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Gracefully Insane: The Rise and Fall of America's Premier Mental Hospital
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Gracefully Insane: The Rise and Fall of America's Premier Mental Hospital description
Alex Beam's Gracefully Insane is a knowledgeable historical portrait of New England's McLean Hospital, until recently the mental institution equivalent of the Plaza Hotel. Fenceless and unguarded, McLean's grounds were landscaped by Frederick Law Olmsted. Amenities included tennis courts, a golf course, room service, and a riding stable. As one director said, "If you don't know where you are, then you're in the right place." Its patients have included James Taylor, Robert Lowell, and Ray Charles. It also looms large in The Bell Jar and Girl, Interrupted, written by former patients Sylvia Plath and Susanna Kaysen. Beam weaves patients' and employees' stories with an informal review of mental health treatments through the years, including lobotomies, insulin-induced comas, ice-water baths, and a ghastly device called the "coercion chair." Gracefully Insane is amiable, lively, and honest. Its many anecdotes (derived from patient records, journals, and interviews) are by turns poignant, humorous, and unsettling. --H. O'Billovitch |
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Gracefully Insane: The Rise and Fall of America's Premier Mental Hospital Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥ |
Crazy with Class
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| Alex Beam's Gracefully Insane is written with a twofold purpose in mind. On the one hand, Beam introduces readers to the rolling hills and well-appointed grounds of a MacLean, psychiatric hospital of the rich and famous; its residents often referred to the hospital as a university, to themselves as alumni. On the other hand, through the lens of Maclean one sees the evolution of the history of psychiatric practice in America. Here, for the most part, MacClean was neither better nor worse than most. If it was fashionable to dunk patients in vats of cold water or harness them into gyrating chairs, such practices could be found. About the only fashion that could not be accomodated is that practiced today: where the emphasis is on the efficacy of pharmacological medicine. With the end of the extended observation stay, this bastion of outliers gradually loses its psychiatric niche. Still, Gracefully Insane is worth a leisurely read, if only to glimpse Ray Charles, Sylvia Plath, James Taylor and the other members of its distinguished alumni. |
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