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Life Inside The Sane Asylum
Just A Thought
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In the early 60's I did my graduate internship at Central State Mental Hospital. I was once giving a speech and asked the audience if there was anyone who had graduated from there? One fellow raised his hand and said he did not graduate from there but he once played football for them. Funny guy, or at least I thought so at the time. I always remember his comment when I think of that thin line between sane and insane...
On the Central Campus there were over three thousand residents or patients, as we called them. In truth, it was home for most of them. During the sixties there were no outpatient treatment facilities for those with adjustment problems, so the state took responsibility for their care.
Pills mostly, with electroshock on Wednesdays for those that could not forget. Music therapy on Thursday for some and at night straight jackets with leather tie downs for others. I still remember my late night rounds through the locked wards. The sounds and conversations that echoed down the narrow halls that would make good subject matter for a psychological thriller.
There was this young lady name Rosie that worked in the office where most of the interns worked. She had been hospitalized for eleven years since the age of 18. Rosie was very bright and a great worker. Her gift of math and statics was used daily by all the interns. If Rosie was not talking to you, she would continuously talk to herself or to an imaginary person in a very angry voice, continuously complaining, ”And then he did this to me, then he said, and I said”, and then, “How dare he tell me this”, and I always watched in amazement. How can anybody be so insane and still apparently hav a job and do such great work?
One day, I was washing my hands in the bathroom just down from my office, and I thought, “My God. Her voice, she never stops talking.” And I suddenly realized, well, I do that, too, except that I don’t do it out loud. And then I thought, “I hope I don’t end up like her,” and somebody next to me looked at me, and I suddenly realized in shock that I had actually said these words aloud, just like her.
I realized my mind was just as incessantly active as hers. The only difference was that my thought was mostly based on feeling sorry for myself. It was depressed thinking. Her patterns were fueled by anger.
Just like Rosie, there was two of me. The "I" was there, and the "me" that was the continuous mental noise, the stream of thinking that considered life and considered myself a problem.
I think of Rosie on occasions. Especially on those occasions when my mind thinks incessantly of "me".
Not half that bad on a good day...Doc
