Joyce, Lucia

The famous psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) was one of many doctors who attempted to treat Lucia Joyce. Lucia despised him, saying, To think that such a big, fat materialistic Swiss man should try to get hold of my soul. ... 

James Joyce later commented on Nora s eccentricity, Whatever spark or gift I possess has been transmitted to Lucia and it has kindled a fire in her brain. She was hospitalized in the 1930s for her mental illness. Her horrifying treatments included injections with seawater and animal serum, as well as solitary confinement. 

Carol Loeb Shloss speculates in Lucia Joyce To Dance in the Wake that whatever condition Lucia Joyce had, it was worsened by family members who forced her to give up her career in modem dance— something at which she excelled. Alas, Lucia was frequently abandoned by men she loved. Her mental health declined. Lucia s brother had her committed to a hospital and insisted that she remain locked up in institutions where she was used as a human guinea pig by psychiatrists testing their nutty theories. When she was 28 years old, the Joyces put her in an asylum near Paris, and she never lived on the outside again. James Joyce loved her dearly and never believed that she was insane. He tried desperately to get her out of occupied France. Unfortunately, he died suddenly in 1941, and Lucia was abandoned to remain in mental hospitals for the rest of her life. She died in 1982 at the age of 75. 

Shloss, Carol Loeb, Lucia Joyce To Dance in the Wake (New York Farrar Straus Giroux, 2003). 

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