Dennis Potter and Psoriasis

The English television playwright, Dennis Potter, the author of such works as “The Singing Detective” and “Lipstick on my Collar,” like to have sex with hookers. These encounters, although a regular thing, never really threaten his marriage, which was rock solid. He not only liked to fuck prostitutes but he compulsively told his mates about these experiences. It wasn’t in the spirit of boasting though; it was more like something he had to confess. To spill the beans to his mates served to satisfy some kind of Psychological need. One psychiatrist he saw about his depression said he had a psycho-sexual problem. Duh! That much was pretty obvious.

Humphrey Carpenter, Potter’s biographer, thinks these confessions were evidence of a “profound self-loathing.” Just as his psoriasis was more proof of his personal “pollution.”

“Your skin is your outer self—your boundary
between you and the world—and inevitably
you part of the leper syndrome. You know,
‘Ring the bell and shout UNCLEAN! ‘”

‘‘Ring the bells, etc.” is a reference to some lines in “The Singing Detective,” by far his best-known and popular work. The Detective is named, amusingly, Phillip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s knight-errant detective of American fame. Marlowe is the Detective of the title and he is in the hospital for treatment of his severe Psoriatic Anthropathy (psoriasis combined with arthritis.) Potter was in the hospital with this condition a number of times, sometimes with a crust of scales over his eyes, it was that bad at times. The original BBC production is excellent, starring Michael Gambon as Marlowe and Joanne Whaley as his nurse in the hospital. The American version, with Robert Downey Jr., cannot hold a candle to the British production, which has the authenticity the teleplay needs. The psychologist that is working with Marlowe tells him that “the temptation to believe that the illness and poisons of the mind or personality have somehow erupted out on the skin. Unclean! Unclean! You shout, ringing the bell warning us to keep off, to keep clear.” Friends of Potter agree that he believed the disease was indeed a “poison of the mind, as punishment for sins or bad karma.”

Ah yes, the Heartbreak of Psoriasis! That’s the attitude the attitude Dermatologists like to push on the public so they will seek expensive treatments or topical creams. They make it basically a vanity issue with psychological implications. My psoriasis showed up when I was 42, with no history of it in my family. I have what they call a moderate case, where it is a bloody nuisance, but not much more than that, although it has grown worst as time has gone by. I have certainly noticed how people scowl when they notice the white scales on my hands and then back away, as if I was a leper, when in fact psoriasis is not an infectious disease. Out of desperation recently I tried taking a bath using sea salt from the Dead Sea. I wanted to see if the trace minerals in the sea salt would alter my unclean appearance. For the first time since psoriasis had showed up it was bothering my wife, especially when engaged in sex. In particular she disliked having my hands fondling her genital area or having a couple fingers in her. She knows better—that it is not contagious—but the irrational factors can take over sometimes. I couldn’t let that become my Heartbreak of Psoriasis, so I did not let her qualms prevent us from having sex. I was too horny and too needy to let that happen. The “filth” she was complaining about was in her head, not in my fingers. Eventually she came around and we rarely had a problem. Apparently, Dermatopathophobia, (fear of skin disease) is embedded in all our psyches. In our case, love conquers all.

In 1980 I sought the opinion of a Tucson Naturopath about the possible causes of my psoriasis. When he heard I had daily contact with cleaning chemicals, he thought that could be the cause, especially since the outbreak occurred two years after I was hired as custodian at St. Andrews Presbyterian Church. The first time I noticed it was under my fingernails—I thought it was a fungus. In a few year s I decided to write the A.R.E. organization in Virginia Beach, Edgar Cayce’s group HQ. All Cayce’s files are kept there, so I ordered his file on Psoriasis, which turned out to be pretty skinny. He said the affliction was caused by a toxic leak from the large intestine. His cure was daunting, a very complicated regime of several teas I had never heard of. If there was more to it than that I can’t recall. Another thing I tried was Castor oil in a glass of milk. I drank that every day for about 6 months.

Naturally, I eventually asked myself could there be an emotional or psychological cause to the outbreak. If so what could it be? The first thing I considered was the shock I experienced when I started working at the church, which was certainly a trauma, especially when it got linked with my mother’s attitude about me taking a class-less scum job like being a janitor, something she was on my ass about till the day she died. The transition to becoming a janitor among the class-conscious Presbyterians was tough enough, but my mother piling on made it only worse. When I took the job in May of 1977 I had myself convinced that a job was a job, at least if survival not prosperity was the man issue. Not quite. Very simply, I had a hard time making the transition from being a university professor and ‘‘big man on campus,” plus someone who had showed his work around the country, which meant absolutely nothing to Church members. Even though there 5 years in between leaving UNLV and taking the job at the church, what mattered is I was still very much identified with my campus Identity, which was hard won and had been a big boost to my lower class ID. Intellectually I had let go of the ID and image, but emotionally I still quite attached to it. I had bragged about going through a “deprofessional process, “ but part of my ego clung to the past image, which had more glamour and drama. I hadn’t eliminated it, I had just buried it out of sight, and when push came to shove, it resurfaced as a roadblock to my psychological ambition. Going back to being a working stiff turned out to be much less appealing than my “Pride of Ascendency.” Readjusting to being a NOBODY again, and believe me the church members who little or nothing about my past accomplishments, made sure I knew I was a nonentity. The elderly Asst. Pastor loved to call “boy” when I was in my forties. I called him on it but he kept it up. The pretty secretary who was fooling around with the senior pastor once said to me after he upbraided me for something or other, “You know, every once and while he wants to kick the dog.” No one gave a damn about my feelings.

Those bad days at St. Andrew’s coincided with the fact my mother was so embarrassed by my working as a janitor she told all her friends I was teaching at the University in Tucson and Sue was, of course, home with then new baby. It really galled me she had to falsify my existence to save face with her friends who had had sons they could be proud of. Is it possible that her belittling campaign toward me when combined with the corrosive negativity dumped on me the first few years at the church, could that cause me enough stress to be the “poison” that kicked off the psoriasis outbreak. Or do I blame the chemicals I had to work with for years? Who knows? I don’t.