by Marco Vassi
Then Al laid the trip on me. “The hospital has received a grant to do a study on the effectiveness of new modes of therapy, something in the area of a quarter of a million dollars. We’re setting up a wing in conjunction with Marvin Goldman, who’s doing a research study. The trip is to find out whether patients improve more quickly using our approach.”
“More quickly than what?” I asked.
Al looked a bit embarrassed. “Than if they are given Thorazine,” he said. “Half the patients on the ward will be on the drug, and half won’t.”
Several things struck me as being out of joint. First of all, Marvin Goldman was a research specialist for Esalen, and I had a deep mistrust of anyone from that organization. Secondly, he had the reputation of being a career hustler, and of being clinically paranoid. Third, the study was to last for five years, and I wondered whether there might not be more emphasis on it than on the actual condition of the people we would be working with.
But some of my fears were quieted when Al told me about the rest of the staff. A few would be straight nurse types from the hospital roster. About a third would be ward attendants who had had their fill of the way things were done at mental institutions, and had volunteered for this new program. And the rest would be acid heads, odd guru types, and assorted freaks. “I think we’d like to have you with us,” said Al. “But first I’d like to introduce you to Richard.”
He took me to meet Richard Kaprow, the project director. He was an extremely successful psychiatrist, working his way up into the higher echelons of California’s hierarchy of mental hospitals. He had just enough humanity left to want to see a program like the blowout center succeed, for he truly understood the horror of the current treatments. But he was a most fearful man, afraid at every moment that some catastrophe would split the foundations of his career. He spent a good deal of time piloting his private plane to and from Sacramento to have conferences with state officials. When he spoke, his eyes were always gazing a little above the tips of his shoes. And when he got excited, his voice took on an unmistakable whine.
The first thing he said to me was, “We don’t have the funds to pay you a salary yet. We’re expecting them to be cleared through Sacramento any day, but we can’t give you any salary until they come in.” Three months later, the funds still hadn’t arrived, but I was past the point of caring. I had other problems.
For now, it seemed that I had a job, something I would like, getting my head straight, and helping other people out of their own dark bags. I went back to San Francisco feeling high.
I moved into the Berkeley House a week later, and began going to the hospital regularly, to attend the many meetings which had to happen before the ward could open. I was on very good behavior, to the point of blinding myself to some obvious facts. The ward was to be in the very middle of the state hospital, with its window bars and police, its atmosphere of repression and debilitating drugs. The people I was meeting did not seem to be the types who would lay their hearts and minds on the line to help anyone out of a bad trip. And the project very early got mired in an immense bureaucratic tangle. But I didn’t want to see any of this.
One of my excursions produced a meeting with Alistair Frazier, a prominent Jungian analyst with a list of books and papers to his credit. Alistair was a super-civilized man, thoroughly rational, with a dilettante’s love for the pathological. He had a rich appreciation of insanity, and could talk for hours on the symbolism of madness. In fact, he and Marvin Goldman had worked up a two-man act which fetched a stiff fee at Esalen weekends, dealing with such fluff as “the poetry of madness,” and “the science of madness.” Still, I liked him immensely, for he was warm and charming and highly intelligent. He was going to act as a visiting father confessor to the ward, dropping in once a week to lay some sheets of wisdom on us from his storehouse of clinical experience. He had never taken LSD, a fact I found curious in a man who was supposedly involved in understanding the intricacies of the human mind. Like they say, he talked a good game.
My money was running out again, and the ward was coming together. Finally, the day of the big meeting came, and some fifty of us met to discuss our future. In that first meeting, as is usually the case, the entire outcome of the scene was projected, had any one of those supposedly therapeutic hotshots had the perspicacity to see it. Most of the people there were sincere, but not one of us had the presence of mind to call attention to the essential dishonesties which began from the very first moment. I saw them, but had no way to articulate them.
For one thing, the meeting was boring. We spent a good deal of time talking at one another and not with one another. Much of the talk involved schedules, pay rates (“Do I get listed as an Assistant Seven or Nine for this project?”), and administration. It followed the pattern of all such meetings, with the usual waves of inattention, irascibility, and ego-tripping.
And then the big question was asked: What of our relations with the hospital at large? How would the administration feel about a revolutionary ward on their grounds, a ward where there would be no locks on the doors? A tremor of insurrection ran through the crowd, for everyone here had the sense that we were participating in some form of radical activity. A true revolutionary is someone who understands all the ramifications of the condition in which he finds himself, from the economic to the psychologic to the cosmic, and who has made the inner decision that he has nothing to lose, having come to the conclusion that the existing order has no redeeming value whatsoever and must be destroyed. Yet, for all their pretty ways, most of these people were protecting their salaries, their apartments, their status. And those who weren’t were worse, for they were the Kaprows, the Goldmans, the Fraziers, who were still climbing the ladder to greater power and prestige.
Now, however, everyone let out with great vocal complaints against the barbarity of the current treatment of the mentally ill, and on this issue the group found its cohesiveness. Within a few minutes, the place sounded like an angry PTA meeting. And then Marvin stepped in. “We are not at war with the hospital,” he said. “In fact, we depend on them for a good many services, for food, for garbage collection, for linen. We need their goodwill, and our task will be to educate them to what we’re doing.” All of this was true, but seemed to sidestep the basic question which was, how to run a free ward in the middle of a mental concentration camp?
Marvin swept the meeting with his eyes. “I want to hear no further talk of revolution,” he said. “The most important aspect of this project is the research, and nothing must stand in the way of that.” He stood up. “I want to hear no wild language,” he continued. “We must protect the research project, no matter what else happens.”
Al and Harish exchanged knowing glances, but no one said anything.
And then Marvin told us what the scene would be. Each of us would be assigned to several patients for observation. We would be given forms on which to check off patients’ behavior and attitude. We would have to write reports of what they did and how they seemed to be feeling.
“But that goes against the very nature of what the ward is about,” someone protested. “How can we relate to them as equals if we are making out reports on their supposed progress?”
“I admit that’s a problem,” said Marvin with that oily smile which can be so disarming. “But we’ll work on it. Just don’t anyone forget that the research is what pays our salaries, despite any utopian ideas you may have.”
In a flash I saw the dream of the blowout center go up in smoke. The place I had pictured, a secluded house in the woods where the poisons of civilization wouldn’t reach, disappeared, and suddenly I was in a dismal gray hospital room with a bunch of timid and confused people, listening to yet another petty dictator lay down the laws by which we would have to live. The vision was so horrid that I immediately squashed it and returned my attention to the mechanics of the meeting.
Which was degenerating into squabbles concerning the eff
ectiveness of research done with paper and pencil techniques. But this was merely the mumbling of the troops; the essential point had been driven home. In a while, Richard smoothed things over with an appeal for us to all pull together and put this project over the top. “In three days,” he said, “we open the ward. Ward Sixteen. And I’ll see you all there.”
At this point, my fantasy life and my objective condition were coming together in a weird way. As I began to get involved with the intricacies of insanity, my social existence began to fall apart. Without a car in California, I was like a man without a canteen on the desert. I began to watch each penny I spent. I had no basis upon which to maintain friendships, since I could find no center inside myself.
When the ward opened, I was put on the daytime schedule. Yet, the whole idea of schedule bothered me, for my image of a blowout center was that the staff members would more or less live-in, timing their hours with the needs of the patients. At the Berkeley house, we had had many discussions about breaking down the artificially constructed chronology on the ward. As it stood, three times a day, no matter what else was happening, an entirely new shift walked in at eight-hour intervals. Naturally, after a while, the people on the ward ceased paying attention to their inner flow and adjusted to the demands of the clock. Shift-change time. Feeding time. Recreation time. Play therapy time. And so on.
This is, after all, the essential sickness of the civilization, this trifling with schedules while life goes begging. We concern ourselves with the superficial, with the style, with the details, with the mere appearance of things, and miss the fact of being. If a person can hypnotize himself with some compulsive ritual which he calls his “daily routine,” then he can excuse himself for all the things he does not perceive. Is this not the core of the Eichmann mentality, this ability to deal with life as though it were a series of reports on paper, and be purposively blind to the reality which these symbols supposedly represent. Jumping, as I always do, to the logical conclusion of any activity, I began accusing the staff of having a Nazi mentality, and already, in those early days, they began to think I was crazy.
There was not a person there who seemed ready to devote more than the compulsory eight hours out of every day. Such was my need and enthusiasm, and such was the real desire on the part of many of the people to do the best they could, that I didn’t take the precaution of protecting my vulnerabilities. The notion of living-in was picked up by Dan Winters, an executive of Esalen. Dan had, myth told it, flipped out some time earlier, and spent a long time in seclusion in Big Sur, talking to whales off the coast. He was now billed as Esalen’s official schizophrenic, or to put it in their own terminology, “a real heavy.” He arrived a week after the ward opened, slept there one night, and spent the next day screaming at Al for what a poor job he was supposedly doing. He disappeared that afternoon and never returned. I asked Bill, the chief ward psychologist, what the story was. “Dan split,” he said. “He said there wasn’t enough action for him here.” I was somewhat taken aback to hear the ward spoken of in terms of a gambling casino, but such was the way of it.
It became impossible to drive all the way in from Berkeley with Al every day because of our conflicting schedules. I wasn’t ready to be the first person to move in on the ward; my mind was shaky enough as it was. At this point, a beautiful, tall, long-haired and bearded cat came up to me, a man by the name of Joel. And then things began to change. Joel said I could crash at his pad until my money came through, and then I might find a place in town.
Joel spoke little. He was a veteran of several hundred acid trips; he was so much on top of the drug and his own scene that he headed the East Bay Drug Rescue Center. This was one of the services offered by the city’s underground head community, and involved being on call twenty-four hours a day to rescue people from bad trips. He described his work as the Giggle Patrol. “I go into a place where everyone is freaking out, and get everybody to giggling and then, when the vibes are up again, I ask what the trouble was.” Single-handedly, without education or training, he provided the most effective, rational, intelligent, and humane approach to the psychology of drug use that I had ever seen.
Joel and I soon came to form the hub of the radical elements on the ward. Al was sympathetic, but still hung up on his psychiatrist image. Also, he had a legal responsibility which kept him tied down. Harish was hip, but had his detachment bit going, which is to say, whenever it came down to really getting involved with another person’s pain, he claimed cosmic indifference and removed himself. And most everyone else on the staff was hanging in, waiting for the scene to develop in one direction or another.
Develop it did. We got the ward set up, but with a few surprises. The head nurse, Donna, was presented to us by the hospital administration. The hospital wanted the ward to succeed because of the prestige of having such a huge grant, but they were extremely suspicious and wanted to keep their hand in. Donna was the middle finger of that hand, pointed straight up.
From the first, things went badly. We were to have had an open-door policy. That is to say, since all the patients were volunteers, theoretically they should be able to come and go as they pleased. If they split, they would just be returned to the wards they came from. But more importantly, having the doors open would give the patients a sense of humanity which is removed when they are locked in like prisoners. Also, it would remove from the staff the onerous task of being in charge of keys, and give the place a true sense of democratic equality. It was, in fact, the sine qua non for the success of a blowout center.
But the hospital said no. And at our first general meeting on the ward — we had two each day, with both staff and patients supposedly attending — the issue was discussed. The patients came in hopefully. For the first time in years many of them had a glimmering hope that their lives could be different. Here were people who, they were told, would not lock them up, shoot them up with massive doses of deadening dope, think they were crazy, or scream at them. And the symbolic proof of this was to be the open door. The open door! The simple freedom to step outside the confines of the building and breathe fresh air whenever one wanted! Such a simple thing, and so glorious!
And at the first meeting, the hope was squashed. They had come with a backlog of suspicion, for from the viewpoint of the mental inmate, society at large is brutal, deceptive, unperceptive, and unfeeling. It was vital, therefore, not to give fuel to that suspicion. And yet, at that very first crucial moment, Richard walked in and threw gallons of gasoline on the flames. There was much hemming and hawing and sidestepping, but finally one of the patients yelled, “Will the door be open or not?”
There was a long pause and then Richard said, “I’m sorry, but you will continue to be locked in.”
All of the patients but three walked out of the meeting. Those who remained were Nick, a fifty-five-year-old professional psychotic who had been drifting up and down the insane asylum circuit for years, following the sun from Mendocino to Phoenix; Loren, a brilliant young paranoid with a cutting edge of cynicism; and Bruce, a hopeless ass-kisser. The staff was furious, and when the patients left, we began to vent our anger. Richard turned up his palms. “What can I do?” he said.
Marvin rose to his feet. “Anyway, it would interfere with the research to have them coming and going as they pleased. Maybe, once we have the schedule down pat, we can give them some more freedom.”
Someone asked, “And when may that be, Marvin?” He smiled. “We’ll just have to wait and see.” Alice, usually a very mild-manned woman, spoke up. “But what about these people we’re supposed to be helping? They need help now. What will the research tell us that we don’t already know?”
“Well,” said Richard, “that all may be true, but the reality is that the doors will stay locked. And that’s the way it is.”
And indeed, that was the way it was.
Interestingly, since my money hadn’t come through yet, I was still officially on a volunteer basis
as far as the record was concerned, and as a volunteer, I wasn’t allowed to have a key either. From the first, I was on a par with the patients in having to ask permission to be let out each time I wanted to take a walk or go to the snack bar. This put me in a mind-bending place. For one moment I would be a staff member, sitting in the psychologist’s office rapping with the brass, and the next I would have to go begging to be let out. There was one difference, however. When the patients asked to be “given grounds,” they were often refused, but I was always let out. Very early I found myself formulating the thought, “What if I weren’t so sure that I would be let out each time? What would it be like to be locked in here?” And from that moment, I began to change my viewpoint, I began to understand what it is like to be a patient in a mental hospital, to have one’s liberties, one by one, stripped away, to be treated like an inferior human being. It was a split in perception that would be healed only when I had gone completely around the bend.
I busied myself with my work, thinking that the other problems were beyond my control, foolishly thinking that the central issue of freedom could, somehow, be swept under the rug. At times Al and I would rap about the ward, and get all liquored up on our visions of what it could be like. But he was as helpless in his way as I was in mine. Or Joel and I would get stoned and dream up visions of starting a Schizophrenic Liberation Front. Joel was very heavily into the revolutionary currents around the Bay Area. Like all true revolutionaries, he didn’t belong to any group. He just did the good work wherever he found it needed to be done. From his experience in hospitals, I began to get some idea of what the scene was in the psychotic underground, and his reports were later corroborated by my own experiences.
For example, as with any subculture, the total society was mirrored. There were the dropouts like Nick who wandered from asylum to asylum. He would sit for hours, rolling cigarettes, not saying a word. And every once in a while he would look up and say, to no one in particular, “Fuck them, they ain’t getting any from me.” At first I didn’t understand him, but when I realized that most of the people who worked on the wards were psychic vampires, sucking energy from the patients, I came to appreciate his refusal to get involved in any of the actually insane games played by so-called sane society. He never participated in psychodrama or music therapy or any of the other inane games provided for the inmates by people who would shit purple turds if they ever got the slightest flash on what it really is to be mad.