20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Breakdowns of the Rich and Famous, January 29, 2002
By the time McLean Hospital opened its doors in the mid-19th century, mental
illness had been treated by such methods as lowering the patient into a
dungeon filled with snakes, pelting him with vigorous spouts of cold water,
inducing vomiting, draining great quantities of blood, spinning him on a
rotating board, dosing him with opium and hashish, and soaking him in a warm,
electrified bath. Founded at the dawn of the Freudian age, McLean offered
something revolutionary: fresh-baked rolls and art lessons, therapy by
landscaping. Alex Beam gives us a fascinating tour of the next century in
what one doctor bemoaned as the "medical playground" of psychiatry. On the
manicured campus in Belmont, doctors adopted and then rejected lobotomy,
adopted and rejected Freudian analysis, and were finally drawn with all their
profession in the direction of psychopharmacology. Anne Sexton taught poetry
there before her own suicide, and Sylvia Plath and Susanna Kaysen emerged
with syllabus-ready memoirs, and one patient of Freud's greeted doctors every
morning by saying "I am my father's penis." Beam is a skeptical inquirer, and
his book may ruffle the feathers of local psychiatrists. (Has ruffled.) But for ordinary readers, he does what few writers
have done -- tell with humor and intelligence the story of doctors and
patients groping through their suffering and toward some kind of answer.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
entertaining and erudite, February 6, 2002
I really enjoyed reading Gracefully Insane: The Rise and Fall of America's Premier Mental Hospital. It's a book that I found both entertaining and erudite. Alex Beam's exceptional writing talent brings to life a colorful and misunderstood institution, the famous McLean Hospital. He effortlessly interweaves annecdotal stories of the rich, famous, and talented (not necessarily in that order) with an insightful look into the history of mental health in America. I find this book to be both scholarly and a tantalizing read--no mean feat! Beam captures the tragic/comic aspects of his complex subject in a way that leaves me feeling wistful for the days when patients were able to stay long enough in a hospital to receive therapeutic benefits. Ultimately, the author vividly captures a McLean Hospital that, despite its faults and shortcomings, provided a much needed asylum from modern life for many fortunate enough to afford it.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
26 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mental Health for Those with Wealth, March 6, 2002
We still have psychiatric asylums, places where those intractable patients of minimal hope of improvement are kept. It is useful to look at the original sense of the word "asylum," which meant a sanctuary, where those inside could take refuge from the outside. Such refuge is no longer the fashion, with "community care" (and plenty of antipsychotic medicines) deemed a sufficient refuge for most. But the rich are different, as everyone knows, and it used to be that there were posh institutes where a family could house (or warehouse) a dotty cousin and could rely upon discretion to keep the patient quiet and quietly removed from society, or Society. Now there is a biography of one of these institutions, one which had a reputation among the moneyed as being the best in the business. _Gracefully Insane: The Rise and Fall of American's Premier Mental Hospital_ (PublicAffairs) by Alex Beam tells the story of McLean Hospital, which had a long guest register of famous and moneyed clients.
Beam does not spend much time on the early history of the hospital. In 1895 it moved to its grand grounds in the woodsy Boston suburbs and it became home to "an improved class of sufferers." It housed a rather amazing cast of characters, and perhaps in tune with the upbeat and upscale McLean atmosphere, they are presented as amusing eccentrics. Beam does not emphasize the pain of their conditions, but he does show the futility of treatment (insulin shock, hydrotherapy, talk therapies, electroshock) for most of them. As pharmaceutical therapies and then managed-care became the way to treat psychiatric patients, McLean lagged behind. Many of the patients stayed on and on, getting expensive care paid in a lump initial sum by families who never wanted to see them again. The hospital is selling off its grand properties and is also going back to its roots; a new, small facility called the Pavilion will take psychiatric care of those whose families can afford $1,800 a night, and it is proving to be popular.
McLean's story is thus part of the larger modern history of inpatient psychiatric treatment, but it is a peculiar one because of its elite patients. It is a remarkable list who stayed there, and they were not all distinguished only by having wealth. The poets Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, and Sylvia Plath wrote about their stays, as did Susanna Kaysen, author of _Girl Interrupted_. John Nash, of _A Beautiful Mind_, was there, as were James Taylor and his brother Livingston and sister Kate. Ray Charles was there following a drug bust. The celebrity patients come and go through these pages, which more importantly contain a entertaining history writ small of American psychiatry.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
