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1.The last reading by Frances Farmer (314-325) is a scathing critique of Western State Hospital in Washington state. Farmer was brutalized the entire time she was a patient. I am familiar with her biography and the paranoid schizophrenic Ms. Farmer was arrested quite a few times for disorderly conduct and assaults on civilians and police. What kinds of humane treatments should be implemented for seriously ill patients that are physically combative?
2.Lenore McCall finishes her story talking about four valuable months spent in the hospital and how she learned “lessons in the art of living.” (293) It is interesting that a woman given the horrible insulin treatment (290-292) would emerge from it with such a positive attitude. Anyone have thoughts on this?
Submitted by Bonnie Akkerman I pledge…
1. One of the more striking accounts in this chapter is from Marian King, who was a patient in a private mental hospital in D.C. in the 1920s (Geller and Harris, 265-74). She is committed for a drug problem and appears to be a spoiled brat. Compared to the other ladies whose stories we hear of in this chapter, she is treated with much more dignity. Her description makes it seem like she is in a drug rehab program for the wealthy. The nurses are a bit mean to her, but other than that her descriptions of her experience are not nearly as bad as the others. If indeed she comes from a rich family, how would a drug treatment program differ for a woman of less means in this period?
2. On the opposite side of the spectrum is the story from Frances Farmer, who had been hospitalized in California and Washington state, 1943-1950 (Geller and Harris, 314-25). She opens her account by repeating four times that she “survived” her experience in mental hospitals (314). She goes on to describe the horrid conditions she was subjected to, including being tied up, tortured with ice baths and living in fetid conditions. When she was released, she says she was a broken person. The way she describes her experience was like she had been a POW, which makes me wonder if she suffered from what we call PTSD today. She doesn’t go into much detail about her post-release symptoms, but her statement that she “crawled out mutilated, whimpering and terribly alone” sounds like she suffered from the psychological trauma that former POWs and combat veterans suffer who are diagnosed with PTSD.