When writing literally saves your life: An Obituary of Janet Frame

This from an obituary by New Zealand Writer, Janet Frame, who died in January at the age of 79:

"For almost a decade, Miss Frame moved in and out of institutions. Since electric-shock treatment did little for her, it was decided in 1952 that she needed a lobotomy. She had often seen such patients returning from the hospital, “with plaster over their shaven heads...and the pupils of their eyes large and dark as if filled with ink.” Now she, too, was to be “changed” into someone biddable and quiet.

But she had also been writing while in hospital. In the nick of time, “The Lagoon”, a collection of short stories, was published and won New Zealand's highest literary prize. “I've decided that you should stay as you are. I don't want you changed,” said Seacliff's chief surgeon. As Miss Frame later agreed, “My writing saved me.”

It was to go on doing so. “Faces in the Water” was written as a therapeutic exercise on the advice of her psychiatrist at London's Maudsley hospital, where she admitted herself as an outpatient in 1957. To the end of her life she used writing as therapy, not caring whether she was published. Her autobiography (which was made into the film “An Angel at My Table” in 1990) was meant to set the record straight and show that she was not disturbed. She loathed being labelled a “mad genius”.

Yet as her fame spread abroad, leading last October to her nomination for the Nobel prize for literature..."

From the Economist Magazine