Research Catalog

Title

Asylum : a mid-century madhouse and its lessons about our mentally ill today / Enoch Callaway.

Author

Callaway, Enoch.

Publication

Westport, Conn. : Praeger, 2007.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xvi, 196 pages : illustrations; 25 cm

Summary

"In his witty and warm history of Worcester State Hospital, founded in 1833 as the first state insane asylum in this nation, Dr. Enoch Callaway reflects not just on the events in this fortress-like place, but also on how those events parallel advances and failures in the field of psychiatry itself. He includes patient/psychiatrist vignettes showing treatment techniques of the period - from farm work to early electric shock therapy and insulin treatments that put schizophrenics in a 90-minute coma. In addition, he offers sharp insight into 'natural' treatments that showed remarkable results, as well as into unexpected recoveries stimulated by tools as simple as a hand mirror. At times, Worcester may seem brutal, at other times its simplicity seems pure and caring. There are marvelous successes, and times when the facility seems no more than a warehouse for the mentally ill. Callaway argues that this history offers lessons about the treatment - and options for better treatment - of the mentally ill in society today."--Book jacket.

Subjects

• Psychiatry > history
• History, 20th Century
• Worcester State Hospital
• Psychiatric hospitals > Massachusetts > Worcester > History
• Massachusetts
• Worcester State Hospital History
• Hospitals, Psychiatric > history

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Welcome to the lunatic asylum -- Back wards -- Isn't that depressing? -- Promotion to Jesus -- Doctor charisma -- Are you there? -- Insulin coma (aka insulin shock) therapy -- By these signs shall ye know them -- Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) -- The last resort -- Beauty is as beauty does -- Some comments on the subject of schizophrenia -- We may be crazy but we're not stupid -- My exhibitionism gets a lucky break -- Truth serum -- The pet paranoid -- The patient who smelled like a darkroom -- Psychiatry, the Cinderella of medicine, before the fairy godmother (aka the pharmaceutical industry) discovered glass slippers for her feet -- Never say die -- Folie à deux -- My nose receives a silver rod at Harvard -- A special place -- The moon and madness -- Electronic relics of the pre-penicillin era -- hydrotherapy -- The psychoanalytic citation -- A saint for the schizophrenics -- Deafness and despair -- Coarse brain damage -- Psychosomatic medicine -- The magic mirror -- The dark side -- Behind the wall of silence -- Gather ye labwear where ye may -- Miscellaneous misadventures -- The fortunate failure -- He who calls his neighbor a fool -- The genital sentinel -- Did she die from counter-transference? -- Fabulous phonies -- The psychoanalytic innovator -- How fortune came to favor the foundation and the hospital -- From madhouse to mansion -- On mink mating and money-making -- Nate Kline -- Marvelous mentors -- Consensual validation: the movie Snake pit -- Footnotes on psychotherapy -- Welcome to the third millenium [sic] -- Visits with those left behind -- Are promises made to be broken? -- The seeds of deinstitutionalization -- The unholy aliance [sic] -- Postscript: So what? With notes on the culture of caring.

ISBN

• 9780275997045 (alk. paper)
• 0275997049 (alk. paper)

LCCN

2007014365

OCLC

• ocn123029478
• 123029478
• SCSB-5481110

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries