unearthed skulls dated to around 5000 BC… Porter, Madness: A Brief History, 10.
Another way to rid oneself… Melanie Thernstrom, The Pain Chronicles: Cures, Myths, Mysteries, Prayers, Diaries, Brain Scans, Healing, and the Science of Suffering (New York: FSG, 2010), 33.
“she who seizes”… Thernstrom, The Pain Chronicles, 33.
“the Lord shall smite thee”… Deuteronomy 28:28, the Holy Bible, King James Version (American Bible Society, 1999).
God punishes Nebuchadnezzar… I first encountered the story of Nebuchadnezzar in Joel Gold and Ian Gold, Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness (New York: Free Press, 2014).
“those who walk in pride he is able to abase”… Daniel 4:37, the Holy Bible, King James Version (American Bible Society, 1999).
Those who survived suicide attempts… Allen Frances, Saving Normal (New York: William Morrow, 2013), 47.
“unambiguously a legitimate object”… Porter, Madness: A Brief History, 58.
German physician Johann Christian Reil… For more on Johann Christian Reil and early psychiatrie, see Maximilian Schochow and Florian Steger, “Johann Christian Reil (1759–1813): Pioneer of Psychiatry, City Physician, and Advocate of Public Medical Care,” American Journal of Psychiatry 171, no. 4 (April 2014), https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1176/appi.ajp.2013.13081151; and Andreas Marneros, “Psychiatry’s 200th Birthday,” British Journal of Psychiatry 193, no. 1 (July 2008): 1–3, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/psychiatrys-200th-birthday/6455A01CEF979FEFAB23B8467B95A823/core-reader#top.
“We will never find pure mental”… Quote from Marneros, “Psychiatry’s 200th Birthday.”
spinning chairs… Esther Inglis-Arkell, “The Crazy Psychiatric Treatment Developed by Charles Darwin’s Grandfather,” io9.gizmodo.com, July 15, 2013, https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-crazy-psychiatric-treatment-developed-by-charles-da-714873905.
“baths of surprise”… Andrew Scull, Madness: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 35.
Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence… If you’re interested in reading a far more flattering and nuanced portrait of Benjamin Rush, check out Stephen Fried, Rush: Revolution, Madness, and the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father (New York: Crown, 2018).
In 1874, German physician Carl Wernicke… Wernicke’s aphasia description came from “Wernicke’s (Receptive) Aphasia,” National Aphasia Association, https://www.aphasia.org/aphasia-resources/wernickes-aphasia.
Frankfurt-based Dr. Alois Alzheimer… For more on Alois Alzheimer and his work, see Joseph Jebelli, In Pursuit of Memory: The Fight Against Alzheimer’s (New York: Little, Brown, 2017).
though seeing a resurgence… “Syphilis,” Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance 2017, CDC.gov, July 24, 2018, https://www.cdc.gov/std/stats17/syphilis.htm.
“the most destructive of all diseases”… John Frith, “Syphilis—Its Early History and Treatment Until Penicillin, and the Debate on Its Origins,” Journal of Military and Veterans’ Health 20, no. 4 (November 2012), https://jmvh.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Frith.pdf.
two researchers identified spiral-shaped bacteria… Joseph R. Berger and John E. Greenlee, “Neurosyphilis,” Neurology Medlink (February 23, 1994), http://www.medlink.com/article/neurosyphilis.
tertiary syphilis… The description of syphilis and its eventual cure came from a variety of sources, chief among them Elliot Valenstein, Great and Desperate Cures: The Rise and Decline of Psychosurgery and Other Radical Treatments for Mental Illness (New York: Basic Books, 1986); and Jennifer Wallis, “Looking Back: This Fascinating and Fatal Disease,” The Psychologist 25, no. 10 (October 2012), https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-25/edition-10/looking-back-fascinating-and-fatal-disease.
the great pox… Gary Greenberg, Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 55.
the infinite malady… “Shakespeare: The Bard at the Bedside” (editorial), Lancet 387 (April 23, 2016), https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736%2816%2930301-4.
the lady’s disease… Wallis, “Looking Back.”
the great imitator… Valenstein, Great and Desperate Cures, 32.
the great masquerader… Thank you to Dr. Heather Croy for cluing me in to this description of syphilis.
“kind of peeling”… Chris Frith, phone interview, August 22, 2016.
“claimed exclusive dominion”… Noll, American Madness, 17.
like stroke, multiple sclerosis, and Parkinson’s… Mary G. Baker, “The Wall Between Neurology and Psychiatry,” British Medical Journal 324, no. 7352 (2002): 1468–69, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1123428/.
“that could not be satisfactorily specified”… Noll, American Madness, 17.
like schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety disorders… Baker, “The Wall Between Neurology and Psychiatry,” 1469.
German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin… In addition to the many people I spoke to about Emil Kraepelin, including Andrew Scull, E. Fuller Torrey, William Carpenter, Gary Greenberg, and Ken Kendler, I credit the following sources for putting him into historical perspective: Noll, American Madness; and Hannah Decker, The Making of the DSM-III: A Diagnostic Manual’s Conquest of American Psychiatry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
This culminated in the description… Kraepelin did not introduce dementia praecox (that honor belongs to French psychiatrist Bénédict Augustin Morel), but his work clarified the term and made it widely accepted in the field.
“incurable and permanent disability”… Noll, American Madness, 66.
Swiss psychiatrist Paul Eugen Bleuler… For a short summary of Bleuler’s contribution to psychiatry, see Paolo Fusar-Poli and Pierluigi Politi, “Paul Eugen Bleuler and the Birth of Schizophrenia (1908),” American Journal of Psychiatry, published online November 1, 2008, https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.2008.08050714.
psychiatrist Kurt Schneider… For more on Schneider’s first rank symptoms, see J. Cutting, “First Rank Symptoms of Schizophrenia: Their Nature and Origin,” History of Psychiatry 26, no. 2 (2015): 131–46, https://doi.org/10.1177/0957154X14554369.
An American psychiatrist named Henry Cotton… For more on Henry Cotton, see Scull, Madhouse.
the growing eugenics movement… For more on the eugenics movement, mental illness, and sterilization, see Adam Cohen, Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck (New York: Penguin, 2017).
thirty-two states passed forced sterilization laws… Lisa Ko, “Unwanted Sterilization and the Eugenics Movement in the United States,” Independent Lens, January 26, 2016, http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/unwanted-sterilization-and-eugenics-programs-in-the-united-states/.
sterilizing three hundred thousand or so… E. Fuller Torrey and Robert H. Yolken, “Psychiatric Genocide: Nazi Attempts to Eradicate Schizophrenia,” Schizophrenia Bulletin 36, no. 1 (January 2010): 26–32, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2800142.
the most common diagnosis was “feeblemindedness”… “Forced Sterilization,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, https://www.ushmm.org/learn/students/learning-materials-and-resources/mentally-and-physically-handicapped-victims-of-the-nazi-era/forced-sterilization.
especially in 1955, when over a half million people… Andrew Scull, Decarceration: Community Treatment and the Deviant—A Radical View (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1977), 80.
Psychoanalysis invaded the US… For more on psychoanalysis in the United States, see Janet Malcolm, Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession (New York: Vintage Books, 1980); Jonathan Engel, American Therapy: The Rise of Psychotherapy in the United States (New York: Gotham Books, 2008); and T. M. Luhrmann, Of Two Minds: An Anthropologist Looks at American Psychiatry (New York: Vintage, 2001).
“nothing arbitrary or haphazard”… Malcolm, Psychoanalysis, 19.
&n
bsp; German judge Daniel Paul Schreber… Information on Schreber was gathered from Thomas Dalzell, Freud’s Schreber: Between Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis (London: Karnac Books, 2011).
“a power, a secular power”… Allen Frances, phone interview, January 4, 2016.
“family relations, cultural traditions, work patterns”… Bonnie Evans and Edgar Jones, “Organ Extracts and the Development of Psychiatry: Hormonal Treatments at the Maudsley Hospital, 1923–1938,” Journal of Behavioral Science 48, no. 3 (2012): 251–76.
The people who needed help the most… Freud, it should be noted, did not believe that psychoanalysis worked on people with schizophrenia. “Freud thought that because of the nature of the libidinal withdrawal in schizophrenia and paranoia, the patient could not form a transference and thus could not be treated.” William N. Goldstein, “Toward an Integrated Theory of Schizophrenia,” Schizophrenia Bulletin 4, no. 3 (January 1978): 426–35, https://academic.oup.com/schizophreniabulletin/article-abstract/4/3/426/1874808.
Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays… For more on Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays and the use of Freud’s theories by corporations and government, see Adam Curtis, The Century of the Self (documentary), British Broadcasting Corporation, 2006.
“interchange of words”… Sigmund Freud, “First Lecture: Introduction,” in A General Guide to Psychoanalysis (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1920), https://www.bartleby.com/283/.
“the most complex of the talking treatments”… “Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy,” British Psychoanalytic Council, https://www.bpc.org.uk/psychoanalysis-and-psychotherapy.
Viennese psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim… Bruno Bettelheim, The Empty Fortress: Infantile Autism and the Birth of the Self (New York: Free Press, 1972).
“psychoanalyst of vast impact”… Daniel Goleman, “Bruno Bettelheim Dies at 86; Psychoanalyst of Vast Impact,” New York Times, March 14, 1990, https://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/14/obituaries/bruno-bettelheim-dies-at-86-psychoanalyst-of-vast-impact.html.
allegations emerged that Bettelheim… Joan Beck, “Setting the Record Straight About a ‘Fallen Guru,’” Chicago Tribune, April 3, 1997, https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1997-04-03-9704030057-story.html.
“extreme diagnostic nihilism”… David Healy, The Antidepressant Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 41.
“true mental health was an illusion”… Luhrmann, Of Two Minds, 218.
a now infamous 1962 Midtown Manhattan study… Leo Srole, Thomas S. Langner, Stanley T. Michael, et al., Mental Health in the Metropolis: The Midtown Manhattan Study (New York: McGraw-Hill), 1962.
4: ON BEING SANE IN INSANE PLACES
The meeting with Dr. Deborah Levy and Dr. Joseph Coyle took place on March 20, 2013. Thank you to Brookline Booksmith for inviting me to Boston and making this meeting possible.
“For ten days I had been one of them”… Nellie Bly, “Among the Mad,” Godey’s Lady’s Book, January 1889, https://www.accessible-archives.com/2014/05/nellie-bly-among-the-mad.
“The facts of the matter are”… David Rosenhan, “On Being Sane in Insane Places,” Science 179, no. 4070 (January 19, 1973): 257.
“like a sword plunged”… Robert Spitzer, “Rosenhan Revisited: The Scientific Credibility of Lauren Slater’s Pseudopatient Diagnosis Study,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 193, no. 11 (November 2005).
“If sanity and insanity exist”… Rosenhan, “On Being Sane in Insane Places,” 250.
“essentially eviscerated any vestige”… Jeffrey Lieberman, phone interview, February 25, 2016.
“Psychiatrists looked like unreliable”… Frances, Saving Normal, 62.
nearly 80 percent of all intro-to-psychology textbooks… Jared M. Bartels and Daniel Peters, “Coverage of Rosenhan’s ‘On Being Sane in Insane Places’ in Abnormal Psychology Textbooks,” Society for the Teaching of Psychology 44, no. 2 (2017): 169–73.
Rosenhan study takes up nearly a whole page… Tom Burns, Psychiatry: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 114.
“a bunch of harum-scarum sensationalists”… Ed Minter, “Still Inexact Science,” Albuquerque Journal, January 29, 1973.
Eight people—Rosenhan himself and seven others… All details about the study here are from Rosenhan, “On Being Sane in Insane Places.”
“Each was told”… Rosenhan, “On Being Sane in Insane Places,” 252.
30 percent of fellow patients… More specifically, 35 of a total 118 patients encountered voiced suspicions. Rosenhan, “On Being Sane in Insane Places.”
“You’re not crazy”… Rosenhan, “On Being Sane in Insane Places,” 252.
“patient engages in writing behavior”… Rosenhan, “On Being Sane in Insane Places,” 253.
“Having once been labeled schizophrenic”… Rosenhan, “On Being Sane in Insane Places,” 253.
“How many people, one wonders”… Rosenhan, “On Being Sane in Insane Places,” 257.
Science’s most famous papers include… For a brief history of Science, see “About Science & AAAS,” https://www.sciencemag.org/about/about-science-aaas?r3f_986=https://www.google.com.
In 1971, a large-scale US/UK study showed… Robert E. Kendell, John E. Cooper, Barry J. Copeland, et al., “Diagnostic Criteria of American and British Psychiatrists,” Archives of General Psychiatry 25, no. 2 (August 1971): 123–30.
concluding in his 1962 paper… Aaron T. Beck, “Reliability of Psychiatric Diagnoses: A Critique of Systematic Studies,” American Journal of Psychiatry 119 (1962): 210–16.
state hospitals had released half… E. Fuller Torrey, “Ronald Reagan’s Shameful Legacy: Violence, the Homeless, Mental Illness,” Salon, September 29, 2013, https://www.salon.com/2013/09/29/ronald_reagans_shameful_legacy_violence_the_homeless_mental_illness/.
Various Reddit pages… One example has forty-three hundred comments as of April 1, 2019: https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/6qzaz1/til_about_the_rosenhan_experiment_in_which_a.
one college student at Jacksonville State Hospital… John Power, “Find Pseudo-Patient at State Hospital,” Jacksonville Daily Journal, May 9, 1973.
He testified in a Navy hearing… Messrs. Vernon Long, John Wherry, and Walter Champion, Navy Board of Investigation, Cong. 1–50 (1973) (testimony of David Rosenhan, PhD), David L. Rosenhan Papers (SC1116), Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, California.
“flipping coins”… Bruce J. Ennis and Thomas R. Litwack, “Psychiatry and the Presumption of Expertise: Flipping Coins in the Courtroom,” California Law Review 62, no. 693 (1973).
“It is not known why powerful impressions”… Rosenhan, “On Being Sane in Insane Places,” 254.
“At times, depersonalization reached”… Rosenhan, “On Being Sane in Insane Places,” 256.
“Rather than acknowledge”… Rosenhan, “On Being Sane in Insane Places,” 257.
5: A RIDDLE WRAPPED IN A MYSTERY INSIDE AN ENIGMA
The bulk of this chapter came from my visit with Professor Lee Ross at his office at Stanford on November 3, 2015, where he granted my request for a personal interview.
he did reassure the superintendent… David Rosenhan, letter to Dr. Kurt Anstreicher, March 15, 1973.
“Through the publicity”… Paul R. Fleischman, letter to the editor, Science, April 27, 1973: 356, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/180/4084/356.
“It can only be productive of”… Otto F. Thaler, letter to the editor, Science, April 27, 1973: 358.
Lauren Slater claimed that… Lauren Slater, “On Being Sane in Insane Places,” in Opening Skinner’s Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004).
A BBC radio report… Claudia Hammond, “The Pseudo-Patient Study,” Mind Changers, BBC Radio 4, July 2009, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lny48.
his close friend and colleague Lee Ross… For more on Lee Ross’s contributions to psychology, see his seminal work
(recently re-released with a foreword by Malcolm Gladwell): Lee Ross and Richard Nisbett, The Person and the Situation: Perspectives of Social Psychology (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991).
as widespread as left-handedness… About 12 percent of the population is left-handed, and studies have shown that the median prevalence of auditory hallucinations in the general public is 13.2 percent. Louis C. Johns, Kristiina Kompus, Melissa Connell, et al., “Auditory Verbal Hallucinations in Persons Without a Need for Care,” Schizophrenia Bulletin 40, no. 4 (2014): 255–64, https://academic.oup.com/schizophreniabulletin/article/40/Suppl_4/S255/1873600.
you’re joining an esteemed group… Joe Pierre, “Is It Normal to ‘Hear Voices’?” Psychology Today, August 31, 2015, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psych-unseen/201508/is-it-normal-hear-voices.
the much-publicized Stanford Prison Experiment… Craig Haney, Curtis Banks, and Philip Zimbardo, “Interpersonal Dynamics in a Simulated Prison,” International Journal of Criminology and Penology 1 (1973): 69–97, http://pdf.prisonexp.org/ijcp1973.pdf.
“pseudoscience presented as science”… Robert Spitzer, “On Pseudoscience in Science, Logic in Remission, and Psychiatric Diagnosis: A Critique of Rosenhan’s ‘On Being Sane in Insane Places,’” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 84, no. 5 (1975): 442–52.
“unfounded”… Bernard Weiner, “‘On Being Sane in Insane Places’: A Process (Attributional) Analysis and Critique,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 84, no. 5 (1975): 433–41.
“entirely unwarranted”… George Weideman, “Psychiatric Disease: Fiction or Reality?” Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic 37, no. 5 (1973): 519–22.
The excerpt from chapter 1 came from David Rosenhan’s unpublished book Odyssey into Lunacy, from his personal files.
Pseudopatient list compiled from pseudopatient notes and the unpublished book located in David Rosenhan’s personal files.
PART TWO
Felix Unger: I think I’m crazy… The Odd Couple, directed by Gene Sacks, Paramount Pictures, 1968.
The Great Pretender Page 32
