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psychiatric hospitals

L

Lou_reed

New Member
Hey guys!:)

Could you please reccomend me some good books set in Phychiatric hospitals, your help would be truly appreciated .

What did you guys think of Blindness?

Thanks.
 
Lou_reed said:
Hey guys!:)

Could you please reccomend me some good books set in Phychiatric hospitals, your help would be truly appreciated .

What did you guys think of Blindness?

Thanks.
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I have an old paperback at home of
Rubin, Theodore SHRINK The Diary of a Psychiatrist Publisher: Popular Library New York 1974.

It is his autobiographical account of his residency in a New York State mental hospital. Don't know if it is still in print.

Also, The Making of a Psychiatrist, another autobiography ... by David Viscott


I never read "The Snake Pit", by Mary Jane Ward, but I think that is a classic:

http://www.raintreecounty.com/SnakePit.html
 
The Professor and the Mad Man: a Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester.

It is known as one of the greatest literary achievements in the history of English letters. The creation of the Oxford English Dictionary began in 1857, took seventy years to complete, drew from tens of thousands of brilliant minds, and organized the sprawling language into 414,825 precise definitions. But hidden within the rituals of its creation is a fascinating and mysterious story--a story of two remarkable men whose strange twenty-year relationship lies at the core of this historic undertaking. Professor James Murray, an astonishingly learned former schoolmaster and bank clerk, was the distinguished editor of the OED project. Dr. William Chester Minor, an American surgeon from New Haven, Connecticut, who had served in the Civil War, was one of thousands of contributors who submitted illustrative quotations of words to be used in the dictionary. But Minor was no ordinary contributor. He was remarkably prolific, sending thousands of neat, handwritten quotations from his home in the small village of Crowthorne, fifty miles from Oxford. On numerous occasions Murray invited Minor to visit Oxford and celebrate his work, but Murray's offer was regularly--and mysteriously--refused. Thus the two men, for two decades, maintained a close relationship only through correspondence. Finally, in 1896, after Minor had sent nearly ten thousand definitions to the dictionary but had still never traveled from his home, a puzzled Murray set out to visit him. It was then that Murray finally learned the truth about Minor--that, in addition to being a masterful wordsmith, Minor was also a murderer, clinically insane--and locked up in Broadmoor, England's harshest asylum for criminal lunatics. The Professor and the Madman is an extraordinary tale of madness and genius, and the incredible obsessions of two men at the heart of the Oxford English Dictionary and literary history. With riveting insight and detail, Simon Winchester crafts a fascinating glimpse into one man's tortured mind and his contribution to another man's magnificent dictionary.
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Harper's had an issue awhile back about a particular asylum that housed many famous writers over the years. It was amusing becausing this place is still open in the states and some young writers beg to be admitted under the pretense of depression or some other mental malady. I wish I could remember the name right now, but it just skips me.
 
I read a book in my early twenties called Summer of the Black Sun by Bill T. O'Brien. It made quite an impact on me at the time, but have no idea how it would hold up now. It was set in a psychiatric hospital based on the one where I did my psychiatry rotation for my nursing degree (maybe the only reason I found it interesting).

ell
 
"Girl interrupted" by S. Kaysen a very interesting book about a 18 years old girl staying at a psychiatric hospital


"Blindness"???? one of the most beautiful books i've ever read!! :)
 
i just remembered another good one, actually it is a short story
"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
 
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