Bipolar Disorder. The Feeling of Hopeless Loneliness

Constant psychiatric and chemotherapy treatment in clinics, including radical methods (electroshock), did not bring relief: in the end, it all ended in a terrible tragedy when Althusser strangled his wife, with whom he had lived for more than thirty years. The forensic examination established that the murder was committed "at the moment of iatrogenic hallucination, complicated by melancholic depression." After undergoing involuntary treatment, Althusser lived a secluded life as a walking ghost, practically a living dead man until his death.

In his book, which has now been translated into Russian for the first time, he shockingly candidly recounts this tragedy: "I killed the woman who meant everything to me; in my painfully unconscious state I "did her a favor," from which she could not refuse, but from which she died," – as well as his tormenting struggle with the illness that haunted him his entire life.