What do they know of the impotent stupor that invades one, the paralysis that freezes action, oppressive cloud of negation that stifles not only effort but the idea of what possible efforts one could make? I have spent long hours just sitting, sitting in a chair like a very old persom whose life is bounded by sleep and eating and sitting and waiting, and out of contact.

Perhaps deep down that is the worst: the loss of contact. One is reduced to the condition of a cell existing however imperfectly outside the body corporate, whether the body politic or the body economic, no longer part of the throbbing plasma of life, a cell in suspension outside the vitalising bloodstream, a kind of ectopic pregnancy, a hazard to itself and to others, uncertain of ever reaching a safe delivery.

One has become a burden and embarrassment to one's friends, an object of kindness and concern rather than an equal giving and sharing in equal friendship. First to fall from that grace are those whose first question is "Have you got anything yet?" Well meaning no doubt, they just cannot understand the effect their words have on the unemployed. He lives with his unemployment 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and when he meets a friend he hopes to forget that fact for an hour or two, and not to be forced to articulate his failure publicly.

I have a friend or two who never mention my "condition". We meet and talk and share a pint discussing topics of the day, joys past, and dreams of the future. But some ex-colleagues are tongue-tied. They feel the difference between them and me more keenly than I.

Never having shared the attitude that a difference in a person's status should fundamentally affect a difference in one's dealings on the purely human plane, I was surprised to discover that there is a real class distinction between those in employment and the unemployed. The longer the period of unemployment the stronger this feeling seeps into oneself, and as the months go by a kind of Ishmael complex develops: one is really out in the wilderness, bearing the stigma of unacceptability to one's hardworking fellows. One begins to feel ashamed of oneself, self confidence ebbs, a 'loser' syndrome develops. I have read that this underlying mental attitude is detectable by prospective employers even in otherwise well composed letters of application.

And so one sits. The thoughts become increasingly depressive. The past is remembered for the milestones of failure. The present is the verdict of the past summed up. The future is a half-hearted hope.

Note: Years after his death in 1980, I discovered the above in my brother Brian's papers. His description in more self-effacing, elegant terms, mirrors my own of the effects that unemployment has on the human condition.
John Ward