A SHARED MADNESS BETWEEN A MOTHER AND A DAUGHTER

INTRODUCTION

Between 1993 and 1999, I worked in the psychiatry department of a general hospital in Madrid. This hospital, called Gregorio Marañón, treated many patients from different areas of the city, especially from the south/southeast. Specifically, from the crowded neighborhoods of Carabanchel and Vallecas, we attended all the psychiatric admissions that came from there. Three psychiatrists, several psychologists, social workers, and ward nurses did it.

Coming from this neighborhood of Carabanchel, a woman of about 45 years of age was brought in an ambulance, accompanied by the police.

THE PREVIOUS STORY

This patient had been seen by numerous drivers walking against traffic on the shoulder of a busy highway early in the morning. There she was detained by a Civil Guard vehicle. Without exercising any opposition to them, the agents who stopped her asked her where she was going. She answered with an apparent calm that she was going to look for her boyfriend, whose plane was landing that day at a nearby airfield…which doesn’t exist.

Because of the situation and the incoherent responses given by this person, the agents requested an ambulance that took her to the emergency room of the hospital.

BACKGROUND

This person, who was admitted to the psychiatric department and whose psychiatric care corresponded to me, recounted in a somewhat lengthy and complex way during the first interview I had with her, that this…