11.The important mentors who made my Epileptic Journey possible. (Article 5 of the history of my epilepsy.)

EA and Isabel Artigues Johnsson

1988-92 EA worked as my secretary and assistant. I hired her against the testing psychologist's advice, and our cooperation was a direct hit. We developed a rare performance together when we worked. This brought with it that we often got our mission beyond the daily operational chores, such as to organize events for the Swedish parent company, which included both the board of directors, corporate management, divisional management and individual visits.

When my contract with the Spanish business went out  this coincided with that I discontinued a few years old Teutonic common-law marriage, which didn’t lack its bright points, but it had stopped working and gone over the time of my neuroses. Then EA succeeded as the most natural thing in the world and came with me to Sweden when I was offered a new position in Sweden as Administrative Officer in the division, to which the Spanish company belonged. Seen from an epileptic, therapeutical and experimental point of view, my years in Valencia, which is ‘the city of the flowers, light and love,’ were relatively peaceful and 'harmonious'. For sure the neuroses appeared in hallucinations at rare occasions a few times and the feeling of being bored and locked was well timed with my move to Sweden. In many ways, this period can withstand to be compared to the 1978-79 stay in Los Angeles. The same climate, which itself is an antidepressant, made me feel quite excellent with friendly, sweet people, both on my Spanish workplace and in my private living environment in the center of Valencia.

During the following years, we moved a large number of times, first within Helsingborg, but also abroad to France and Germany, before we in 1998 settled down in Ramlösa, Sweden. During the first few eventful years EA was a condition that I could keep pace with all the change assignments I had around the Surface Material Division. She also had time to amazingly fast learn Swedish through adult education, give birth to Isabel 1994 and to study and achieve certificates in Spanish and French at the University of Lund and maintain contact and communication with her parents in Valencia. When in 1997 I had worked myself into a burnout, and I decided to go into my epilepsy, this was obviously a dramatic change for EA. However, she stood up sincere and got to experience my ‘crazy’ experiments first hand and helped me to film epileptic seizures and / or birth primal so that I could study them afterwards.

EA worked brilliantly during the stressful and eventful career years, and her neurotic energy could then be channeled into positive grooves. Of course, when I finished my career, a tightening economy became a consequence and the need for additional revenue was initially matched with EA’s own desire for a teaching career. This situation put new demands, and because I suddenly became a home going dad so it was not just the outer Swedish weather which was gray and overcast, even at home, it became a little grayer and a desire for Spain became increasingly stronger. This desire was not lessened by the fact that EA at occasions felt aggrieved by the Swedish view of children's education both at the Waldorf kindergarten where Isabel, our daughter, went but also in her own teaching acts at a few different schools in Helsingborg. EA neurotic energy could no longer as elegantly be sublimated into special projects, which was her elixir of life, but sometimes they took other forms. It would, however, take until 2006 before EA made up with herself that her future did not lay in Sweden.

EA has over 21 years from 1988 to 2009 had an important role in the fact that all stages of Maslow's model from time to time have been met. I have trusted her loyalty, her generosity and her willingness to devote herself, and she has accepted my different experiments. Especially the years 1992 to 2002, I was completely dependent on her commitment and energy for my well being, and I can say that during the following years when EA was struggling with both herself and with her teaching career, so she indirectly caused that I was undergoing a personality development which meant I for the first time learned to manage a home and a child.

This meant perhaps the finest development in my career when I learned to take care of Isabel and to wash and clean. This I owe to EA. Like everything, I have done during my life since birth, first I would fail before I awkwardly, got the insights into the most important things in life. 

Her neuroses and different view on educational methods, I had to accept that I was not able to handle. They could not be accommodated within a neurotic decision in the beginning of our time together, ‘to show all doubters that I could hold together a marriage indefinitely,’ and give me subjective well-being enough to cope with.

Friendships based on business is better than business based on friendship. John D. Rockefeller