One of Acute Nervous Disequilibrium | A letter to Cyril Yeates by James Joyce, 1936
An autographed letter to Cyril Yeates, husband of his cousin Gretta, concerns
the mental health of James Joyce’s daughter Lucia.
Dear Yeates
This is just to thank you and Gretta for you promptness in making inquiries. I shall not be able to come to a decision for about a fortnight. At the present moment the general opinion of the doctors is that it is definitely not an incurable case and probably not now to any great extent even a mental case but one of acute nervous disequilibrium. If that is so either the diagnoses of a dozen of the leading psychiatrists in Europe that it was a progressing demential case of the kind which is finally incurable if it progresses were all wrong or the series of injections at the eleventh hour as arrested the final stage. In any case her transfer here was a psychological blunder which has to be undone.
Sincerely yours, James Joyce, 1936
James Joyce and Lucia Joyce
When Lucia was notified of her father’s death in 1941,
she said:
“What is he doing under the ground, that idiot? When will
he decide to come out? He’s watching us all the time.”
