Women and Madness

by Phyllis Chesler

  —Allan M. Dershowitz1

  FROM THE BEGINNING TO THE END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, in America, women of color tended to be hospitalized, not simply diagnosed. When they sought help, they were not placed in private therapy. Perhaps their symptoms were more severe; perhaps they were the victims of racist as well as sexist diagnostic criteria; perhaps they could not afford or did not want private therapy.

  But in general, twentieth-century female patients (and sometimes male patients, too) were imprisoned against their will—sometimes for up to 30–40 years; medicated against their will; lobotomized against their will; given electro-convulsive and insulin coma shock treatments against their will; denied medical treatment for other ailments; and were, afterwards, stigmatized as “mentally ill” when they sought employment and housing or pursued legal actions.

  Adolescent lesbians and homosexuals were subjected, usually by fundamentalist families, to especially horrific institutionalizations. They were put in isolation, physically beaten, subjected to propaganda and verbal abuse, were bullied, and were kept incommunicado. These practices took place both in America and throughout the world.

  I was involved in one such case, in America, in which a mother and her new husband incarcerated her teenaged daughter, whom the stepfather had been sexually abusing. The mother viewed the daughter’s “lesbian-like” assertiveness as a grave threat. She also did not want to acknowledge that her new husband had been preying on her daughter. Luckily, but only after a year, the girl’s biological father fought for and won custody of his much-traumatized daughter.

  In the twentieth century, pregnant, unmarried teenagers were also psychiatrically pathologized, and separated forcibly from their newborn infants. In the early 1970s, in the UK, it was discovered that a number of women had been psychiatrically incarcerated for fifty years because they had borne “illegitimate” babies. It also became clear that for years, sexually active teenagers in Ireland had simply been put in nunneries, often for the rest of their lives, and were supervised by highly abusive nuns who put them to hard labor for their sexual sins.

  As we have seen, many women who were psychiatrically hospitalized were not “mad.” Rather than challenge the psychological vocabulary of the female condition, they adopted its tone more surely than ever. They were depressed, suicidal, frigid, anxious, paranoid, phobic, guilty, indecisive, inactive, and without hope. Only a few women were able to reject such traits entirely, or to combine them with opposite-sex traits such as physical aggressiveness and sexual potency. Only a few women actually heard or saw “things”; those who did were not helped by too much of the wrong medication, forcible imprisonment, or the untender ministrations of a woman-hating or madness-phobic staff.

  I spoke to twenty-four women who had been psychiatrically hospitalized. Twelve women clearly reported exhibiting opposite-sex traits such as anger, cursing, aggressiveness, sexual love of women, increased sexuality in general, and a refusal to perform domestic and emotional-compassionate services. Four of these twelve women also experienced “visions.” The other twelve women reported a predominance of female-like traits such as depressions, suicidal attempts, fearfulness, and helplessness.

  The women’s present ages ranged from nineteen to sixty-five. As a group they had been hospitalized seventy times or an average of three times each. Their total hospital stays ranged from one week to nearly ten years. The number of times each woman was committed ranged from one to fifteen. Five of these women were hospitalized ten times for “depression”; ten were hospitalized fourteen times for “suicide attempts.” At the time of their first commitment, five women were married, two were divorced, one was widowed, and sixteen were single. Two of the women were black and one was Puerto Rican.

  Each woman had been in private therapy for approximately fifty months: forty-three months with male therapists and fourteen months with female therapists. Each woman saw approximately three different therapists, both before and after hospitalization. (“Approximately” means an exact “total average” for the entire group. This group of twenty-four women includes Third World women, lesbians, and women who had sexual relationships with their therapists. In other words, this is not the unduplicated comparison between the groups of women presented in Chapter Four).

  Two of the women never completed high school, four completed high school, six had some college, seven received B. A. degrees, and five had completed some graduate school training. Eighteen of the twenty-four women were either only or oldest children.

  Some of these women committed themselves voluntarily: their lives seemed hopeless, there was no alternative, and their parents or husbands insisted it would be “better” for them if they “cooperated” from the start. More often, these women were committed wholly against their will, through brutal physical force, trickery, or in a state of coma, following unsuccessful suicide attempts.

  CARMEN: I was so sad [after my daughter’s birth] and so tired. I couldn’t take care of the house right any more. My husband told me a maid would be better than me, that I was crazy. He took me to the hospital for what they called observation.

  KATHRYN: After my husband left me and the baby, I was too depressed to do anything. I was a twenty-year-old mother, and back home dependent on my parents. I didn’t go to college because my mother didn’t think I was smart enough. My father was very violent to me. It was a shitty family and I escaped it by getting married. So I come back home and said, “I’m home,” and my mother said, “Like hell you are. You made your bed, lie in it.” So I had to threaten that I’d kill myself to get some sympathy and my mother said, “Okay, if you’re crazy you belong in a hospital. If you’re depressed, go get some tests to find out why.” My father knew the director of this private loony bin and they all told me to sign myself in and be grateful.

  RUTH: I was married about eight years when suddenly my husband seemed to be bored with me and the children. So he kept going to meetings every night. He had fun with the boys and became very popular. But I felt neglected. So I got angry. When I asked him why he couldn’t stay home sometime with me and the children he just slammed the door and said I was sick and needed a doctor. Well, I believed him and went to someone he recommended. To make a long story short, this doctor didn’t ask me my problem. All he did was give me a needle and put me to sleep. Then he kept giving me shock treatments. This caused me to sleep all the time. Consequently, my children missed my attention and my husband enjoyed his freedom and had no guilt. This shock treatment went on for about six years. I was very subdued all the time and never objected to anything.

  SOPHIE: My husband was a very difficult man, always losing his jobs because he fought with the boss. I had to leave one good job after another and follow him to his next job. Then my husband found a girl friend—I didn’t complain, marriage is not a bed of roses—and my multiple sclerosis symptoms started. My husband told me to get shock therapy, that my symptoms were in my head. Lucky we couldn’t afford it privately … but he [my husband] brought a psychiatrist home and they both threatened me. If I didn’t commit myself, they’d commit me and that would be worse for me. So I went into the hospital.

  BARBARA: My mother had me put away when I was thirteen. She couldn’t control me. My father had left us, she was drinking and crying all the time. I kept running away from bad foster homes, and so she finally committed me to an institution.

  Washington (AP): An associate of consumer advocate Ralph Nader says doctors are receiving inadequate warnings that a potent “chemical strait jacket” for mental patients can cause symptoms of Parkinson’s disease…. A Food and Drug Administration official agreed the drug (stellazine) is overused, particularly for the treatment of mild anxiety and primarily trivial complaints.

  New York Post

  The drug industry openly acknowledges the enslavement of women, as shown in an ad with a woman behind bars made up of brooms and mops. The caption reads: “You can’t set her free but you can make her feel less anxious.” Another one pictures a woman who,
we are told, has an M.A. degree, but who now must be content with the PTA and housework. This, we are advised, contributes to her gynecological complaints, which should be treated with drugs.

  Robert Seidenberg, M. D.

  All of the women received massive drug dosages (such as thorazine, chlorpromazine, stellazine, mellaril, and librium), and many received shock therapy and/or insulin coma therapy routinely, and often before they were psychiatrically “interviewed.”

  LAURA: The first thing they did was give everyone shock treatment. It didn’t matter who you were. You walked in and they gave you shock three times a week. Before they decided what ward they were going to put you in, they shocked you completely. I was scared to death. I thought I was going to die. The only person who came to see me, and this is going to make you laugh a little bit, came to give me an I. Q. test.

  Many of the women were physically beaten. Their requests for contact with the outside world were denied. Their letters were censored or not mailed. One woman’s diary was partially destroyed. Legitimate medical complaints generally went untreated: they were condemned or brushed aside as forms of “attention getting” or “revenge.” It is ironic that a mental patient can successfully sue an asylum for physical injuries sustained during her incarceration, but not for mental injuries. Nor can she successfully sue for poor or non-existent medical attention.

  BARBARA: I got beat up lots of times. Then I learned the ropes and they put me in charge of beating up the younger children if they got out of line. They were beating up five- and six-year-olds. If I complained about it they’d do the same to me.

  SOPHIE: I knew something was physically wrong with me. I was having trouble walking but they didn’t believe me. I was limping and falling down and they were laughing at me. They [the attendants] kicked me, only because I asked for some good medication. Once they kicked me and threw me in a room, no bigger than a closet, to spend the night on the floor, without my clothes.

  Those women remanded to state asylums were involved in sex-typed forced labor. They worked as unpaid domestics, laundresses, ward aides, cooks, and commissary saleswomen. If they refused these jobs they were considered “crazy” and “uncooperative” and punished with more drugs, shock treatments, beatings, mockery, and longer hospital stays. If they accepted these jobs, and performed them well, the hospital staff was often reluctant to let them go.

  SUSAN: I refused to peel potatoes in the kitchen. So they threw me in solitary for a few days.

  CARMEN: I was proud to be the private housekeeper for Dr. X. I cleaned and cooked, baby-sat, shopped and even tutored her son in Spanish. What I didn’t like was having to wash their underwear. That I didn’t like.

  PRISCILLA: When I refused to mop up the ward and put the chronics’ shit in the little coffee cans for them, they [the attendants] ganged up on me. They put a sheet over me, threw me down to the floor, and began punching and kicking me.

  Many patients were received and discharged, while I was there, who never had five minutes’ conversation with the doctors while in the asylum. Often the new arrival would … inquire “When am I to have an examination?” I would reply “You never have an examination after you get here, for the doctor receives you on the representation of those who want you should stay here.”

  Elizabeth P. Ware Packard

  Modern Persecution (1873)

  Only a few of these women received any psychotherapeutic attention. Therapy groups (and therapists) either interpreted their requests for information or release psychodynamically or counseled them to become more “feminine” and “cooperative.”

  LAURA: Fix yourself up, they told me. So every morning I got the hot sweats [insulin therapy] and every afternoon I spent in the beauty parlor with the other women. Of course, you had to pay for it. You have to hide your feelings, pretend everything is wonderful, if you want to get out.

  JOYCE: I had a doctor who kept interviewing me. He’d go over the same story over and over again. I remember I was looking terrible, my hair wasn’t combed, I had no make-up. He said, “Why don’t you fix yourself up? A nice girl like you!” And I said, “I never want another man to look at me again.”

  LAVERNE: I finally figured it out. You weren’t supposed to be angry. Oh no. They lock you up, throw away the key, and you’re supposed to smile at them, compliment the nurses, shuffle baby—so that’s what I did to get out.

  CAROLE: I really was aggressive. I knew my legal rights and I was fighting mad. There I was in a human toilet bowl, a concentration camp, and I couldn’t get out. They didn’t like me and my college education.

  Many of these women were sexually propositioned or molested while in mental asylums. However, freely chosen heterosexual and especially lesbian intercourse was discouraged and prohibited.

  BARBARA: There was a girl who was raped by an attendant but the nurse went to speak to him and it was hushed up. A doctor tried to rape me during a gynecological examination and I was afraid to complain, afraid they’d say I was lying or crazy and give me shock treatments.

  MARSHA: I was falling in love with a woman at the hospital—but that was considered “sick.” They have these Saturday night dances you’re supposed to go to, and you’re not supposed to dance with another woman but only with a man. But you’re not supposed to go to bed with him either.

  After the story of Miss Doris Anderson, the black welfare lady from Baltimore, was printed … the phones began to ring and mail began to come in. The callers told of other sane, healthy people who fell afoul of bureaucratic psychiatry and were packed off to asylums against their will. Many of the callers stressed that this was not something which only happened to black women on welfare. They told of white middle-class women having the same thing done to them. No case of this happening to a man was reported—they were all women, and in no instance did any of the victims file suit against their jailers. Some remained silent because they didn’t know exactly how to fight back. Either they didn’t have a lawyer and weren’t quite sure of how to get one or they were intimidated, as though being taken away to the funny farm had caused them to doubt their own sanity.

  Nicholas von Hoffman

  Washington Post

  It was for others’ interest I plead—it was of others’ wrongs and woes I complained. It was for them and their sakes I deliberately laid down my position as the asylum favorite, and became henceforth the asylum prisoner. From this time, for two years and eight months, was I made a close prisoner, and never after, with but one exception, allowed to step my foot outside the asylum walls, and I fully believe it was the doctor’s purpose to make a maniac of me, by the skillful use of the asylum tortures.

  Elizabeth P. Ware Packard

  Modern Persecution (1873)

  Only two of the women had any awareness of their legal rights, and of course both were defeated in court battles and “punished” by further psychiatric incarceration. Only one of the twenty-four women considered her experience of “madness” as a positive event. Only one of the women did not consider herself as “crazy.” Most of the women were humiliated, confused, fatalistic, or naive about their hospitalization and about the reasons for it. Most dealt with the brutality by (verbally) minimizing it and by blaming themselves. They were “sick”—weren’t they?

  LAURA: In the beginning, I wasn’t shrewd at all. I was just so hurt. (Laughter.) I didn’t know that they would punish me three times as much if I tried to escape. They put me in a strait jacket and this was rather cruel and kept me alone in this room for twenty-four hours. I could hardly move and I was completely stiff. They wouldn’t even let me go to the bathroom. They put a bedpan under me and things like that. But you have to understand that I was sick. I can’t fake it and say I wasn’t, you have to realize I was really ill. [My italics.]

  JOYCE: I remember there was this huge room. The day room. And all these people. Hundreds of people. Some of them were leaping around the room and doing all kinds of weird things. I was so terrified that I really began to cry. And my thoughts were
, Oh, my God, this is it, I really am crazy now. Now I know I’m crazy because I’m here. Then I said, “I’m schizophrenic, aren’t I?” And he [the psychiatrist] said, “No, you’re not schizophrenic, you’re hysterical and neurotic!” And I wouldn’t believe him. I insisted that [schizophrenia] was my diagnosis. [My italics.]

  LUCY: Whenever I’d question something they’d done, criticize them, especially about how they treated some of the other patients, they’d yell at me and lock me in solitude. I’d get emotional and excited, I’m sick like that [my italics]. They’re not explicit about what’s expected, but you find yourself locked up if you say too many things too loud that they don’t like. I was sick, no question about it.