In Will Self’s 1991 debut collection The Quantity Theory of Insanity, an art therapist named Misha Gurney finds himself involuntarily sectioned in the psychiatric hospital where he is employed. In the title story, Misha’s father is revealed as a friend and early associate of the hospital’s chief psychiatrist Zack Busner, a recurring character in Self’s fiction until the present day.
In his first incarnation, Busner is engaged in testing the titular theory, by whose metric “the surface of the collective psyche was like the worn, stripy ticking of an old mattress. If you punched into its coiled hide at any point, another part would spring up – there was no action without reaction, no laughter without tears, no normality without its pissing accompanist.”
