The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Peter Stastny (Author), Lisa Rinzler (Photographer)
Key Phrases: suitcase owners, blood temper, New York, United States, White House (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When New York's 120-plus-year-old mental institution Willard State Hospital was closed down in 1995, New York Museum curator Craig Williams found a forgotten attic filled with suitcases belonging to former inmates. He informed Penney, co-editor of The Snail's Pace Review and a leading advocate of patients rights, who recognized the opportunity to salvage the memory of these institutionalized lives. She invited Stastny, a psychiatrist and documentary filmmaker, to help her curate an exhibit on the find and write this book, which they dedicate to "the Willard suitcase owners, and to all others who have lived and died in mental institutions." What follows are profiles of 10 individual patients whose suitcase contents proved intriguing (there were 427 bags total), referencing their institutional record-including histories and session notes-as well as some on-the-ground research. A typical example is Ethel Smalls, who likely suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of her husband's abuse; misdiagnosed and institutionalized against her will, she lived at Willard until her death in 1973. While the individual stories are necessarily sketchy, the cumulative effect is a powerful indictment of healthcare for the mentally ill. 25 color and 63 b&w photographs.
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Review

"A tour de force, a must-read for anyone concerned with social justice, human rights and historical reclamation." -- Laura Prescott, President and Founder of Sister Witness International Inc.

"Darby Penny and Peter Stastny turn remembrance into an act of alchemy." -- Kim Hopper, author of Reckoning with Homelessness

"Darby Penney and Peter Stastny have...reclaim[ed] these individuals from the nameless, faceless fate of being only 'mental patients.'" -- Judi Chamberlin, author of On Our Own

"No reader will walk away untouched by these compelling portraits...." -- Ronald Bassman, Ph.D., author of A Fight to Be: A Psychologist's Experience from Both Sides of the Locked Door.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press; 1 edition (January 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1934137073
• ISBN-13: 978-1934137079
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #197,059 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Uncovering the REAL footprints, January 20, 2008

By	R. Bassman - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

In this this extraordinary, groundbreaking book, the authors introduce us to buried treasure. From their belongings and hospital records, the "forgotten lives"of institutionalized mental patients are re-constructed. Not only do we become privy to the harsh environment in which they are forced to subsist, also we see their unique hopes and dreams - evidence that these mental patients are more like us than different. The profiles of the ten individuals are rendered with tenderness and sometimes a bit of humor, not at the patient's expense but rather at their keepers. At bottom and central, is the illumination of a dark period of our history that the authors point out remains relevant today. Most importantly, a reading will provoke feelings and generate a different way of thinking about how one tumbles into the role of life-long mental patient.
Ronald Bassman, PhD

102 of 130 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars One of the Worst Books I've Ever Read, February 22, 2008

By	Docarelle (Virginia) - See all my reviews

I was excited about this book when I heard about it and looked forward to it eagerly. The idea behind it was absolutely brilliant. How wonderful would it be to have access to the possessions, writings, and records of the disenfranchised people who were committed to psychiatric facilities back in the "dark ages of psychiatry"? The writers made a claim that they researched intensively when writing this book; however, I was able to locate 15 errors in the first 50 pages without even looking twice. What happened to the "10 years of research"? The further I read, the more unsettled I became. The entire book was an exercise in blaming the mental health field for everything that ever happened to anyone with psychiatric issues, and, although the field frequently needs slapping, it needs an "eyes open" slapping instead of the blindfolded and repeated slam-crash-bang of a pinata stick.
The bottom line is this. Tell me the truth. Tell me upfront that you think that institutions stunk and that people were treated cruelly and that everyone was sick and blighted who was ever associated with the running of them. But don't take the lives of people who had pretty wretched lives to begin with and then use them to underscore your personal belief that psychiatry and institutions are bad and evil. That is bathos and victimization at its finest. No one who was "exhibited" in this book gave their permission for their lives and for the minutiae that made up their existence to be examined and cross-examined and interpreted so broadly. That is taking advantage of people with psychiatric issues and using them for your own purposes. That is what I object to. It's making a profit off of other people's misery and to that I object and will always object. That is intellectual dishonesty and making a buck off someone who was helpless by using them to make your point, whether or not they would have agreed with you. And in my egg-headed highfalutin' world that is a bad thing.
The absolute worst thing about this book was that the authors didn't allow these people to have their psychiatric issues. They tried to reframe all their subjects' interactions so that every bizarre thing they did, said, or thought was reframed as "normal" and any interpretation of their thought processes as being "different" was seen as the inherent evilness of the doctors and "the system". This makes me worry about the intent of the authors. Is mental illness or psychiatric illness or whatever you want to call it such a bad and shameful thing that we can't call it by its name or look at it in the daylight? Are we so ashamed of it that we have to make it into something that it isn't? If we do so, then we deny the humanity and struggle that is part and parcel of it just to soothe our own personal fears. Where is the bravery and the dignity in that, pretending something doesn't exist just because we ourselves are frightened by it? I personally like a lot of people who have psychiatric issues but I don't need to pretend that everything they do is normal to like them. Too bad the authors don't have the same viewpoint. This could have been a classic work with the all the rich sources of information they had access to. Instead it's a cheap dime store crime novel without any of the subtleties of the genre.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Middle of the Road, June 23, 2008

By	Howard L. Dixon (Hopewell, VA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Not one review before mine gave a score of "average". Folks either really like this book or absolutely hate it. The numerous errors and typos were easy to spot. The authors quickly established that they had "an axe to grind". But in most of their observations they were talking about institutional care of the past, rather than the current system. Not to say that events upon which they report aren't still happening. I do think the authors do a reasonable job of showing that a number of the cases upon which they report did not have a "wretched" before Willard. Examples such as "She is in a [private boarding] home and refused to leave after being ordered out and used vulgar and obscene language" seems pretty weak as justification for a lifetime of institutional commitment. And it does seem clear that the culture of the time resulted in very little timely research regarding the underlying reasons behind the patient's abnormalities. I do not share the view that these folks would have been upset with their stories being told, in fact with varying degrees, those that could think coherently would have probably welcomed it.