Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America's Premier Mental Hospital
PublicAffairs - PublicAffairs
Release date: 2003-01-07
Paperback
Author: Alex Beam
History of ideas, intellectual history, History of medicine, Mental health services, Psychiatry, 20th century, c 1800 to c 1900, Psychology, USA, History / World, Mental Illness, Psychology / Mental Illness, History, McLean Hospital, Family & Health: General
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Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America's Premier Mental Hospital
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This popular history was in many ways just what I hoped it would be: colorful, weird, informative, full of kooky tales of mentally disturbed rich and celebrated individuals. It seemed to come up a little short in a couple of areas - the writing is pretty straightforward and lackluster, altho there is a very cool, dry wit at work thruout. Also, the number of colorful tales of madness are not as many as one might wish, but Beam was hampered by not having access to everyone's name and record due to privacy issues.
The book starts with the beginnings of the McLean hospital and its establishment as the place for privileged Bostonians (and a few others) to check in when some real insanity developed. The author spends some time going over long-discredited therapies like hydrotherapy, full feeding, lobotomy, and others. Over time McLean changed and experienced turmoil - the 1960s was such a time there (as elsewhere), when numerous troubled, drugged up, rebellious youngsters found themselves being checked in by their worried parents. In recent years, the entire mental health business has changed and centers more now around shorter term therapies and psychopharmacology. McLean, whose bread and butter was being a dumping ground for rich families to park their most troubled members for years and years if necessary, has had to change too. They still exist, I think, but some of the glorious rolling lawns and brick mansion-like halls have been sold off.
What is most interesting are the stories of some of the noteworthy lunies that show up, many of them suffering from mental illnesses that had, probably still don't have, any real cure. Here are some of the great poets of the 20th century - bipolar Robert Lowell, and suicidal sirens Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, all of whom knew each other. Writer Susanna Kaysen based her book (which was turned into a successful movie) "Girl, Interrupted", on her period of treatment. The singing Taylor family - James, Livingston, and Kate - all children of a well-known doctor, were all at one time or another, residents at McLean. One resident was a doctor's wife who stood on a hill and cast spells on the cars as they drove up to the hospital. Here is schizo Stanley McCormick, one of the richest and handsomest young men in America in the early 1900s - staggering his way thru life, unable to work successfully, too disturbed to make love to his wife, and so enamored of masturbation that he made a leather harness to keep his hands off his genitals while he slept. Another aristocratic resident was Louis Agassiz Shaw, literary and Harvard educated, the owner of a lovely mansion on Boston's North Shore. He was forced to spend the rest of his life in McLean after strangling his maid. He calmly and haughtily told the arresting officer that he did it because she was making too much noise. Another murderous member of America's aristocracy lived out her years there too: Joan Tunney Wilkinson, daughter of boxing great Gene Tunney and sister of U.S. Senator John Tunney. She, while in the throes of paranoid schizophrenia, murdered her English husband with a cleaver. Apparently a fair share of Boston's finest families have seen their relatives pass thru McLean's doors - Adamses, Lowells, Jameses. Rich crazies are not the only characters in this tale, though - some of the disturbed folks are the doctors themselves - at least 2 McLean psychiatrists were suicides, including the brilliant and popular Harvey Schein, who took his own life for unclear reasons in 1974.
This is an engaging book, and even tho the subject matter is too serious for it to be strictly entertainment, it is still an informative pleasure read more than a serious study. One cannot help but think about the struggles that are depicted here, and the painful tragedy that is mental illness, and how far humanity is from truly understanding it. Still, it is good to laugh about it from time to time, and to look upon these people who were blessed with much talent and wealth, but who so lacked inner stability that they ended up in a place like McLean.
Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America's Premier Mental Hospital
Date undefinedWhile those with severe and persistent mental illness struggle to find care, those who are from the upper echelons can be assured that there is a place for them. THAT place is brilliantly profiled in this book. Under the aegis of a ivy league college, this training hospital addresses the needs of the famously mentally ill in grand fashion. No cardboard boxes for these folks. Therapy is state of the art. Nothing is too good to address their needs, and this book should stand as a benchmark as how those who are in need of care will never experience anything like McLean Hospital just as many of the poor will never know that their illness is not so much a treatable disease as a sad social condition.
Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America's Premier Mental Hospital
Date undefinedThis book was nothing like I expected it to be. I had no idea so many "famous" people spent time at this institution. It was very easy to read, had a few technical terms I had to look up but I finished it in two days. Very good read...
