A Confederacy of Dunces : mental illness in the life and work of John Kennedy Toole

Abstract

SUMMARY This article examines the life and work of John Kennedy Toole, focusing on his 1981 Pulitzer Prize winning novel A Confederacy of Dunces . Toole finished the novel in 1966 and, after failing to rework his manuscript to his editor’s satisfaction, he shelved the project. Following this, he displayed symptoms typical of paranoid schizophrenia and he took his own life at the age of 31. In his novel, Toole parodies both psychoanalysis and the practice of psychiatry at the time, with a strong overlap with the emerging perspectives critical of psychiatry popularised by figures such as Szasz, Laing and Foucault. Toole’s life and work have relevance for psychiatrists interested in the relationship between creativity and mental illness, attitudes towards psychiatry in the 1960s, and the interplay between societal values and judgements of mental health.