The Man with the Hat (Article 4 of the history of my epilepsy.)

From the age of 16, that is from the mid 50's, I have most of the time worn hat. The reason for this was simply that in my childhood home closet, which had a hat rack with a collection of hats from my father's youth when it was fashionable to wear a hat. There were hats by Borsalino from Italy, Pechel from Austria and Failsworth from England. My father used them no longer so I laid hands on a black felt hat from Pechel and simply cut off 1 cm from the brim which added more "swing" to the impression. Since my father and I were not very attached to each other you can say that hats joined us, and I passed on his weakness for hats.

I felt that my black hat, was seen by a sizable goodwill, wherever I went. Even my girlfriend liked the hat. However, her mother could not stand it. I think it was me who she could not stand (so from that perspective, she was an unusual mother) and when I once by carelessness had left the hat in my girlfriend's home so it was gone when I would get it. Her mother had thrown my beloved hat from Pechel in the trash. I never forgave her. A new hat from my father's collection, I think it was a Borsalino, lost a little of the width of its brim, and I was myself again. If it was because of the bad influence from my own or from the neuroses of my potential mother in law I do not remember, but the relationship with her daughter did not survive.

1961 I wanted to move away from Malmö and Sweden when I tried to adjust to a new life with epilepsy, so I searched and found work at the Commercial Hat Company on Bredgade in the heart of Copenhagen. The company represented Stetson, Borsalino, Pechel and other brands, so I was really on my dad's street. It was a veritable “harem of hats”, and I could “pick and choose” from the sample collections. The Danish family who owned the company really grieved me when I quit in 1963 to move back to Sweden again. Such a hat lover, they did not find every day and one who although he was Swedish, spoke Danish so that even the hats ‘understood’.

Hats have not only been a fun thing because while I was given anti-epileptic medication, which was beneficial as far as my seizures vanished, but the tragic fact happened, because of the medicine, that my hair fell off rapidly. This created an additional complexity to be bald before I was 25 years and has in turn strengthened my need to wear a head ornament. Many have analyzed and indicated that my very early baldness might be due to my "hat abuse", but they have not had the whole picture clear for themselves. My hair growth was, before I started to take epileptic drugs, impressive after a slow start when I was 2-3 years old.

Anyhow even 50 years after the adventure at Stetson and Borsalino at Kongens Nytorv in the King's Village, I am a faithfully wearing their hats. They are now often shipped by DHL from a dealer in England, where they still have an understanding for felt hats. Wherever I have lived in the world, and it has been to create a personal description to identify me quickly in a certain situation and at a specific place it has always worked to say it is ‘the man with the hat.’ Issa, my daughter, and I never feel anxious about losing each other when we go shopping at the modern-day mad hypermarkets such as Carrefour. Issa will always be able to see where "the man in the hat" is staying.

Several years ago the Anglo-American neurologist Oliver Sacks published a popular science book, which was entitled "The Man, Who Mistook His Wife for a hat". The book contains some 20 cases from Sacks’ practice, and they are about peculiar problems; memory losses, mental disability, loss of body image that occurred due to disorders of certain brain functions. He describes the victims' fates with skill, insight and empathy. Everything happens, however, based on Sacks' own or alternative viewpoint, and other promises are not given. It is a fascinating read and gives an interesting picture of the brains’ complex design and about what can happen if the motor or sensory capabilities are damage in a patient and how it changes the patient's social situation. When the intellect, emotions and lust for life are reduced the person changes, and Sacks give examples of the remarkable changes when the patients lack insight into their defects.

The questions raised by both Sacks and David Ingvar (in a preface) about the functions of the memory are still unresolved after 20 years, although much has happened and among others Art Janov and the scientists he refers to have spent much time with this science and these phenomena. How and where are the memories in our brains? Do they consist of three-dimensional signal patterns between neurons, or some form of complex molecules? The information on nervous system structure and function is increasing exponentially and  thousands of reports are published annually in neuro science. New neuro transmitters that communicate and modulate signals in our synapses are detected continuously.

In this context, I have no white rabbit to pull out my Stetson. My ambition is not to contribute with scientific information. However, it is my hope that my exciting experiences are to raise questions among neurologists and researchers. I hope they will create new connections in the brain research and the psychodynamic therapy treatment to ensure that the memory, the different functions of pain and the brains neurotic pain reliever can be focused on in a mutual perspective, all under one hat so to speak.

My story about a life with epilepsy, as the result of a pain caused by a religious belief, I have tried to restructure so that it covers several dimensions. In many ways, my various approaches follow the Abraham Maslow's needs’ theory, the upper edge of which pyramid is about self-actualization. To reach this level I have first had to fill the underlying basic needs. When then dramatic changes have taken place during the fulfillment process, stimulated by a subjective idea of well-being, I have several times been forced to start over and strengthen my safety base and my physiological needs before I was ready for new experiments and so on.

My understanding has gradually increased and my ability to adapt myself to Janov’s recommendations and to my brain's incredible ability to remember and relive the trauma which it could not resist on a fetal stage but with the help of self-produced drugs and later anti epileptics had to put a lid on. The brain's own production of painkillers has stimulated neurotic behavior (or vice versa), which contributed greatly to my subjective welfare, for long periods of my life and only de-escalated when I could experience, feel the traumatic pain fully.

You do not become someone who wears a hat just because you own a hat.