Mind games

In this issue, Granta is exploring the subject of therapy, which now permeates our lives - and is filtered through the arts - in many different ways. Ian Parker's contribution, "Obedience", is a compelling report of controversial experiments conducted in the US by Stanley Milgram in 1961. Milgram paid a small fee to volunteers, who were instructed to increase voltage to wired-up subjects seated in separate rooms, visible through glass.

The subjects were actually actors, simulating pain, but the volunteers did not know this. Not all "obeyed" by increasing voltage, but some did - to levels that could have been fatal in a real situation. Parker gives us a deeply uncomfortable and hard-to-forget insight into human behaviour.

Tim Parks, in "Paolo", writes of the disturbing ongoing symbiotic relationship between his schizophrenic brother-in-law (who is institutionalised) and his mother-in-law. Parks suggests nurture may have something to do with the illness, rather than purely nature. You have to wonder did he show this to his mother-inlaw before publishing it, and if not, why not? Her response is the missing part of the article.

Justine Picardie in "If I dream, I have you" writes of trying to contact her dead sister through a medium, after therapists have proved unhelpful in her attempt to move on from the event. But it has to raise the question, who is benefitting most here? Her sad piece is undoubtedly heartfelt, but does the confessional element alone make it relevant enough to share with all those who didn't know her sister? Is her therapy the knowledge that she is passing on the story to readers?

Edmund White went through years of therapy, first for curiosity, and then, it seems, from ritual dependence, to try to understand his homosexuality. His account of those years, "Shrinks", also looks hard at social background and attitudes toward homosexuality that time, to try and explain why he felt the need for therapy.

Among the other contributors are: Paul Auster being pompous about a trivial coincidence; Gautier Deblonde's photographs of sculptor Anthony Gormley's odd bodies (the envelope for the minds); and a charming piece by Judith Hermann about a one-off visit to a therapist, "which cost me my red coral bracelet and my lover", which may or may not be true.

This issue is all consistently interesting stuff, raising lots of questions - although it's very noticeable that there are no non-fiction contributions from non-Westerners, which is unusual for Granta. What does that tell us? That self-contemplation and exploration is the privilege of people who don't have to worry about basic survival? But perhaps we don't need a therapist to tell us that.

Rosita Boland is an Irish Times journalist