Miss Emily Grierson is a 54 year old former crafts teacher. I met Emily through the town mayor. She was reluctant to come in for therapy but the mayor managed to convince her that it was for her own good and she really needed it.
At a first glance, Emily seemed frail and fixated in a world she had created for herself and she was not willing to let anyone in. She had lived almost half of her adulthood with her father who kept her mostly locked in the house. As a young adult, she was not allowed to have any suitors. The only man she loved in her young adulthood had deserted her.
She seemed very lonely and had trouble letting go of people. She was also in denial about a lot of things; for instance her desperate need to keep her father’s corpse in the house after his death. Emily’s father died when she was thirty years old. After his death, she kept him in the house and did not grieve for him for three days.
She did not portray any signs of grief to her neighbors who called on her to offer her condolences. In fact, she told them her father was not dead (Faulkner 16). It took the intervention of the ministers and doctors to convince her to let go of the body. It was not until then that she broke down in tears. This was not such a big deal since people grieve differently and the first stage of grief is denial. It is therefore understandable that she would want to hold on to her father’s body.
Even after her father’s death Emily barely went out. She finally went out two years later and met Homer, a road constructor. She believed she finally had someone to marry and share the rest of her life with but was disappointed when Homer told her he would never marry. Emily having experienced her father’s death and desertion from a man she once loved battled with the idea of being deserted again.
Her senses told her the best thing to do was not wait for Homer to desert her, but think of a way to make him stay with her permanently. Death was permanent.
Emily felt it right to poison Homer with rat poison and keep him locked in her bedroom. She also had intercourse with his corpse. “I felt connected to him,” she said.
After six months of locking Homer in her bedroom, she began to lose her mind. “It felt like my soul and my body departed me every time I unlocked Homer’s room. I began to lose touch and no longer wanted to see him. This made me feel like I was crazy. How could I no longer want to be with the man I loved?” To her, this was a crazy feeling.
Psychological diagnosis
Miss Emily Grierson suffers from severe psychosis. She developed psychosis in response to the demanding conditions of her social status in the South which made it impossible to develop healthy coping and defense mechanisms. While it might be easy for some to cope with demands of an aristocratic status, people like Emily develop psychosis due to their inability to cope.
Miss Emily undergoes delusion and paranoia after her father’s death. She refuses to admit her father is dead and attempts to fill a hole of loss by holding on to the corpse (Romdhani 1520). This further exhibits her skewed vision to reality.
Miss Emily exhibits deficits in social functioning. She is unable to interact with people in a proper manner and is socially withdrawn. Additionally, she fails to attend to her personal hygiene and maintain cleanliness around her home.
Miss Emily’s psychosis intensifies when she fails to confront her father’s death. Instead, she kills Homer to keep him ‘alive’ in her world. Her severe psychosis has led her to develop symptoms of schizophrenia as a maladaptive coping mechanism.
Psychosocial and pharmacologic treatment
Isolation is one of the contributing factors to Miss Emily’s schizophrenia. Research has demonstrated that activities which keep an individual busy and gives them a sense of pleasure can make them feel less lonely and isolated. Miss Emily needs to be in a program for the elderly that offers activities and interaction with other people. The activities will improve her mood and give her a real sense of the world (Felmet et al 242) .
While Miss Emily involves herself with social activities, she will need to be put on antipsychotic medication. Miss Emily will need to attend more therapy sessions to help her adjust to change and accept treatment.
Long term and Short term outcomes
Miss Emily’s short term outcomes will include mood stabilization, weight gain and possible risk of diabetes due to anti-psychotic treatment and improved mental health. My long term prediction of her treatment is that she will most likely relapse especially with discontinuation of anti-psychotic drugs. Miss Emily is 72 years old, and she needs a low dosage of medication. Her psychosis will be minimally managed.
Works cited
Faulkner, William. “A Rose for Emily.”Selected Short Stories of William Faulkner. New York: Random House Inc, 1993
Felmet, Kandi, et al. Elderly Patients with Schizophrenia and Depression: Diagnosis and Treatment. Clin Schizophr Relat Psychoses, vol.4, no.4, 2011, p. 239–250.
Romdhani, Mourad. Miss Emily Grierson’s Psychopathy in William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”: Overt Disorder, Covert Order. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES AND CULTURAL STUDIES, vol 3:2, 2016: 1513-1524.
