Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

Margaret and Lindsay

After Mary—now Lindsay—left for Hotchkiss, she became less jealous of and closer to her sister Margaret. Just as Margaret had, Lindsay also struggled to adjust to both the academic rigor of her new environment and the wealth and privilege of her classmates.

Meanwhile, Joe, who had been working as a baggage handler in Chicago, became resentful after being denied a promotion. The angry letters he sent in response resulted in his being fired, culminating in a psychotic break in 1982: “In short order, Joe lost everything—his car, his apartment, his fiancée. Then he started seeing things” (185). He eventually returned to his parent’s home in Colorado, but the experience of having visited Joe while he was hospitalized in Chicago left a permanent impression on Lindsay.

Meanwhile, Margaret had transferred from Skidmore to the University of Colorado but continued to keep her distance from her family. When she reconnected with a Skidmore classmate, Chris, she began dating him, dazzled by his wealth and the luxuries it afforded, like yacht clubs, boating, and free trips to Maine.

On New Year’s 1984, Chris proposed, and Margaret accepted. Wylie, a friend of Margaret’s from Boulder, warned her that the relationship was moving much too fast, and Margaret herself spent the night of the reception in tears. Nevertheless, she went through with the wedding.

That same year, Jim’s wife had left him for hitting their now teenaged son. In the wake of Kathy’s departure, he became increasingly unstable, drinking heavily and at one point slashing the tires of Lindsay’s boyfriend’s car while they were visiting Hidden Valley Road.

Lindsay

Lindsay returned to Boulder for college, but despite her outward success at school, she struggled increasingly with anxiety. The situation came to a head when Lindsay began dating a nephew of the Garys. Lindsay found herself unable to have sex with him, and when he asked her what was wrong, she broke down and revealed Jim’s abuse. The couple sought advice from Nancy Gary, who recommended a therapist named Louise Silvern.

Working through her childhood trauma proved to be a years-long process, but Lindsay gradually began to recognize and learn to cope with the unhealthy dynamics still at work in her family. As Lindsay became more comfortable with Silvern, she also shared the story of being raped at the party and was able to stop blaming herself for it.

Eventually, Lindsay told her mother about Jim’s abuse, only for Mimi to reveal that she herself had been sexually abused as a girl by her stepfather. Lindsay has mixed feelings about the admission, feeling both closer to her mother and feeling that her trauma was made less important: “[A]t the same time, Lindsay felt she had been denied something—her own misfortune was once again preempted by someone else’s” (199). She was also frustrated by Mimi’s willingness to blame Jim’s behavior on schizophrenia.

Nevertheless, Lindsay accomplished what she set out to do, telling her mother she wouldn’t tolerate Jim’s presence anymore. The next time Jim showed up while Lindsay was visiting Hidden Valley Road, Don ordered him to leave. Jim refused, which led to a blow-up in which Lindsay revealed his abuse to everyone present, and Jim—after shouting and breaking things—was told never to come back.

By the early 1980s, purely environmental theories about schizophrenia were increasingly unviable due to both lack of evidence and psychotherapy’s poor track record in treating the disease. Nevertheless, problems remained in treating the condition as a physical disorder. It wasn’t clear how antipsychotic drugs worked, but to the extent that they did, they also created new medical issues: “The drugs made some patients obese, others stiff and ungainly, others practically catatonic—this from drugs that had been hailed as miracles” (204-205).

In 1984, DeLisi began her search for “multiplex” families with multiple instances of schizophrenia. Her research eventually led her to the Galvins, whom she visited in Colorado. With the exception of Richard, everyone agreed to take part in diagnostic interviews and blood draws. Having heard about Freedman’s research, DeLisi also alerted him to the existence of the Galvin family. Like DeLisi, he visited the Galvins, conducting his double-click tests on the family in the hopes of being able to link sensory gating to a particular region of the brain.

Despite all of this, progress remained slow; DeLisi’s research, for instance, yielded contradictory results about the genetic relationship between schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. At NIMH in 1990, researchers did succeed in uncovering new evidence of brain abnormalities in people with schizophrenia (specifically, a smaller hippocampus), but one of the researchers behind the study, Daniel Weinberger, was beginning to feel that brain imaging studies were a dead end. His own theory was that schizophrenia began much earlier than the period when its obvious symptoms emerge (typically late adolescence or early adulthood). One implication of this theory was that the best way of treating schizophrenia might be early childhood or even in utero intervention for at-risk individuals.

Don, Donald, Jim, John, Michael, Richard, Joe, Mark, Matt, and Peter

Although his efforts to live independently consistently failed, Donald spent seven years largely stable before experiencing a major breakdown in 1986. He was hospitalized and put on new medication, but he had another psychotic break in 1990. Meanwhile, the medication had begun to take a physical toll on him, limiting his ability to move freely.

Jim—now visited only by Mimi—had also developed health problems, including weight gain and a weak heart. Joe suffered from the same complaints, but he was psychologically well enough to live on his own and maintain some sort of relationship with his healthy siblings. Likewise, Matt had dramatically improved after beginning clozapine in 1986; although he remained resentful of treatment, his delusions and hallucinations mostly subsided. As a result, he was able to live a relatively independent life, even volunteering at a food kitchen for homeless veterans.

Meanwhile, Peter had fallen into a pattern of arrests and hospitalizations. His diagnosis was now bipolar disorder, but he continued to resist taking medication. During one assessment interview, he opened up about something he’d previously kept secret: that he was also abused by Jim as a child.

The healthy Galvin siblings did their best to distance themselves from the rest of the family. Partly out of concern for their own children’s welfare, John and his wife rarely visited, while Richard spent much of his twenties partying and investing in high-stakes mining projects. Michael and Mark remained in closer communication with the family, though Mark seemed permanently scarred. He dropped out of college, divorced the mother of his three children, then remarried and began managing the bookstore at the University of Colorado (221).

Don’s health deteriorated throughout the 1980s following a cancer diagnosis, and his physical condition prevented him from taking part in the hobbies he once enjoyed, most notably, falconry.

Margaret

Margaret became pregnant soon after marrying, and Chris insisted that she get an abortion; she did, but the marriage fell apart within a year anyway. She moved back to Colorado, completed her college degree, and began seeking solace in yoga, camping, hikes, etc. Margaret also reconnected with Wylie and eventually began dating him. The two married in 1993.

Although uninterested in traditional therapy, Margaret sought out various experimental treatments, mysticism, retreats, art therapy, group therapy, and Gestalt; “For a few years, she found solace in Brainspotting, an avant-garde trauma therapy concentrating on controlling one’s eye movements in the midst of creative visualization” (226). Margaret’s attempts to confront Jim and Mimi about the abuse she had endured weren’t particularly successful, but over time, she managed to let go of some of her hurt and anger, though she continued to avoid most of her family whenever possible.