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

by Darby Penney

The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic Cover

ISBN13: 9781934137147
ISBN10: 1934137146
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Synopses & Reviews

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The Lives They Left Behindis a deeply moving testament to the human side of mental illness, and of the narrow margin which so often separates the sane from the mad.  It is a remarkable portrait, too, of the life of a psychiatric asylum--the sort of community in which, for better and for worse, hundreds of thousands of people lived out their lives. Darby Penney and Peter Stastny's careful historical (almost archaeological) and biographical reconstructions give us unique insight into these lives which would otherwise be lost and, indeed, unimaginable to the rest of us.”—Oliver Sacks, M.D., Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry, Columbia University Medical Center, Columbia University Artist, and author of Musicophilia

 

“The haunting thing about the suitcase owners is that it’s so easy to identify with them.”—Newsweek

 

“In their poignant detail the items helped rescue these individuals from the dark sprawl of anonymity.”—The New York Times

 

“[The authors] spent 10 years piecing together . . . the lives these patients lived before they were nightmarishly stripped of their identities.”—Newsday

 

More than four hundred abandoned suitcases filled with patients’ belongings were found when Willard Psychiatric Center closed in 1995 after 125 years of operation. They are skillfully examined here and compared to the written record to create a moving—and devastating—group portrait of twentieth-century American psychiatric care.

Synopsis:

Now in paperback, this is the acclaimed portrait of institutionalized patients whose abandoned possessions recall their

Synopsis:

Now in paperback, this is the acclaimed portrait of institutionalized patients whose abandoned possessions recall their

Synopsis:

The Lives They Left Behind is a deeply moving testament to the human side of mental illness, and of the narrow margin which so often separates the sane from the mad.  It is a remarkable portrait, too, of the life of a psychiatric asylum--the sort of community in which, for better and for worse, hundreds of thousands of people lived out their lives. Darby Penney and Peter Stastny's careful historical (almost archaeological) and biographical reconstructions give us unique insight into these lives which would otherwise be lost and, indeed, unimaginable to the rest of us.”—Oliver Sacks, M.D., Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry, Columbia University Medical Center, Columbia University Artist, and author of Musicophilia

“The haunting thing about the suitcase owners is that it’s so easy to identify with them.”—Newsweek

“In their poignant detail the items helped rescue these individuals from the dark sprawl of anonymity.”—The New York Times

“[The authors] spent 10 years piecing together . . . the lives these patients lived before they were nightmarishly stripped of their identities.”—Newsday

More than four hundred abandoned suitcases filled with patients’ belongings were found when Willard Psychiatric Center closed in 1995 after 125 years of operation. They are skillfully examined here and compared to the written record to create a moving—and devastating—group portrait of twentieth-century American psychiatric care.

About the Author

Darby Penney is an accomplished poet, a national leader in the human rights movement for people with psychiatric disabilities and a former state mental health official who has experienced the mental health system inside and out. Peter Stastny, author of numerous publications, is a psychiatrist and documentary filmmaker. Lisa Rinzler is a prize-winning cinematographer (Three Seasons, Menace II Society, No Direction Home: Bob Dylan) whose photographs illustrate the book alongside reproductions of excerpted medical records and images found among the suitcase contents. Robert Whitaker is the author of Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill.

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Shoshana, January 9, 2009 (view all comments by Shoshana)
Terribly disappointing because it could have been wonderful, but instead suffers from repetitive, barely-restrained vitriol. The book's ostensible focus is On reconstructing the lives of people who were patients at a residential psychiatric hospital from suitcases left in the attic. This is an interesting proposition, but it is not pursued hermeneutically or adequately. The problem is not that the authors have a point to make and use the case studies to support it. Rather, they are not sufficiently up-front about their agenda and present a veneer of scientific inquiry to convey their neutrality. However, they are not neutral, and their thesis is ill-served by not being explicitly described.

An otherwise-interesting topic is marred by heavy negative over-generalization, failure to stick to the topic it proposes to present, and failure to separate the issue of type and quality of care from the question of what to do when a person is unable to manage in society. Making the book worse is poor editing, both in terms of sometimes-confusing organization and flow, and unclear and repetitive statements. Some important information and explanation are also missing (for example, whose hands are holding the people's possessions in the photos, and is it journalistically suspect to have used hands that appear to match the person's demographics?). Another area that seems deceptive and detracts significantly is the authors' contradictory attitude about the patients' privacy. On the publishing information page, they report that they would have used patients' names but for privacy laws. I can understand this regret; my dissertation study participants wanted me to use their names and I was not permitted to do so. However, the authors' desire to use names stems from their own wishes, not their subjects', as their subjects are dead. Presumably if the patients' relatives had given permission, the authors could have used the patients' names (since the survivors hold the decedents' privilege). It is possible that the patients would not have wanted their names used. In this light, the authors' use of people's first names, full-face photos, and potentially identifying information seems both coy and unethical, as well as unnecessary and provocative. Who was it who was stripped of their autonomy and used for other people's ends by the bad legal/medical/psychiatric abusers? And whose privacy is abrogated by the authors, for their own purposes? Hmm.

I support the authors' contentions that psychiatry has been used as an instrument of social control and management, that patients were and are pathologized and disbelieved, and that they often receive inadequate care, especially in public institutions. This is widely documented and more effectively demonstrated elsewhere, though it bears repeating. The authors could have used this book more effectively for this purpose had they constrained their editorializing and not engaged in multiple instances of extreme and overgeneralized assertions. For example, they don't give any examples of people who they think need any kind of psychiatric intervention, yet also condemn the state and psychiatric/medical profession for not providing other services. Perhaps most egregiously problematic, they condemn the objectification of the patients and the loss of their complexity and humanity, yet by only portraying the parts of the patients' histories that support the authors' perspective, they also treat the patients as objects that serve the authors' ends.

And please, Powell's, must this sit on the psychology shelf? I don't think a single psychologist, psychology client, or psychological intervention appears in it. Better to keep it with the history of medicine and sociology texts.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9781934137147
Author:
Penney, Darby
Publisher:
Bellevue Literary Press
Photographer:
Rinzler, Lisa
Author:
Rinzler, Lisa
Author:
Whitaker, Robert
Author:
Stastny, Peter
Subject:
Mental Illness
Subject:
Specific Groups - Special Needs
Subject:
History
Subject:
Psychology : General
Edition Description:
Trade Paper
Publication Date:
20090131
Binding:
TRADE PAPER
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Y
Pages:
205
Dimensions:
8.90x5.90x.60 in. .70 lbs.

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The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic New Trade Paper
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Product details 205 pages Bellevue Literary Press - English 9781934137147 Reviews:
"Synopsis" by ,
Now in paperback, this is the acclaimed portrait of institutionalized patients whose abandoned possessions recall their
"Synopsis" by , Now in paperback, this is the acclaimed portrait of institutionalized patients whose abandoned possessions recall their
"Synopsis" by ,

The Lives They Left Behind is a deeply moving testament to the human side of mental illness, and of the narrow margin which so often separates the sane from the mad.  It is a remarkable portrait, too, of the life of a psychiatric asylum--the sort of community in which, for better and for worse, hundreds of thousands of people lived out their lives. Darby Penney and Peter Stastny's careful historical (almost archaeological) and biographical reconstructions give us unique insight into these lives which would otherwise be lost and, indeed, unimaginable to the rest of us.”—Oliver Sacks, M.D., Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry, Columbia University Medical Center, Columbia University Artist, and author of Musicophilia

“The haunting thing about the suitcase owners is that it’s so easy to identify with them.”—Newsweek

“In their poignant detail the items helped rescue these individuals from the dark sprawl of anonymity.”—The New York Times

“[The authors] spent 10 years piecing together . . . the lives these patients lived before they were nightmarishly stripped of their identities.”—Newsday

More than four hundred abandoned suitcases filled with patients’ belongings were found when Willard Psychiatric Center closed in 1995 after 125 years of operation. They are skillfully examined here and compared to the written record to create a moving—and devastating—group portrait of twentieth-century American psychiatric care.

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