6: THE ESSENCE OF DAVID
Florence is trim and attractive… I learned about David Rosenhan and Florence Keller’s history over many lovely interviews, but this meeting happened the week of June 14, 2014.
“It all started out as a dare”… David Gunter, “Study of Mental Institutions Began as a Dare,” Philadelphia Daily News, January 19, 1973.
January 1969, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania… Details about Swarthmore in the late 1960s were compiled via many sources—most notably David’s unpublished book Odyssey into Lunacy. I also visited Swarthmore College and accessed their archives, which had a few documents relating to David’s hiring and eventual move to Stanford. In addition, the 1969 and 1970 Halcyon yearbook and student newspaper the Phoenix provided colorful context. I also turned to other secondary sources to put together a wider snapshot of this time in American history: Clara Bingham, Witness to the Revolution: Radicals, Resisters, Vets, Hippies, and the Year America Lost Its Mind and Found Its Soul (New York: Random House, 2017); The Sixties (mini-series), produced by Tom Hanks and Playtone, CNN, 2014; Rob Kirkpatrick, 1969: The Year Everything Changed (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2011); Andreas Hillen, 1973 Nervous Breakdown: Watergate, Warhol, and the Birth of Post-Sixties America (New York: Bloomsbury, 2006); Brendan Koerner, The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking (New York: Crown, 2013); Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (New York: Bantam, 1988); and Jules Witcover, The Year the Dream Died: Revisiting 1968 in America (New York: Grand Central, 1997).
more than eighty-four incidences of bombings… Kirkpatrick, 1969, 14.
Richard Nixon’s inauguration… To see more about Nixon’s inauguration, see “1968,” The Sixties, CNN.
casualties hit their peak in 1968… There were nearly 16,889 deaths in 1968. “Vietnam War U.S. Military Fatal Casualty Statistics: Electronic Records Report,” National Archives, https://www.archives.gov/research/military/vietnam-war/casualty-statistics#date.
“It’s easy to forget”… Mark Vonnegut, The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002), 15.
“Lose your mind and come to your senses”… According to several books on Gestalt therapy, “Lose your mind and come to your senses” (or variations on this theme) was one of Fritz Perls’s favorite sayings.
Two million Americans… Bingham, Witness to the Revolution, xxviii.
as Joan Didion wrote… Joan Didion, The White Album (New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2009 edition), 121.
One of the country’s most popular bumper stickers… Bingham, Witness to the Revolution, 432.
Ken Kesey’s trippy novel… The following sources were helpful in putting together a short sketch of Ken Kesey and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: Robert Faggen, introduction to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 4th ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 2002), ix–xxv; James Wolcott, “Still Cuckoo After All These Years,” Vanity Fair, November 18, 2011, http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/12/wolcott-201112; Nathaniel Rich, “Ken Kesey’s Wars: ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ at 50,” Daily Beast, July 26, 2012, https://www.thedailybeast.com/ken-keseys-wars-one-flew-over-the-cuckoos-nest-at-50.
“gave life to a basic distrust”… Jon Swaine, “How ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ Changed Psychiatry,” The Telegraph, February 1, 2011, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8296954/How-One-Flew-Over-the-Cuckoos-Nest-changed-psychiatry.html.
“If it gets me outta those damn pea fields”… Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 13.
“Hell, I been surprised”… Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 58.
“I discovered at an early age”… Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 265.
Cold War paranoia touched everyone… For more on the abuses of Soviet Union psychiatry, see Richard Bentall, Madness Explained: Psychosis and Human Nature (New York: Penguin Books, 2004); and Robert van Voren, “Political Abuse of Psychiatry—An Historical Overview,” Schizophrenia Bulletin 36, no. 1 (January 2010): 33–35, https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbp119.
outspoken general named Pyotr Grigorenko… I first encountered the story of Pyotr Grigorenko in David Rosenhan’s own writing: David Rosenhan, “Psychology, Abnormality and Law,” Master Lecture in Psychology and Law, presented at the Meeting of the American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, August 1982 (found in David Rosenhan’s personal files). For more on Grigorenko, see W. Reich, “The Case of General Grigorenko: A Psychiatric Reexamination of a Soviet Dissident,” Psychiatry 43, no. 4 (1980): 303–23; and James Barron, “Petro Grigorenko Dies in Exile in US,” New York Times, February 23, 1987, https://www.nytimes.com/1987/02/23/obituaries/petro-grigorenko-dies-in-exile-in-us.html.
He spent five years… “Pyotr G. Grigorenko, Exiled Soviet General, Dies in N.Y.” Los Angeles Times, February 25, 1987, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-02-25-mn-5733-story.html.
“a dangerous lunatic”… “1,189 Psychiatrists Say Goldwater Is Psychologically Unfit to Be President!,” which ran in Fact magazine in 1964.
“Psychiatrists are medical doctors”… American Psychiatric Association, “APA Calls for End to ‘Armchair’ Psychiatry,’” Psychiatry.org, January 9, 2018, https://www.psychiatry.org/newsroom/news-releases/apa-calls-for-end-to-armchair-psychiatry.
R. D. Laing, a Scottish psychiatrist… To understand R. D. Laing in full, you need to read his work, but I also highly recommend reading his son’s biography of him: Adrian Laing, R. D. Laing: A Life (New York: Pantheon Books, 1997).
“They will see that”… R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience (New York: Random House, 1967), 107.
“Madness need not be all breakdown”… Laing, The Politics of Experience, 133.
“Schizophrenics were the true poets”… Erica Jong, Fear of Flying (New York: Penguin Books, 1973), 82.
Thomas Szasz called mental illnesses a “myth”… Thomas Szasz, preface to The Myth of Mental Illness (1961; 2nd reissue, Harper Perennial, 2003).
“If you talk to God”… Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1973), 101.
whom he called “parasites”… Thomas Szasz, Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society’s Unwanted (New York: Wiley, 1994), 142.
“The Crisis of 1969”… Material was pieced together from articles published in the student newspaper the Phoenix, specifically Russ Benghiat, Doug Blair, and Bob Goodman, “Crisis of ’69: Semester of Misunderstanding and Frustration,” Swarthmore College Phoenix, January 29, 1969: 4–6. A more recent examination can be found in Elizabeth Weber, “The Crisis of 1969,” Swarthmore College Phoenix, March 7, 1996, http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/98/elizw/Swat.history/69.crisis.html; and Kirkpatrick, 1969, 10–11.
Vice President Spiro Agnew… This came from my interview with Swarthmore psychology professor Barry Schwartz and has been repeated in various articles. A recent Swarthmore student newspaper article, however, casts some doubt that Spiro Agnew coined the phrase. Miles Skorpen, “Where Does the ‘Kremlin on the Crum’ Come From?” The Phoenix, March 6, 2007, https://swarthmorephoenix.com/2007/03/06/ask-the-gazette-where-does-the-kremlin-on-the-crum-come-from/.
7: “GO SLOWLY, AND PERHAPS NOT AT ALL”
This chapter was pieced together with help from Rosenhan’s unpublished book and interviews with Jack Rosenhan, Florence Keller, and former students.
Rosenhan was a scrawny kid… Jack Rosenhan, in-person interview, October 21, 2015.
dream analysis… Edith Sheppard and David Rosenhan, “Thematic Analysis of Dreams,” Perceptual and Motor Skills 21 (1965): 375–84.
hypnosis… David Rosenhan, “On the Social Psychology of Hypnosis Research,” in Jesse E. Gordon, ed., Handbook of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 481–510.
Freedom Riders… David Rosenhan, “Determinants of Altruism: Observations for a Theory of Altruistic Development,” paper presented at an annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, September
1969, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED035035.pdf.
He replicated Stanley Milgram’s 1963 study… David Rosenhan, “Obedience and Rebellion: Observations on the Milgram Three Party Paradigm,” Draft, November 27, 1968, David L. Rosenhan Papers.
Milgram had created a fake shock box… For more on Milgram (and subsequent questions about his research), see Gina Perry, Behind the Shock Machine: The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments (New York: New Press, 2013).
“A number of us here”… David Rosenhan, letter to Stanley Milgram, July 9, 1963, Milgram Papers, Series III, Box 55, Folder 12.
“young children’s unprompted concern”… Rosenhan wrote many articles about altruism and children, among them David Rosenhan and Glenn M. White, “Observation and Rehearsal as Determinants of Prosocial Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 5, no. 4 (1967): 424–31; David Rosenhan, “The Kindnesses of Children,” Young Children 25, no. 1 (October 1969): 30–44; and David Rosenhan, “Double Alternation in Children’s Binary Choice,” Psychonomic Science 4 (1966): 431–32.
Rosenhan set up his lab… The descriptions of Rosenhan’s lab came from his unpublished book; a log of all the equipment bought for his lab; descriptions from interviews with two of his lab assistants, Bea Patterson and Nancy Horn; and his academic papers.
then documented how the child’s altruistic behavior… Rosenhan and White, “Observation and Rehearsal as Determinants of Prosocial Behavior.”
published another, more interesting paper about the role of confidence… Alice M. Isen, Nancy Horn, and David L. Rosenhan, “Effects of Success and Failure on Childhood Generosity,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 27, no. 2 (1973): 239–47.
“Abnormal psychology is a painfully complicated”… David Rosenhan, September 12, 1972, David L. Rosenhan Papers.
“rivet a group of two to three hundred students”… Pauline Lord, letter to David Rosenhan. April 5, 1973, David L. Rosenhan Papers.
“The question is… What is abnormality?”… David Rosenhan, abnormal psychology class lectures (cassette), Stanford University, undated.
“that the course had had two shortcomings”… David Rosenhan, Odyssey into Lunacy, chapter 1, 2.
an undergraduate course at Yeshiva University… Description of Yeshiva University and the minority groups class came from Rosenhan’s unpublished book.
Kremens, who had worked… This and other details about Kremens were learned in an in-person interview with his son and Mrs. Kremens on April 12, 2017.
a Haverford Hospital nurse named Linda Rafferty… Susan Q. Stranahan, “Ex-Haverford Nurse Sues to Regain Job,” Philadelphia Inquirer, December 30, 1972.
“homosexual abuse by other patients”… Commonwealth of Pennsylvania ex rel. Linda Rafferty et al. v. Philadelphia Psychiatric Center et al., 356 F. Supp. 500, United States District Court, March 27, 1973.
“the first drug that worked”… Shorter, A History of Psychiatry, 246.
“widely cited as rivaling penicillin”… David Healy, Pharmageddon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 88.
“Thousands of patients who had been assaultive”… Susan Sheehan, Is There No Place on Earth for Me? (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1982), 10.
to the tune of $116.5 million… Scull, Decarceration, 80.
depression was still viewed by many… Michael Alan Taylor, Hippocrates Cried: The Decline of American Psychiatry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 19.
We developed schizophrenia… Healy, The Antidepressant Era, 162.
“Miss Ratched shall line us”… Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 262.
“We were all keyed up”… Harvey Shipley Miller, phone interview, January 26, 2016.
“They will probably write a paper about it!”… Rosenhan, Odyssey into Lunacy, handwritten notes, private files.
among them medical anthropologist William Caudill… William Caudill, Frederick C. Redlich, Helen R. Gilmore, and Eugene B. Brody, “Social Structure and Interaction Processes on a Psychiatric Ward,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 22, no. 2 (1952): 314–34, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1939-0025.1952.tb01959.x.
“I believe he lost his objectivity”… Martin Bulmer, “Are Pseudo-Patient Studies Justified?” Journal of Medical Ethics 8 (1982): 68.
“not alter our life histories”… Rosenhan, Odyssey into Lunacy, chapter 2, 16.
During World War II, three thousand conscientious objectors… Joseph Shapiro, “WWII Pacifists Exposed Mental Ward Horrors,” NPR, December 30, 2009, https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122017757.
featured in Albert Maisel’s “Bedlam 1946”… Albert Maisel, “Bedlam 1946,” Life, May 6, 1946, 102–18.
Harold Orlansky compared American asylums… Harold Orlansky, “An American Death Camp,” Politics (1948): 162–68, http://www.unz.com/print/Politics-1948q2-00162.
Frederick Wiseman’s damning documentary… Titicut Follies, directed by Frederick Wiseman, American Direct Cinema, 1967.
Goffman described the hospital as a “total institution”… Erving Goffman, Asylums (New York: Doubleday, 1961).
a condition that psychiatrist Russell Barton… Russell Barton, Institutional Neurosis (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959).
“authoritarian”… These three descriptions came from notes provided to me by Swarthmore student Hank O’Karma, who attended a different seminar on abnormal psychology the previous semester. The original source is J. D. Holzberg, “The Practice and Problems of Clinical Psychology in a State Psychiatric Hospital,” Journal of Consulting Psychology 16, no. 2 (1952).
“degrading”… T. R. Sarbin, “On the Futility of the Proposition that Some People Be Labeled ‘Mentally Ill,’” Journal of Consulting Psychology 31, no. 5 (1967): 447–53.
“illness-maintaining”… Alfred H. Stanton and Morris S. Schwartz, The Mental Hospital: A Study of Institutional Participation in Psychiatric Illness and Treatment (New York: Basic Books, 1954). A fun aside: Morris Schwartz is better known as the subject of Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life’s Greatest Lesson (New York: Doubleday, 1997).
“Wasn’t it dangerous?”… David Rosenhan, Odyssey into Lunacy, chapter 1, 5.
“Perhaps hospitals cure”… David Rosenhan, “Brief Description,” private files.
“Go slowly”… Rosenhan, Odyssey into Lunacy, handwritten notes, private files.
Dr. Orne would later make waves… Alessandra Stanley, “Poet Told All; Therapist Provides the Record,” New York Times, July 15, 1991, https://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/15/books/poet-told-all-therapist-provides-the-record.html.
8: “I MIGHT NOT BE UNMASKED”
This chapter was compiled with help from David’s unpublished book, his diary entries, and letters and correspondences exchanged around that time.
Rosenhan didn’t do anything… Jack Rosenhan, in-person interview, October 21, 2015.
“Thinking and discussing are not”… Rosenhan, Odyssey into Lunacy, chapter 3, 1.
They had met on the first day… I learned about the Rosenhans’ courtship thanks to various interviews with Jack Rosenhan and with Mollie’s oldest friend, Abbie Kurinsky (January 14, 2014).
“Remember how I touched your arm”… David Rosenhan, letter to Mollie, undated.
The phone logs recorded a man… Haverford State Hospital medical records, February 5, 1969, David Rosenhan private papers.
He put on an old raggedy… Rosenhan, Odyssey into Lunacy, chapter 3, 5a.
Two court-martialed soldiers… Wallace Turner, “Sanity Inquiry Slated in Setback for Defense at Trial for Mutiny,” New York Times, February 6, 1969, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1969/02/06/88983251.html?pageNumber=16.
younger brother struggled with manic depression… Jack Rosenhan, in-person interview, October 21, 2015.
he grew even more conservative… Jack Rosenhan, in-person interview, October 21, 2015.
during manic phases when off his medications… Jack Rosenhan, in-person interview, October 21, 2015.
“My dad was constantly on the phone”… Jack Rosenhan, in-person interview, October 21, 2015.
Jack believed that these experiences… Jack Rosenhan, in-person interview, February 20, 2017.
“a fear that I might not be unmasked”… Rosenhan, Odyssey into Lunacy, chapter 3, 2.
“Do I need shirts, ties, and underwear”… Rosenhan, Odyssey into Lunacy, chapter 3, 2.
A semicircular gray stone wall… My description of Haverford State was compiled with help from H. Michael Zal, Dancing with Medusa: A Life in Psychiatry: A Memoir (Bloomington, IN: Author House, 2010); and “Governor Hails New Hospital,” Delaware County Daily Times, September 13, 1962: 1.
the Haverford Hilton… Zal, Dancing with Medusa, 12.
“the Queen Ship”… Mack Reed, “‘Queen Ship’ of Hospitals Foundering,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 1, 1987, http://articles.philly.com/1987-10-01/news/26217259.
“showpiece of radical design”… Reed, “‘Queen Ship’ of Hospitals Foundering.”
British psychiatrist Humphry Osmond… Thanks to the following sources for their information and insight into Humphry Osmond (who is far more fascinating than I had space to describe): R. Sommer, “In Memoriam: Humphry Osmond,” Journal of Environmental Psychology 24 (2004): 257–58; Erika Dyck, Psychedelic Psychiatry (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008); Tom Shroder, Acid Test (New York: Blue Rider, 2014); Jay Stevens, Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987); Janice Hopkins Tanne, “Humphry Osmond,” British Medical Journal 328, no. 7441 (March 2004): 713; and Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence (New York: Penguin Press, 2018).
a “guru of the 1960s”… Sommer, “In Memoriam,” 257.
“They’re ugly monuments”… Sidney Katz, “Osmond’s New Deal for the Insane,” Maclean’s, August 31, 1957, http://archive.macleans.ca/article/1957/8/31/dr-osmonds-new-deal-for-the-insane.
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