471E4--Week 12 Questions/Comments--Thursday

I can definitely see how poetry was a successful treatment in some cases because it allowed patients to express themselves. While writing poetry can be a way of treatment I still find it to be more of a tactic for propaganda. Poetry that is written on mental illness/institutions drew people in because it was about a life they did not know and a controversial one. Whether people believed the poems or not it still got the attention. I am wondering how many poems were inspired by personal experience or just what they thought the institution was like. -Courtney Collier

In the section on Walter Paton, the seventy-seven year old patient who had been in the hospital since 1948, they said that they tried to release him but they were not successful attempts. In the description of Walter it said he was shy and well liked by the caretakers. I am wondering if Walter did not want to leave the asylum because he was well taken care of and given attention and also because the institution was his safety net. He was also eager for the interview which seems to me that he likes the attention. It also could have meant the family did not want to deal with him as well. -Courtney Collier

Hardly 3 pages into the reading Beam calls Sexton's poem about Sylvia Plath "bitchy." Are you joking Beam? If you're going to swear in your writing at least be elegant, and if you're going to write a book about people in asylums, try to appreciate their turmoil. -Joanna Jourdan

So we have discussed blessins of the elite status of Mclean, but we haven’t discussed the curses. One curse that I see reoccurring in the number of patients who manipulate their illness for self-serving purposes. We see Priscilla, in chapter four, who frankly states she pretended to be ill for the attention. Then Anne Sexton,who also uses her illness to manipulate friends and families, tries to get transferred to Mclean. While she isn’t admitted to Mclean her desire to be there shows that the elite status of Mclean not only romanticizes mental illness, but potentially created a subset of patients whom are there for inspiration (not care). In the same turn, young adults in the 1960s were being admitted in high numbers under generic diagnosis. It was the fashionable solution for elite families to send their rowdy children to the asylum. Not all of these patients were insane – so what is going on? It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, Mclean elite-ness draws in the less insane who publish their experiences only increasing the elite-ness and romanticizes of mental illness. How often in our films did we come across people who manipulated their illness? Notice how people are faking mental illness not to get inside the asylum to protest or expose, but to publish and romanticizes their experiences in the famous Mclean. Meanwhile this cycle is enabled by market opportunity -insurance company’s paying for mental treatment, increase in medical professionals, and creation of new drug therapy (198). - Kasey Moore

I don't think you could have stated it any better, Kasey. I agree with you, what struck me instantly as I began reading was how people like Sexton manipulated perception of and milked their "illness" in order to gain a certain kind of attention. Beam mentions that Lowell recognized the pressures that came with prestige and a privileged background...makes it seem that mental illness is a rich person's disease. --Chelsea Chin

It seems that some of the patients at McLean hospital became famous by documenting their stay in a certain way. Susanna Kaysen and Sylvia Plath have received their fame from literary works. How does this differ from the readings we read in our discussion of the "Opal" from a few weeks back? ~ Emily Barry

Beam states that psychiatrists began pursuing the profession to find out what was wrong with them. This is a departure from the early years when doctors went to asylums to make a name for themselves. When did the change occur and why? -Joanna Jourdan

McLean in this section didn't seem like my idea of a hospital. The patients brought drugs in and sometimes shared them with attendants? Teenagers spent years there because their parents didn't know how to deal with them? McLean sounds like it would have been a strange place to visit in the 1960s, but I wonder how much of Beam's interpretation is him trying to emphasize the impact of popular culture on the hospital and not necessarily representative. -Joanna Jourdan

Was the appeal of a restful stay that alluring to the elite? It seems that the elite class though of it as a great vacation whether to further their careers as Sexton or Jackie Kennedy congratulating Lowell for “getting away for the holidays.” – Katie Tryon

-I didn’t enjoy this book as much as some of the others. I disliked how the author goes into so much detail on the patient’s lives before hand or details conversations with people he interviewed that were unneeded. It kind of reads like Mclean is comparative to a stay at a spa. Also kind of interesting, I went to look up some of the articles he has written recently and “How Dre, Z, Nas, and 9th Wonder spent their summer vacations” was a title of an article published in August in the Boston Globe. –Katie Tryon

To me, this book which started out as a way to discuss McLean Hospital simply turned into different patient stories. It was just all about famous people who had gone to McLean. Besides the first chapter in which we learned about some about the hospital and how it was structured, we never learned anything else about it. We did not really hear accounts from people who worked in Mclean or what treatments the patients were given. This book does not tell the story of McLean, but just the story of certain individuals there. - Morgan H.

Louis Shaw was in McLean because he killed someone (pg. 172). But was he really mentally ill or was he just pretending he was to avoid going to jail and to avoid disgracing his family more? Ray Charles was sent to McLean after being busted for possession of heroin and marijuana (pg. 186). If this had been anyone else in these situations, would they not have gotten into trouble? I’m not sure I like that the status of these people can save them from punishment. - Morgan H.

Like Katie said, Beam overdoes it with the details and not in a good way. In fact, some just seem to weaken the book in my opinion. I understand that he is writing to a popular audience, but on page 170, for example, while discussing Louis Agassiz Shaw's lineage he notes that he's related to "Robert Gould Shaw, the heroic Civil War captain played by Matthew Broderick in the movie Glory ." Did he really have to throw that last bit in there, really? -Carly W.

I don't understand how it was possible for Walter Paton to stay at McLean as long as he did. There aren't any sort of regulations about how long a person can reside in an institution? Is this actually a common thing? We've talked about people having long stays in asylums, but I feel like this is a REALLY long stay. -Carly W.

Though this book truly offers a unique history, one that is like no other, which is the history of an elite class of mental health patients. For some Mclean served as a true hospital, but for others it was a glamorized hotel with drugs and a golf course. Though this unique history offers a lot the author does not go far enough with his research or analysis. To me the author treats mental illness as a joke and a ploy to make money. He feeds off of elite names and their stories for his benefit rather than disseminating the problem. It would be interesting for a real historian to right an intriguing history of the elite at Mclean and how their mental illness was different, if at all, from others who suffer from the same problem. Otherwise this book is no different than a glamour magazine. –Jack Hylan

Since the class on Monday, when several people pointed out how Beam’s opinions should be taken with a grain of salt, I’ve read the rest of the book from a position of critical skepticism. Starting on chapter nine Beam states “psychiatrists hardly ever use the word ‘cure.’” I don’t think that’s a fairly accurate statement, especially when thinking back at all the other books we’ve read in this class that show otherwise. –Scott Campbell

Beam does focus on one interesting concept of healing through the arts. He talks briefly about Robert’s “band therapies” idea on 194 which given the number of musicians at McLean makes sense. I wish the author would have reviewed this field more though. – Scott Campbell

I feel like Beam had so much potential with this book and just didn't fulfill it. The book starts as a great analysis of McLean but gets so lost in the personal stories of famous patients. I felt like McLean became a side topic among people such as Sylvia Plath and James Taylor.-Maggie Nunn

On pg. 208 and 209, the doctor's note on June's prognosis seemed so deceitful. The comments such as "luring her in" and "we must show a concern for her" made me think that the McLean doctors and attendants were manipulative to the patients. I was surprised to see this at McLean but we have seen manipulative doctors many times now throughout the semester.-Maggie Nunn

The notion of a "cure" is a powerfully potent implication. I wonder if in fact this did play much of a role in the thinking of psychiatrists at this time? I also wonder, what are other people's thoughts are on this idea of a "cure?" ~ Alex Young

I am struck by Beam's comment on page 219, "mental illness can be infectious. Nurses, psychiatric aides, and therapists are hardly indifferent to their surroundings in the mental hospital, and many of them break down themselves. As the doctors are fond of saying: No one is immune." What is he trying to imply? -- Chelsea Chin