ABSTRACT
Barbara O'Brien, the woman who took a Greyhound Bus across the United States in the 1950s at the behest of voices, recorded a glossary of terms, words that functioned as new language. Once she realises that the Hook Operators had been delusions, Barbara experiences what she calls "the dry beach". Barbara's explanation for what happens to her in these weeks and months of returning to "reality" echoes her experience of psychosis. Barbara used what she learnt from the Hook Operators to navigate the world, rebuilding her life in relation to them, their directives and their language, but her new life carried traces of her experience in psychosis. Language, the arc of its trajectory into psychosis and back, carries what J. Lacan, in his late work, called the Real unconscious. Like Whitney, the author returned from psychosis with fierce determination to come off and stay off medication.
