- Taschenbuch: 296 Seiten
- Verlag: PublicAffairs; Auflage: New edition (17. Dezember 2002)
- Sprache: Englisch
- ISBN-10: 1586481614
- ISBN-13: 978-1586481612
- Größe und/oder Gewicht: 21 x 14,1 x 1,9 cm
- Amazon Bestseller-Rang: Nr. 299.355 in Englische Bücher (Siehe Top 100 in Englische Bücher)
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Gracefully Insane
und über 1 Million weitere Bücher verfügbar für Amazon Kindle .
Erfahren Sie mehr
| ||||||||||||||||||||
Produktinformation |
Mehr über den Autor
Entdecken Sie Bücher, lesen Sie über Autoren und mehr
› Besuchen Sie die Seite von Alex Beam auf Amazon
› Besuchen Sie die Seite von Alex Beam auf Amazon
Produktbeschreibungen
Amazon.com
Alex Beam's Gracefully Insane is a knowledgeable historical portrait of New England's McLean Hospital, until recently the mental institution equivalent of the Plaza Hotel. Fenceless and unguarded, McLean's grounds were landscaped by Frederick Law Olmsted. Amenities included tennis courts, a golf course, room service, and a riding stable. As one director said, "If you don't know where you are, then you're in the right place." Its patients have included James Taylor, Robert Lowell, and Ray Charles. It also looms large in The Bell Jar and Girl, Interrupted, written by former patients Sylvia Plath and Susanna Kaysen. Beam weaves patients' and employees' stories with an informal review of mental health treatments through the years, including lobotomies, insulin-induced comas, ice-water baths, and a ghastly device called the "coercion chair." Gracefully Insane is amiable, lively, and honest. Its many anecdotes (derived from patient records, journals, and interviews) are by turns poignant, humorous, and unsettling. --H. O'Billovitch
-- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.
From Library Journal
This quirky work of social history recounts the story of McLean Hospital, a trendy mental institution affiliated with Harvard University, from its genteel beginnings in the early 19th century to its downsized status today. Through interviews and analyses of archival sources, Beam, a Boston Globe journalist and author of two novels (Fellow Travelers; The Americans Are Coming!), provides an oddly entertaining narrative that reads easily and supplies fascinating details about business, pop music, and literary figures. Casual readers may be drawn to tales that inspired the film Girl, Interrupted and Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. Name-dropping is rampant, reflecting one former patient's view that staying at McLean was comparable to attending a progressive college. Less successful is Beam's attempt to generalize about the history of mental healthcare from such a unique case. He subtly criticizes the mental health establishment that permitted care to be so heavily influenced by socioeconomic status and whose treatment paradigms shifted so wildly from hydrotherapy and lobotomies to "talking cures" and psychopharmacology. Recommended for large public and regional libraries as well as specialized history of mental health collections. Antoinette M. Brinkman, M.L.S., Evansville, IN
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
-- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.
In diesem Buch
(Mehr dazu)
Einleitungssatz
Everyone makes the same comment: It doesn't look like a mental hospital. Lesen Sie die erste Seite
Buchdeckel | Copyright | Inhaltsverzeichnis | Auszug | Stichwortverzeichnis | Rückseite
Everyone makes the same comment: It doesn't look like a mental hospital. Lesen Sie die erste Seite
Mehr entdecken
Wortanzeiger
Ausgewählte Seiten ansehenWortanzeiger
Buchdeckel | Copyright | Inhaltsverzeichnis | Auszug | Stichwortverzeichnis | Rückseite
Tags(Was ist das?)Bei einem Tag handelt es sich um ein Schlagwort, das zum Produkt passt.
Tags erleichtern allen Kunden die Suche und die Sortierung ihrer Lieblingsprodukte. |
Kundenrezensionen
Es gibt noch keine Kundenrezensionen auf Amazon.de
5 Sterne
4 Sterne
3 Sterne
2 Sterne
1 Sterne
Die hilfreichsten Kundenrezensionen auf Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
38 Rezensionen
23 von 24 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Breakdowns of the Rich and Famous
29. Januar 2002
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe
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.
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.
14 von 14 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
entertaining and erudite
6. Februar 2002
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe
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.
27 von 31 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Mental Health for Those with Wealth
6. März 2002
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe
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.
Waren diese Rezensionen hilfreich?
Wir wollen von Ihnen hören.
Kunden diskutieren
|
Das Forum zu diesem Produkt
Fragen stellen, Meinungen austauschen, Einblicke gewinnen Aktive Diskussionen in ähnlichen Foren
Kundendiskussionen durchsuchen
|
Ähnliche Foren
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Lieblingslisten
Ähnliche Artikel finden
Anhand des Sachgebietes nach ähnlichen Produkten suchen:
Ihr Kommentar
Möchten Sie die Produktinformationen aktualisieren oder Feedback zu den Produktabbildungen geben?
|
