Mental Health Ministry II
MENTAL HEALTH MINISTRY II
About the Author/ Preface—Dmitri Mihalas is an astronomy professor; he taught at the Universities at IL, & CO, Princeton, Chicago. He had manic-depression for 40 years; he discovered its source 10 years. ago. This pamphlet is from Inter-Mountain YM (CO) "interest groups" led by Dimitri & Barbara Mihalas. The essay describes the depressed's transition from [suicidal] despair, [through] mystical experience & Meeting support, to a grounded place for spiritual growth.
In 1986 I passed through a year of major depression, the worst experience of my life. Starting in 1987, I have received incalculable benefits from it. My world view has changed radically for the better, with peaceful paths and breathtaking vistas I never knew existed. Dimitri Mihalas
DEPRESSION, MEDICATION AND PSYCHOTHERAPY—Medication and Psychotherapy approaches to therapy have complementary strengths and functions. I believe medication heals a victim who is locked in a very deep depression or a wildly manic state, where there is clear indication of abnormal brain function. Psychotherapy offers an opportunity for insight into oneself, once the main force of the illness is broken; one can be open to spiritual insight and growth before medication takes effect. The "crashing" metaphor of a severe depression episode hints at the magnitude of the task at hand if one is to "fly" again.
What one does is put out flames, & then rebuild, using parts from the wreckage & new parts crafted in the psychotherapy & spiritual growth processes; you aren't the same person afterward. There are alternative approaches to therapy that work best in addition to standard methods, rather than as substitutes. I learned a powerful technique from the Neuro-Linguistic Programming discipline. I don't know how, but it worked very well with psychotherapy, which interpreted deep & powerful images offered by my subconscious in response to structural changes made in my belief system, & my emotional posture. Religious experience is [another resource, whether we are talking about] Quakerism's "direct experiential knowledge" or Buddhism's uncritical acceptance of what is. [These shape] inner changes that can facilitate growth for a new life in the rebuilding process.
THE PROBLEM OF SUICIDE—Suicide is the greatest danger and worst possible outcome of deep depression; it is a final, permanent defeat, because suicide represents the end of all growth, spiritual or otherwise. Considering suicide is the sharpest existential moment he/she will have; if survived it can spark spiritual growth. Suicide becomes a tragedy only when it succeeds. Why do people want to die? People who commit suicide do not actually want to die; they reached a point where their present life is unendurable, and they see no way to change it. If this line of thinking is followed to its logical conclusion it represents certain death.
At this point, medical intervention is urgent. Sometimes it is from sliding, untreated, deeper & deeper into a black well of major depression. Sometimes one reaches the crisis after months of "failed" medical treatment. Here one needs spiritual strength, & hope that effective treatment will still be found. Suicidal people often examine their life in agonizing, minute detail. They mostly discount what is good & attach special importance to what is bad. Medical intervention helps the victim gain a more balanced picture, & reminds them constantly of a biochemical bias & imbalance in the brain. Sometimes none of this works; the victim moves on a smaller & smaller orbit around a black hole called suicide. The victim may actually resist efforts of help, & ask, "Whose life is it, anyway?" This can be debated on many philosophical, legal, religious levels & from many points of view. I offer here a compelling answer & a model of healing & continuing wellness.
A SPIRITUAL MODEL OF HEALING AND WELLNESS—People who have had both would choose a heart attack over major depression. My model resembles Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's model for dying; in her model you get to die; in my model you get to live. The most common reaction to realizing you have chronic mental illness is denial; denial doesn't help. In mild depression, denial can be sustained for a long time; once grinding, crushing, mind-breaking major depression sets in, denial falls by the way, replaced by seeking survival.
In Kubler Ross's model of dying, the next stage is anger: Why me? It is unreasonable to expect depressed people show anger because they are in misery; rather than angry, they are passive, & feel guilty about everything in their lives, & deserving of illness. There is loss, grief & mourning. Life will never be the same; (it may even become better). Lost opportunities & disappointed hopes—this is the loss, which leads to grief, & deep mourning. Human spirit is [resilient] under the most adverse circumstances; the will to survive leads us to acceptance.
You can forevermore be caught up in your loss, grief, and mourning, or you can say, "I don't like this situation, and never will. But I can't change it, so I accept it so I can get on with living." If we say that [and mean it], we begin to experience release. The loss is still there, but now we refuse to have it dominate every moment of our lives. Saying, "I have other things to do now," cuts the puppet strings. Once you are released, healing can begin. You might think that this process leads only to an acceptance of a permanently degraded life. In the case of mental illness, radically different outcomes are possible. We look back at what we lost, and replace them with things which we like better. The trip through the "fire" of depression can be purifying, burning away the worst of them, creating new openings. This fire authenticates the depth and reality of their experience, their experiential knowledge of God, [and puts them] on the road which leads beyond healing to Grace.
THE MEETING'S ROLE—Support from the outside can make a person's battle against depression easier & more likely to succeed. 4 of the roles a Meeting plays were the most important. 1st, is the continued acceptance and encouragement of the depressed person by other Friends. [Valuing the] person despite his/ her present disability [is reassuring] and serves as promises of a possible warm and happy future even at this bleak moment.
2nd is vocal ministry by other Meeting members. One Friends referred to a cleansing baptism by fire that was the perfect metaphor for my misery. Anger & grief was gone. I see only openings, possibilities. [I was so affected by 1 person's vocal ministry], that I referred to it in my bleak moments and wrote the following poem:
Sunday Morning, 1986—Sunday morning ... Quakers' 1st Day. Quiet/ ... sun shining brightly./ It is ... cold for June ... We are late as usual ... it's my fault ... I'm in ... remorseless depression,/ ... moving slow./ Maybe ... Meeting/ will do me some good. // road is ... blazing sunlight,/ & dappled ... woven shadows/ of trees, bushes, & purple, white, & yellow flowers [on] the shoulder/ ... [At meeting] some put down their own burdens for a moment/ & minister to mine ... certain that they & I can keep me alive ... I'm not so certain. //
Everyone has too much energy/ to be here on such a nice day/ ... Finally ... Meeting ... centers down to wait upon the Lord./ My soul can't ... a voice ... is telling me ... there is no hope [nor] ... any relief ... How much longer can this go on before I break [into suicide]?// I become aware of ... the collective presence of the Meeting ... we are empowering one another, [and of] something bigger than all of us,/ benign, protective, powerful, ... good ... A woman speaks a message about her life ... [it] fits mine/ giving it new meaning.//
She touched me from across the room ... Into closed eyes she shines Light ... her words ... cut through depression ... For a few minutes I am unchained ... & join her in warm soft Light./ The experience comforts me,/ it doesn't heal me/ It restores courage ... & allows [moving] forward,/ a few minutes without pain.// ... [In] many hard days ahead./ ... I am able to close my eyes/ return to that cool, brilliant morning,/ & hear that woman's quiet [faceless] voice ... [in] a place where ... I can rest, rebuild, be safe ... God touched me ... with His grace.
The Meeting provides a forum for ministry by a sufferer of depression. The victim can lighten one's load & help with the growth of others by sharing the sufferer's problems & triumphs—shedding light into a darkened world. The Meeting is an excellent source of help for the everyday chores a depressed person can't manage. In facing the prospect of many days in Boulder, alone in a big empty house in the mountains, I went to Ministry & Counseling Committee with a list of about 12 families & couples I especially liked, & asked them to see if any of those people would allow me to call them, & invite myself to their house for the evening. I actually used my backup list only twice, each time coming home after a pleasant evening feeling better. I could sometimes endure it by myself, knowing those folks were there if I needed them.
THE ROLE OF MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE: The Dark Journey—A full discussion of the "Dark Journey's" or "Dark Night of the Soul's" experiences can be found in Dark Night Journey by Sandra Cronk. I found major depression is a kind of Dark Journey, comprising most of what she describes. Surviving severe depression gave me new insight into the Dark Journey's meaning. I went home 1 afternoon in January 1986 to pull the trigger. My wife had already taken the gun away; my plan was thwarted. I was stuck without a gun or another plan; I simply stumbled forward. [Later that month, my wife & I parted company in a snowstorm. As she] slowly disappeared into the falling snow, I felt a pang of loneliness, loss & emptiness. What would happen if she suddenly disappeared? How could I stand it or survive? Those questions would be hers if I were to kill myself. "My life belongs to me in the context of all the other lives it touches. I kill a part of them along with myself. I found an [unexpected], irrefutable answer to the question, "Just whose life is it, anyway?"
Along with a suicidal urge, another "part" of my mind had a growing, strong conviction I was being protected, sheltered, & [assured] that it would all come out right. [God or not], it was a tremendous power; the merest touch of it is enough to last a lifetime. My "Dark Journey" below, written much later, evokes a sense of this.
Dark Journey— "... Blackness envelops us,/ making movement impossible./ Thus begins our souls'/ shadowy journey/ of isolation, loss, fear.// Only when we lose false courage ... & turn to You,/ ... do we feel Your hand/ guiding ... carrying us to the center of Grace ...It is then, for the 1st time,/ that we feel You. Become alive."
This poem is the speck of light I returned with from my black canyon's edge. Why is it given to us to have to travel through terrible darkness? It is in the deepest darkness that one can most easily see light. The darker it is, the more and fainter stars you can see. [If we lose the Light, and] are plunged into great darkness, we have a chance to find that Light again, no matter how faint it may have become. Dark Journey is a gift.
Support from Afar—[Prayer life] & spiritual experience can have an effect similar to psychotherapy. [The 3 quotes I use here] are all from the little book The Prayers I Love. 1. "I have no other helper, [father, support] than You ... I pray to You./ Only You can help me.// My present misery is too great ... I cannot pull myself up or out.// ... help me out of this misery./ Let me know that You are stronger/ than all misery & all enemies.// ... let the experience contribute to ... my brothers' blessing ..." [The last 2 phrases are part of] a plea & a promise. 2. & 3. (John Donne; 1573-1631): "He brought light out of darkness,/ not out of lesser light. He can bring summer/ out of winter/ though thou have no spring." "God never says/ you should have come yesterday./ He never says/ you must come again tomorrow./ But today,/ if you will hear His voice,/ He will hear you"
Grace/ EPILOGUE—It is more fruitful to describe Grace experientially than to try to define it. Grace: Grace is:/ when you can look through,/ and beyond,/ the deepest darkness/ into Light ...// when you discover/ the heavy burden/ you have carried/ these many miles/ is actually your gift ...// when you/ willingly/ endure the burning/ in order to give Light ...// When you understand finally,/ that you can defy death,/ by dying/ to be reborn and live ... Through Grace ... [we] can go on/ despite disabilities,/ & be nourished by them." Grace "taught my heart to fear," and to realize that none of those fears matter once I made the leap of faith to go on living despite my "insignificance" and "worthlessness."
With Grace we can give to one another, comfort one another, be with one another, [bear with one another], and bear together our ups and downs. For me the world looks different. Where I saw problems before, I now see solutions; where I felt weakest and most insecure, I have learned to rely on others. Guilt, grief, anger, and disappointment have been burned away. To quote Helen Weaver Horn "From Brokenness" for those feeling broken: "This is the daily miracle:/ that glancing off each granite face,/ the Seed at last finds lodging/ in the broken place,/ and from the dark heart of the cleft/ sprouts Grace, springs green." Broken places are the places through which Grace, and Light, and Life can 1st penetrate our souls. We can reach out from the broken places in our bodies and mind and touch the world, touch each other, and touch God. Brokenness is a gift. [I would neither relive or erase the events of 1986]. It was terrible and it made my life better; I learned a lot. I am much happier. I have more to offer those around me. I have been touched by Grace.
One cannot reach the dawn/ save by the path of night. Kahlil Gibran
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DEPRESSION, MEDICATION AND PSYCHOTHERAPY—Medication and Psychotherapy approaches to therapy have complementary strengths and functions. I believe medication heals a victim who is locked in a very deep depression or a wildly manic state, where there is clear indication of abnormal brain function. Psychotherapy offers an opportunity for insight into oneself, once the main force of the illness is broken; one can be open to spiritual insight and growth before medication takes effect. The "crashing" metaphor of a severe depression episode hints at the magnitude of the task at hand if one is to "fly" again.
What one does is put out flames, & then rebuild, using parts from the wreckage & new parts crafted in the psychotherapy & spiritual growth processes; you aren't the same person afterward. There are alternative approaches to therapy that work best in addition to standard methods, rather than as substitutes. I learned a powerful technique from the Neuro-Linguistic Programming discipline. I don't know how, but it worked very well with psychotherapy, which interpreted deep & powerful images offered by my subconscious in response to structural changes made in my belief system, & my emotional posture. Religious experience is [another resource, whether we are talking about] Quakerism's "direct experiential knowledge" or Buddhism's uncritical acceptance of what is. [These shape] inner changes that can facilitate growth for a new life in the rebuilding process.
THE PROBLEM OF SUICIDE—Suicide is the greatest danger and worst possible outcome of deep depression; it is a final, permanent defeat, because suicide represents the end of all growth, spiritual or otherwise. Considering suicide is the sharpest existential moment he/she will have; if survived it can spark spiritual growth. Suicide becomes a tragedy only when it succeeds. Why do people want to die? People who commit suicide do not actually want to die; they reached a point where their present life is unendurable, and they see no way to change it. If this line of thinking is followed to its logical conclusion it represents certain death.
At this point, medical intervention is urgent. Sometimes it is from sliding, untreated, deeper & deeper into a black well of major depression. Sometimes one reaches the crisis after months of "failed" medical treatment. Here one needs spiritual strength, & hope that effective treatment will still be found. Suicidal people often examine their life in agonizing, minute detail. They mostly discount what is good & attach special importance to what is bad. Medical intervention helps the victim gain a more balanced picture, & reminds them constantly of a biochemical bias & imbalance in the brain. Sometimes none of this works; the victim moves on a smaller & smaller orbit around a black hole called suicide. The victim may actually resist efforts of help, & ask, "Whose life is it, anyway?" This can be debated on many philosophical, legal, religious levels & from many points of view. I offer here a compelling answer & a model of healing & continuing wellness.
A SPIRITUAL MODEL OF HEALING AND WELLNESS—People who have had both would choose a heart attack over major depression. My model resembles Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's model for dying; in her model you get to die; in my model you get to live. The most common reaction to realizing you have chronic mental illness is denial; denial doesn't help. In mild depression, denial can be sustained for a long time; once grinding, crushing, mind-breaking major depression sets in, denial falls by the way, replaced by seeking survival.
In Kubler Ross's model of dying, the next stage is anger: Why me? It is unreasonable to expect depressed people show anger because they are in misery; rather than angry, they are passive, & feel guilty about everything in their lives, & deserving of illness. There is loss, grief & mourning. Life will never be the same; (it may even become better). Lost opportunities & disappointed hopes—this is the loss, which leads to grief, & deep mourning. Human spirit is [resilient] under the most adverse circumstances; the will to survive leads us to acceptance.
You can forevermore be caught up in your loss, grief, and mourning, or you can say, "I don't like this situation, and never will. But I can't change it, so I accept it so I can get on with living." If we say that [and mean it], we begin to experience release. The loss is still there, but now we refuse to have it dominate every moment of our lives. Saying, "I have other things to do now," cuts the puppet strings. Once you are released, healing can begin. You might think that this process leads only to an acceptance of a permanently degraded life. In the case of mental illness, radically different outcomes are possible. We look back at what we lost, and replace them with things which we like better. The trip through the "fire" of depression can be purifying, burning away the worst of them, creating new openings. This fire authenticates the depth and reality of their experience, their experiential knowledge of God, [and puts them] on the road which leads beyond healing to Grace.
THE MEETING'S ROLE—Support from the outside can make a person's battle against depression easier & more likely to succeed. 4 of the roles a Meeting plays were the most important. 1st, is the continued acceptance and encouragement of the depressed person by other Friends. [Valuing the] person despite his/ her present disability [is reassuring] and serves as promises of a possible warm and happy future even at this bleak moment.
2nd is vocal ministry by other Meeting members. One Friends referred to a cleansing baptism by fire that was the perfect metaphor for my misery. Anger & grief was gone. I see only openings, possibilities. [I was so affected by 1 person's vocal ministry], that I referred to it in my bleak moments and wrote the following poem:
Sunday Morning, 1986—Sunday morning ... Quakers' 1st Day. Quiet/ ... sun shining brightly./ It is ... cold for June ... We are late as usual ... it's my fault ... I'm in ... remorseless depression,/ ... moving slow./ Maybe ... Meeting/ will do me some good. // road is ... blazing sunlight,/ & dappled ... woven shadows/ of trees, bushes, & purple, white, & yellow flowers [on] the shoulder/ ... [At meeting] some put down their own burdens for a moment/ & minister to mine ... certain that they & I can keep me alive ... I'm not so certain. //
Everyone has too much energy/ to be here on such a nice day/ ... Finally ... Meeting ... centers down to wait upon the Lord./ My soul can't ... a voice ... is telling me ... there is no hope [nor] ... any relief ... How much longer can this go on before I break [into suicide]?// I become aware of ... the collective presence of the Meeting ... we are empowering one another, [and of] something bigger than all of us,/ benign, protective, powerful, ... good ... A woman speaks a message about her life ... [it] fits mine/ giving it new meaning.//
She touched me from across the room ... Into closed eyes she shines Light ... her words ... cut through depression ... For a few minutes I am unchained ... & join her in warm soft Light./ The experience comforts me,/ it doesn't heal me/ It restores courage ... & allows [moving] forward,/ a few minutes without pain.// ... [In] many hard days ahead./ ... I am able to close my eyes/ return to that cool, brilliant morning,/ & hear that woman's quiet [faceless] voice ... [in] a place where ... I can rest, rebuild, be safe ... God touched me ... with His grace.
The Meeting provides a forum for ministry by a sufferer of depression. The victim can lighten one's load & help with the growth of others by sharing the sufferer's problems & triumphs—shedding light into a darkened world. The Meeting is an excellent source of help for the everyday chores a depressed person can't manage. In facing the prospect of many days in Boulder, alone in a big empty house in the mountains, I went to Ministry & Counseling Committee with a list of about 12 families & couples I especially liked, & asked them to see if any of those people would allow me to call them, & invite myself to their house for the evening. I actually used my backup list only twice, each time coming home after a pleasant evening feeling better. I could sometimes endure it by myself, knowing those folks were there if I needed them.
THE ROLE OF MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE: The Dark Journey—A full discussion of the "Dark Journey's" or "Dark Night of the Soul's" experiences can be found in Dark Night Journey by Sandra Cronk. I found major depression is a kind of Dark Journey, comprising most of what she describes. Surviving severe depression gave me new insight into the Dark Journey's meaning. I went home 1 afternoon in January 1986 to pull the trigger. My wife had already taken the gun away; my plan was thwarted. I was stuck without a gun or another plan; I simply stumbled forward. [Later that month, my wife & I parted company in a snowstorm. As she] slowly disappeared into the falling snow, I felt a pang of loneliness, loss & emptiness. What would happen if she suddenly disappeared? How could I stand it or survive? Those questions would be hers if I were to kill myself. "My life belongs to me in the context of all the other lives it touches. I kill a part of them along with myself. I found an [unexpected], irrefutable answer to the question, "Just whose life is it, anyway?"
Along with a suicidal urge, another "part" of my mind had a growing, strong conviction I was being protected, sheltered, & [assured] that it would all come out right. [God or not], it was a tremendous power; the merest touch of it is enough to last a lifetime. My "Dark Journey" below, written much later, evokes a sense of this.
Dark Journey— "... Blackness envelops us,/ making movement impossible./ Thus begins our souls'/ shadowy journey/ of isolation, loss, fear.// Only when we lose false courage ... & turn to You,/ ... do we feel Your hand/ guiding ... carrying us to the center of Grace ...It is then, for the 1st time,/ that we feel You. Become alive."
This poem is the speck of light I returned with from my black canyon's edge. Why is it given to us to have to travel through terrible darkness? It is in the deepest darkness that one can most easily see light. The darker it is, the more and fainter stars you can see. [If we lose the Light, and] are plunged into great darkness, we have a chance to find that Light again, no matter how faint it may have become. Dark Journey is a gift.
Support from Afar—[Prayer life] & spiritual experience can have an effect similar to psychotherapy. [The 3 quotes I use here] are all from the little book The Prayers I Love. 1. "I have no other helper, [father, support] than You ... I pray to You./ Only You can help me.// My present misery is too great ... I cannot pull myself up or out.// ... help me out of this misery./ Let me know that You are stronger/ than all misery & all enemies.// ... let the experience contribute to ... my brothers' blessing ..." [The last 2 phrases are part of] a plea & a promise. 2. & 3. (John Donne; 1573-1631): "He brought light out of darkness,/ not out of lesser light. He can bring summer/ out of winter/ though thou have no spring." "God never says/ you should have come yesterday./ He never says/ you must come again tomorrow./ But today,/ if you will hear His voice,/ He will hear you"
Grace/ EPILOGUE—It is more fruitful to describe Grace experientially than to try to define it. Grace: Grace is:/ when you can look through,/ and beyond,/ the deepest darkness/ into Light ...// when you discover/ the heavy burden/ you have carried/ these many miles/ is actually your gift ...// when you/ willingly/ endure the burning/ in order to give Light ...// When you understand finally,/ that you can defy death,/ by dying/ to be reborn and live ... Through Grace ... [we] can go on/ despite disabilities,/ & be nourished by them." Grace "taught my heart to fear," and to realize that none of those fears matter once I made the leap of faith to go on living despite my "insignificance" and "worthlessness."
With Grace we can give to one another, comfort one another, be with one another, [bear with one another], and bear together our ups and downs. For me the world looks different. Where I saw problems before, I now see solutions; where I felt weakest and most insecure, I have learned to rely on others. Guilt, grief, anger, and disappointment have been burned away. To quote Helen Weaver Horn "From Brokenness" for those feeling broken: "This is the daily miracle:/ that glancing off each granite face,/ the Seed at last finds lodging/ in the broken place,/ and from the dark heart of the cleft/ sprouts Grace, springs green." Broken places are the places through which Grace, and Light, and Life can 1st penetrate our souls. We can reach out from the broken places in our bodies and mind and touch the world, touch each other, and touch God. Brokenness is a gift. [I would neither relive or erase the events of 1986]. It was terrible and it made my life better; I learned a lot. I am much happier. I have more to offer those around me. I have been touched by Grace.
One cannot reach the dawn/ save by the path of night. Kahlil Gibran
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211. Seeking Light in the Darkness of the Unconscious (by John Yungblut; 1977)
230. The life of the spirit in women: a Jungian approach (by Helen M. Luke; 1980)
About the Author—Helen Luke came to the US from England in 1949. She worked as a [Jungian] counselor in Los Angeles for many years before founding Apple Farm center in 3 Rivers, MI, for people who were seeking connect their daily lives with the reality of myth and symbol. In connection with the center, she wrote Dark Wood to White Rose: A Study of Meanings in Dante’s Divine Comedy. The present pamphlet was written out of concern for the need of women today to regain a true understanding of the nature of the feminine.
About the Author—John Yungblut is a graduate of Harvard College and the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA. He became a member of the Religious Society of Friends in 1960. He worked with AFSC, Quaker House, International Student House, and as a Pendle Hill teacher for 4 years as of this pamphlet. His own nervous breakdown in college aroused an interest in depth psychology. He did counseling along Jungian lines. This essay represents a recent outgrowth of his personal synthesis of psychology and mysticism.
The God who has chosen to tabernacle with me in the mysterious within of my skin-encapsulated body has chosen to whisper [of sin and evil] to me in the darkness. John Yungblut
Introduction—Most of us would confess that we suffered from the fear of darkness. [Does] even matter [have a] memory of the darkness on the face of the deep while chaos yet prevailed? But darkness also has an irresistible fascination for some of us, beginning in early childhood.
Darkness in the Bible—Whatever their ultimate source, the fear & the longing are immemorial & universal. The Bible offers the darkness of ignorance, of sin, & of the unformed void. [We are fascinated & even long for the darkness of ignorance that primitive people dwell in]; but there is no going back. If we have lost a [primitive] kind of innocence, we may find a nobler innocence that awaits us on the far side of obedience to new light.
Meantime, scripture has assigned [the labels] “sin & evil” to another form of darkness. The God who has chosen to tabernacle with me in the mysterious within of my skin-encapsulated body has chosen to whisper [of sin & evil] to me in the darkness. Martin Buber said: “If you ask me what sin is I know instantly with reference to myself. I haven’t the slightest idea with reference to anyone else.” Only the solitary man knows the judgment under which the light, revealed to him in secret, places him in terms of aspiration and commitment. God required that the solitary mystical experience finds outward expression in social codification, [written in stone].
What enables some children to know that making sport of killing is evil, & what conceals this knowledge from others? I suppose the difference is a more developed mystical faculty of identification. The darkness of ignorance is transformed into the darkness of sin when one does perversely what one’s better self knows is wrong. [The result of Jesus being] “the light which enlightens every man” was that he rescued us from the darkness & brought us to the kingdom of light.
Darkness is both the evil & a place to which evil men are consigned.
Darkness is also the stuff of primeval chaos on which the act of creation can play, producing order & light. The Psalmist, among others, tells us “He made darkness around him his hiding-place & dense vapor his canopy” (Psalm 18:11) & “clouds & thick darkness are round about him” (Psalm 97:2). It isn't only that God may overtake us in the darkness. He may whisper there a word which we must proclaim in the light (Matthew 10:27).
Our New Perception of a Continuing Creation—The very “within” of matter has contained man and life has cradled him through the entire process of evolution until he has arrived at his present estate; [there is still more “humanizing” left to do]. The New Adam is just beginning to emerge. The individual man [may face] his own unconscious, and say: “I am, indeed, still in the dark, the same dark that covered the face of the deep.” Out of the thick darkness of our unconscious God Speaks or whispers the word that will mean new life to us if we but attune our ears to hear it. The vast unknown [within us] can produce in us a paralyzing fear. Loren Eiseley says, “Man is not Man. He is elsewhere. There is within us only that dark, divine animal engaged in a strange journey—that creature who, at midnight, knows its own ghostliness, and senses its far road.”
The Darkness of the Unconscious—Carl Jung has arisen in our New Israel as a prophet. [Beyond Freud’s description of the unconscious, Jung saw it as] darkness from which new light might be wrested, “thick darkness” out of which God might speak anew.” Jung summons contemporary man to be “willing to fulfill the demands of rigorous self-examination & self-knowledge.” This was Jung’s Holy Grail; quest for the true self, was also the Self's quest for, God within. “The archetype for the self & the archetype for God are indistinguishable.”
[Just as] George Fox believed in the inner light’s capacity to guide him, Carl Jung believed that the daemon in the unconscious was the Spirit that could lead him into all truth. When the Lord showed Fox “the natures of those things within the hearts & minds of wicked men,” Fox protested that [he had no desire to do those things]. The Lord explained it was needful that he “should have a sense of all conditions,” [that he might speak to them]. As a child Jung had wrestled with and rejected the notion that God was all good and loving. Laurens Van der Post described Jung’s reasoning as “Somewhere and somehow God was terrible as well and stood in a relationship with darkness and evil, indeed perhaps had need of them as an instrument of grace and redemption.” If one could but wrestle with the evil urge in man, it would yield its own peculiar blessing.
Carl Jung’s Journey into Darkness—He had lived and worked for 8 years in the Burghölzli mental institution. The dynamics of his own unassimilated anima (feminine side of his unconscious) required understanding and integration [before he could] heal others in a more creative way. [He fell into, delved into these dynamics], and as Laurens Van der Post said: “This was the greatest of his many moments of truth and so far did he fall, and so unfamiliar and frightening was the material he found, that there were many moments when indeed it looked as if insanity might overcome sanity.” It was a great relief to Jung to discover that part of his interior suffering in dreams and fantasies was a purely psychic response to [the world war that] was about to happen.
The other & larger part of his psyche’s unrest had to do with arriving at mid-life, & with the unresolved conflict of his own anima and animus. It was like plunging into an ocean of darkness. He had no inner assurance when he let himself go & undertook the terrifying journey. When he reached the point where he could go no further in self-analysis, Van der Post suggests that he found “a positive & integrated feminine self” to assist him.
Toni Wolff, a former patient, served as physician of Jung’s tortured psyche in the most critical period of his search for individuation. Perhaps the greatest credit is due to Jung’s loyal wife, Emma, who not only tolerated this intense relationship between her husband and Toni Wolff, but encouraged it, [recognizing her own limits]. Toni Wolff taught him about the rejection of the creative masculine element in woman herself. The interaction of the 4 components in the man-woman relationship—the man, his anima, the woman, her animus—constituted the final complexity with which he had to deal if he were to understand the human psyche in depth. So, he must face in himself the darkness of the shadow, the mirror of his anima in woman, and the animus in woman that mirrored and threatened his own masculinity. [Such was] the infinite darkness of his own unconscious.
Finding Light in Darkness—In the great confluence of the darkness of the unconscious of 2 persons, provided there is the mutual will toward a new creation between them, an ocean of light can come atop the ocean of darkness. The new light does indeed well up from the very darkness itself. Both persons become comparatively whole for the 1st time, [and yet] they experience at the same moment the most clearly etched and engraved “total otherness.” As in the experience of mystical union with God, the paradox asserts itself: “Never was I so much myself nor so completely out of myself.”
Jung 1st used a Black book for recording the early episodes of this journey into the darkness of his unconscious. As he gained in confidence, he began to use a Red Book, which represents the [transparent epiphany] of light from darkness. After the awesome and terrifying withdrawal into the darkness he has made his dramatic return to the light, a new light wrested in part from the darkness itself. [He has created a castle within and has donned scarlet armor]. He proclaimed: “unconscious is the only accessible source of religious experience.” He designated as “shadow,” [the new thick darkness], all that man had despised, rejected and repressed in himself. Within the mystery of the conjunction of opposites, [in the darkness from which God can speak], their sting can be drawn, their poison drained, and their very energy harnessed to realize a more profound individuation. Jung learned how to seek in this darkness a light that could heal and save.
On Dealing with Darkness—What response do we need to have with reference to the darkness of ignorance, evil, & the unformed void? Our response to ignorance needs to be an abiding awareness of our poverty in the possession of property, knowledge, and wisdom. Our response to evil needs to be chastity, reinterpreted to mean sustained, committed pursuit of moral purity, a disciplined quest for wholeness & holiness [in our whole life]. Our response to the unformed void within us needs to be obedience to both known light & the quest for light in the darkness of the unconscious' inner abyss. And if the light one has becomes temporarily dimmer, the light one seeks is brighter still and is to be found at the very heart of the darkness of the unconscious.
About the Author—Helen Luke came to the US from England in 1949. She worked as a [Jungian] counselor in Los Angeles for many years before founding Apple Farm center in 3 Rivers, MI, for people who were seeking connect their daily lives with the reality of myth and symbol. In connection with the center, she wrote Dark Wood to White Rose: A Study of Meanings in Dante’s Divine Comedy. The present pamphlet was written out of concern for the need of women today to regain a true understanding of the nature of the feminine.
I. The Spirit & the Animus—The true meaning of “spirit” is glimpsed by us only through [an experience] that can never be explained in words. The most universal of all images of the spirit is the breath, & wind. Closely related to this is the fire image. Whenever a breath of wind or spark of fire lodges in the mind, we are immediately aware of some kind of newness in life. “Spirit” expresses that which brings about transformation. [e.g.] The Holy Spirit in the Godhead entered into a woman & transformed God into incarnate man. The spirit has usually been associated with masculine creative power, though its feminine aspect has been known as Sophia.
[The feminine and masculine aspects of spirit must be] experienced as separate [before they can] unite in a holy marriage. The masculinity of the spirit is meaningless unless it enters into a feminine container. No man can create without the equal participation of the woman without or the woman within. In every creative act, the male and the female, the active and the passive, are of equal importance; [the feminine and masculine are of equal value]. It requires a great effort of consciousness in every individual woman to remain aware of this destructive spirit whispering [the centuries-old message] about the inferiority of her passive, feminine, nature.
Carl Jung’s “animus” is a personification of the unconscious masculinity in women, [& is often manifested negatively]. What the animus, [the ability knows one’s goal’s & to do what is necessary to achieve it] affirms is that creative power in a woman can never bear fruit if she is caught in an unconscious imitation of men. Unrecognized & undifferentiated, he will actually destroy the possibility of her integrating her contrasexual powers. The danger of mistaking a spirits experience for The Spirit experience has always been recognized by the wise.
How then are we to test the spirits? If we find ourselves so inflated by it that we at once set out to convert others, we may be sure that we are simply possessed by the “spirits” of the [anima and animus]. We are justified in speaking of the spirit of God only when it leads to an incarnation in us of the spirit of the truth within. The true experience is a reception of the creative seed into the vessel of the feminine.
II. Women & the Earth—[Before a woman can embrace & use her masculine discrimination], she must 1st learn to recognize & value the nature dominant in her by the fact of her sex. She must recognize all her delusions about the nature of womanhood. Often a woman will reveal that her concepts of what it means to be a woman are concocted from notions of frivolous, empty-headed pleasure-seekers pursuing sexual goals. Half-consciously it adds up to a choice between whoredom & slavery. [The mother-symbols of earth, moon, dark, & the ocean have been forced into a back seat to sun & light & air]. The way back & down [into the earth] to those springs & to the roots of the tree of life is also the way up to the spirit of air & fire in the vaults of heaven.
The Yin, feminine, receptive principle, equal & opposite of Yang, the creative, doesn’t lead but follows; it is like a vessel in which the light is hidden until it appears at the right time. There are 2 dangers: inertia, or Yin taking the lead & opposing Yang. If we can learn to be still without inaction, to “further life” without willed purpose, & to nourish without domination: then we shall be women again out of whose earth the light may shine.
III. The Academic Woman [Introduction]—Very few women in this century are free of the guilt complex [& of feeling incapable] of producing original thoughts. In many women, the guilt produces a positively compulsive desire to go to school. The drive very often has little or nothing to do with practical necessity or with a genuine love of learning. The acquisition of mental & rational skills appears to innumerable modern women as the only way to escape a sense of inferiority besetting them. Fear & anxiety of not achieving a doctorate, plus the ever-growing, unconscious resistance which made it harder & harder to write can affect [her entire life].
III. The Academic Woman: Neurosis—An academic woman’s neurosis usually occurs when she is approaching life’s midpoint, & when she has already achieved success in her profession. [While in her dreams she seeks identity & meaning through the prestige of mental activity acceptable to male academic gatherings], it becomes clear that she was really searching for a new religious attitude to life. [In her youth she had been unconsciously nourished by the Catholic Church’s symbolic life]. To continue to receive nourishment, one must consciously find faith’s living water and spirit’s flame through real self-knowledge and attention to one’s own spontaneous imagery. The negative animus uses as a weapon the mistrust and contempt for the feminine way which surrounds us all. Neither asceticism, forced meditation, short cuts to the numinous, or the attempt to force creation out of a sterile soil can avail until she finds and experiences what it means to be a woman.
No one creates anything without co-operation of the contra-sexual element. [The woman described above in trying to work as a man would be going in a direction backwards for her]. She has then to start from the receptive, the hidden, the goal-less aspect of Yin. [One solution was] to resign from her job & stay at home with her children, garden, & cooking, & look inward with quiet attention to the images behind her life. I'm not suggesting all women must sacrifice this way. But the break must be made—a defeat accepted—a loss of prestige endured.
[A man in a similar situation discovered that the resistance to pursuing his doctorate was the voice of the spirit speaking to him like Balaam’s ass so that he would accept his vocation as a priest]. He gave up his job in spite of strong opposition & for 2 years taught small children in a remote place. Without any effort on his part the way opened for him, & all he had sacrificed was restored to him in a priestly instead of in an intellectual context. His spirit was set free to grow, nourished by the earth of the feminine within him.
[While the man had mistaken his calling & rejected feminine values, the woman had chosen the right calling, but tried to follow it at her womanhood's expense, instead of allowing it to grow out of her feminine nature. At first she felt clumsy, inept, moving in an alien element. The animus resisted, forcing her to remember & to affirm her calling to academic life & her need for it. She learned to wait for the right time. Thus, the neurosis' cause in both man & woman lay in their subjection to collective contempt for the feminine, “receptive devotion.”
Marie-Louise Von Franz points out how the way of the heroine often involves a time of withdrawal from the world and enduring the suffering of silent waiting. [There is eventually a] reunion with the hero, whose quest has involved vigorous action. [A woman sometimes has] to wait for the return of her creative spirit. [A way opened for the woman too], an opportunity to use all her exceptional qualities of mind and personality.
Let it not be supposed that through any of our human transformations we are freed from our conflicts. When women return to their calling, they can now “carry the outer world” and their own conflicts with their changed attitude to the receptive in life. The greatest contribution to this world of reason and logic comes from the feeling responses of their nature, and their thinking may well be of a clear and incisive nature. Feminine originality lies in the capacity for unique individual responses [to internal or external images, rather than thinking]. These responses are every bit as creative as the production of new ideas.
IV. Woman in the Arts—It may be that for as long as we live in the dimensions of time & space where differentiation between masculine & feminine is essential for consciousness, the number of women manifesting artistic & literary genius will remain small. [There is as much genius in woman as in men, but the feminine genius is at its greatest in the sphere of relationship, rather than artistic or scientific expression. Acting & dancing are in their essence arts of response. The artist becomes a vessel for the spirit of the character he or she represents.
Fiction-writing likewise depends on response [& understanding relationships. [The demand for publicity poses a danger to the creative woman], to her art & the essence of her life. One of the major psychological diseases today is the urge to make everything public. Man’s urge to share his creative thoughts is an essential good. The extremes, sponsored by those with genuine concern for humanity as well as by the media of our society, are largely destroying the sense of mystery itself and with it the essential value of the individual “secret.” The light which is born in secret will shine out when the time is ripe and be seen perhaps by few; the number is irrelevant.
Emily Brontë & Emily Dickinson lived in extreme seclusion, withdrawn from the world; Bronte shunned any publicity. Jane Austen was at great pains to preserve her anonymity. Dickinson’s poetry remained mostly unknown until long after her death & her genius has only recently been recognized. Though they weren’t free in the outward sense, their inner freedom was protected from struggling with the world & destroying their spirits.
Edward Lucie-Smith has said that poets are no longer judged by their work but by the sensational events of their lives [e.g. the suicides of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton]; their poetry is of secondary interest. In our society’s climate the feminine qualities wither and die because nothing is judged valuable unless it is known to and approved by large numbers of people. Art is born of conflict, and the outer life of the creative genius is often tragically disordered and imposes great suffering on those close to him or her.
We are concerned here with the many lesser talents, who are enslaved by the terrible pressure of the will to do which kills the feminine creative genius & hands it over to the negative animus & his pursuit of prestige. The woman poet may receive into the soil of her feminine earth the fire of the spirit & may know “the masculine & violent joy of pure creation [May Sarton].” We are paying a high price for freedom [from enforced servitude to “feminine roles”], but it can't be evaded. [There is a responsibility to ask]: What kind of free spirit is it that breathes through me & is the dominant influence in my life? To discover this is a task of self-knowledge that demands courage, honesty, perseverance. We may do what we will only when we have learned love's nature.
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210. The psychology of a fairy tale (by David L. Hart; 1977)
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210. The psychology of a fairy tale (by David L. Hart; 1977)
About the Author and Editor—David Hart is a Jungian analyst practicing in Swarthmore, PA. He has a special interest in the spiritual and psychological meaning of fairy tales. The Editor, Harriet Crosby, is a former PH student and Clerk of its community meeting; she is a member of Friends Meeting in Washington D.C., and is active with Friends Committee for National Legislation. She has done training analysis with David Hart.
Introduction—The fairy tale Ferdinand the Faithful and Ferdinand the Unfaithful (FFFU) from the Grimm collection is a wonderful example of evil and its integration into life. In modern life, there is an assumption that evil need not happen; we are out to correct evil. When we think we can see evil and who ought to stop doing it, we have not integrated evil into our own lives. The fairy tale is remarkable in that it can contain good and evil, [and is rich in symbols for different parts and qualities of our Self, some of which I will explain].
(FFFU)—Once upon a time lived a rich man and woman. Once they became poor they had a little boy. Ferdinand the Faithful. (FF) They had to have a beggar stand as godfather for him. The beggar gave the midwife a key to a castle that the boy would receive when he was 14; the boy looked for the castle at age 7, but did not find it. At age 14, the boy found the castle, opened it, and found only a white horse, on which he resolved to travel. He 1st saw a pen; he was going to leave it behind, but a voice told him to pick it up. He then saw a fish out of water on the lakeshore. He put the fish back and the fish gave him a flute to call the fish with. Later he met Ferdinand the Unfaithful (FU) and traveled with him.
At an inn, a young girl fell in love with FF & got him an audience with the King. Rather than be a court servant FF became an outrider. The girl got FU a job as a court servant. The King kept saying, “Oh, if only I had my love with me.” FU told the King to send FF to get the sleeping princess or die. FF lamented his fate, & someone asked “Why?” FF realized his horse was talking to him. The horse explained how to get her & what to ask the king for. FF took 2 ships, one full of meat for the giants of the lake, one full of bread for the large birds. He was to say to the giants & the birds: “Peace, Peace, my dear little giants [birds]/ I have had thought of ye,/ something I have brought for ye. The giants fetched the sleeping princess out of a castle, & carried her to the King.
Introduction—The fairy tale Ferdinand the Faithful and Ferdinand the Unfaithful (FFFU) from the Grimm collection is a wonderful example of evil and its integration into life. In modern life, there is an assumption that evil need not happen; we are out to correct evil. When we think we can see evil and who ought to stop doing it, we have not integrated evil into our own lives. The fairy tale is remarkable in that it can contain good and evil, [and is rich in symbols for different parts and qualities of our Self, some of which I will explain].
(FFFU)—Once upon a time lived a rich man and woman. Once they became poor they had a little boy. Ferdinand the Faithful. (FF) They had to have a beggar stand as godfather for him. The beggar gave the midwife a key to a castle that the boy would receive when he was 14; the boy looked for the castle at age 7, but did not find it. At age 14, the boy found the castle, opened it, and found only a white horse, on which he resolved to travel. He 1st saw a pen; he was going to leave it behind, but a voice told him to pick it up. He then saw a fish out of water on the lakeshore. He put the fish back and the fish gave him a flute to call the fish with. Later he met Ferdinand the Unfaithful (FU) and traveled with him.
At an inn, a young girl fell in love with FF & got him an audience with the King. Rather than be a court servant FF became an outrider. The girl got FU a job as a court servant. The King kept saying, “Oh, if only I had my love with me.” FU told the King to send FF to get the sleeping princess or die. FF lamented his fate, & someone asked “Why?” FF realized his horse was talking to him. The horse explained how to get her & what to ask the king for. FF took 2 ships, one full of meat for the giants of the lake, one full of bread for the large birds. He was to say to the giants & the birds: “Peace, Peace, my dear little giants [birds]/ I have had thought of ye,/ something I have brought for ye. The giants fetched the sleeping princess out of a castle, & carried her to the King.
The princess awoke & said she couldn’t live without her writings; FF went back with 2 ships & got them. He dropped his pen in the lake; his horse couldn’t help him, so he used the flute to call the fish, who brought back his pen. The princess married the King, but didn’t love him, because he had no nose. She offers the skill of cutting off a head & putting it back on; the king does not volunteer. FU encourages FF to volunteer; the beheading leaves a mark like a red thread. She cut off the King’s head, but pretends she couldn’t put it back on; she marries FF. His horse told him to gallop 3 times around the heath. FF did so; the horse turned into a King’s son.
Poverty and the Godfather—When everything is sufficient, nothing is born or conceived. It takes a state of poverty to create a new life. [In the impoverished state] whatever comes has to come from beyond me, because it is not my own doing any longer. Not knowing where support is coming from also means that one is forced to meet the unknown which has a somewhat ominous face.
[The godfather found in this state is no] ordinary godfather. He doesn’t supply anything of a material sort; he gives no gifts & he requires none. What he has to give is spiritual development. Taking pride in accomplishments is foreign to FF’s nature; he has nothing [of worldly worth to show for himself]. The thing that is coming to him has to be waited for. It is a matter of waiting for his maturity, for his is a different kind of endowment.
Supernatural; White Horse; Pen & Fish; Outrider—When FF the boy finds the castle, we enter into the supernatural. The more we experience psychic development, the better we are able to perceive [our own] fairy tale. The fairy tale shows the impact of the supernatural, inner world on what we think of as the real world. To FF the white horse means travel. A horse is a perfect image of unconscious carrying power with its own design.
The voice saying “Take the pen with you,” is saying “You need this kind of awareness as you go along.” The fish on the bank, out of water is life out of its elements gasping and panting for breath. In returning the fish to the water FF is differentiating consciousness from unconsciousness. The fish offers the hero a flute, the means of calling on it, [the subconscious] for help which later on proves invaluable. Only as I take up conscious responsibility for my life can I re-establish a vital contact with the life that extends beyond me. The sign of this reordering is the flute, speaking the language of the unconscious life. It is a link between the 2 worlds.
FF is accepted, loved, & honored everywhere. Rather than be in the court, he decides he wants to be outrider, on the periphery of the known, conscious world of the king; he is following his nose, trusting the unknown. [The king has no nose, no awareness of what experience has to teach us]. The hero’s position is between the two worlds, but embraces both, and is soon to be forced beyond the edge.
FU: Individuation and Shadow; Place in Court; Evil Impulse—FU’s name is the very negation of virtue; FU takes his place in the center of that world. He brings a secret knowledge which increases the awareness embodied by the hero. He adds a dimension which is essential to the hero’s further development. He also has uncanny knowledge and the purpose of using it to destroy the other. It is clear that he has power, but not until he and the hero are working together is it harnessed to solve the king’s problem. It is convenient to think of the two Ferdinands as “ego and shadow,” as long as we are not rigid about it; the shadow is a necessity.
While FF is loved & honored, FU is passed over, & he makes a point of asking why. This question, the turning point of the story is most instructive for our attitudes. [By approaching the king on FU’s behalf, the girl at the inn (the unconscious, inner, feminine personality), paves the way for the future developments of the story]. Admitting an uncomfortable memory, a bad impulse to our consciousness are ways of allowing FU a place at court. Admitting them prevents them from taking over & influencing our unconscious in destructive ways.
We have to see, accept and care for ourselves even as we do things for others. [We need to befriend the negative things in our lives, rather than turn our backs on them]. [Those who turn their backs wind up being] possessed by the evil which they are trying to reject. Befriending the evil impulse is the equivalent of what Jung designates as the religious attitude, namely ‘careful consideration of the superior powers of life.’ Accepting what could not be accepted before is a redemptive act.
[See Part One for Fairy Tale the following discussion is based upon].
King’s Distress Pattern; FU’s Response—[When the king kept saying] “If only I had my love with me,” it is what we would call a distress pattern, something that was endlessly wrong, & nothing is done about it. The pattern is habitual, & we may not even be aware of it. It’s as though the entrance of FF & FU throws a spotlight on what had been an unconscious pattern that was hard to face. The saving possibility has to enter before we can consider any kind of change. If the king, the center of conscious says “There is no hope,” then there isn’t any.
The point about our evil Ferdinand is that he stops the broken record and sets the redemptive process in motion. The shadow is truly a liberating force when the person concerned understands something of the great purpose of the negative. FU is an intrusion of the negative impulse which refuses to accept the limits of a resigned consciousness. We have to pay serious attention to these impulses and the things that won’t let us rest.
Hero’s Quest: Life; Death; and Desperation—There are 3 challenges which lead to the transformation. [It really is a matter of life or death]. The threat of death seems to be the border between this world and world of new life. So it has to be faced with all one’s resources. The challenges reduce the hero to despair. His helplessness evokes another power, the voice of his white horse. When the hero abandons hope, the horse arises as a spiritual being. The Unfaithful will accept nothing less than true life. The Faithful is that part which lets itself be led, carried, tested, and broken by the same demand. As FF accepts his fate, new powers come to him. I think one purpose of this fairy tale is to demonstrate that we all have this faithful complex within.
The Giants and Birds are Elemental Passions—He has to load two ships of meat and bread to feed the giants and the birds. The hero is to say “peace” to them, speak softly and feed them well; then the giants will help. If we are in the grips of these elemental passions, we become scattered and totally ineffective. We also become blind. It’s extraordinary, amazing, to bring a spirit of affirming and loving recognition towards these elemental, devouring, rapacious, passions.
Plucking out the eyes symbolizes the loss of awareness that is involved when one is attacked by a drive. What is wrong is not the feeling itself, but one’s attitude toward oneself for having it. The inner passions need acceptance and recognition. Then the so-called evil powers become great powers for life. The whole point of fairy tales is bringing the unconscious life into consciousness.
Sleeping Princess/Anima—The sleeping princess expresses the unredeemed state of the feminine component of the man’s psyche and the soul. The princess says she cannot live without her writings; she cannot be truly revealed and meaningful without them. FF makes a second perilous journey to retrieve them. In your life or mine, it may mean following a mood past the point that has always seemed to promise disaster and eventually finding that it leads into a new basis of life, transforming everything with an altered meaning.
Fetching the writings gives the soul a voice of her own. When the soul begins to speak through a person, she carries authenticity that doesn’t depend on appearance. How do you bring the voice of your soul into your conscious life? Whenever true life is at the threshold, we are in danger of its being taken over. The pen becomes lost; this means that life can't be made articulate or real. The only guarantee of true life’s continuity arises from continuing encouragement of what is unconscious in ourselves. When the conscious fails, the unconscious arises to meet & support it. Another being seems to find a voice & thought begins to reshape itself. Bringing the princess away from the castle signifies a transformation of life & the emergence of new truths. The process of growth is primarily an inner one & must gradually penetrate into conscious awareness in a slow, gentle way.
Now that the princess is coming into consciousness, there is a chance to catch up with all that backlog of feelings and inner awareness represented by her writings. Her secret life, kept underground for too long, needs to be brought out into the world; otherwise she can’t live. The fairy tale is faithfully trying to show the effect of life in abundance on what we regard as normal life.
The King: No Journey; No Nose—The old king hasn’t made the journey that FF made to the enchanted land, yet he grabbed the princess for himself. This is the inflation of the ego which is inevitable when the new comes in and we haven’t the mind to encompass it. In the fairy tale, the nose has to do with the totality of experience, a sense of the whole. Thus the faculty that the king lacks is intuition; he is limited to the ego world, and not able to progress beyond his limits. The king’s mistake is to think that spiritual reality is subject to human calculation and measurement; he takes literally what in truth exists spiritually and symbolically. So, the new life is there, but in the wrong hands. [The king is offered a chance at beginning a new life, and to take a leap of faith, but he plays it safe instead]. He is allowed to express his own limits and thereby destroys himself.
The Queen’s Magic—The queen possesses magic, the power of life and death, [destruction and recreation]. The head has to do with central control, ego consciousness and deliberateness. [The princess/anima asks: “Are you really going to put yourself in my hands or not?” The redemption of the anima has led to the point where the hero must sacrifice himself. FF has taken his life and given it to her.
Is it not strange that Ferdinand the Unfaithful drives the faithful one to an act of faith? The shadow [is uncompromising, and] drives us to take risks. As long as we can remain open to the latent evil in our unacceptable, difficult, dangerous natures, we have the truest guide to what can make us more whole.
The white horse makes a final transformation, [progressing from] faithful, speechless servant, to intelligent, articulate guide, to king’s son, separate from & equal to the hero. His development parallels the transformation in the story, until we have a state of equality & freedom, where evil & distortion of power have been overcome.
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24. We are Accountable: A View of Mental Institutions (by Leonard Edelstein; 1945)
Prefatory Note [About the Author & Pamphlet]—Leornard Edelstein is a graduate of Syracuse University & Harvard Law School. As a part of Civilian Public Service & coordinator of their Mental Hygiene Program, he is part of Unit 49 at the Philadelphia State Hospital. This pamphlet was written in response to an award offered by Pendle Hill Publications Committee & [awarded to Edelstein & Wallace Hamilton for their pamphlets].
[Introduction]—This is the story of the mental institution. It is an ugly story of [humankind's] failure, & the undeserved suffering that springs from it. It is a plea for love, understanding, & human dignity. [One man wrote it as] the lament of thousands—sitting on wooden benches, alone, neglected, forgotten. [An account of such a place was written 100 years ago by Charles Dickens, and can be written about a modern state hospital today]. In spite of awe-inspiring advances [in the last 100 years], one of our modern mental institutions might be the very place Dickens described. These descriptions are still true for too many of our modern institutions, [involving] 10s or 100s of thousands of "forgotten men."
[A Modern Mental Institution's Evils and Their Roots]—There is evidence of patients being beaten to death while being treated for mental illness. There is also the "neck-choke" or the "towel-gag," where an angry attendant wraps a wet towel around a "difficult patient's" neck and then twists it into a tightening noose. The next Sunday, this same attendant was at the door with the patient's trusting wife, gentle and smiling, receiving a tip and praise. Other attendants will draw a chalk line, and then brutally punish anyone standing on the wrong side of it. When an attendant reports a beating, he is berated for "squealing" to authorities.
Some brutality occurs under the description of teasing and taunting, aggravating fears, [actualizing] the threats patients hear from the voices in their heads, and empty threats of depriving them of food, or "drawing and quartering at dawn." This is a type of brutality that can be as destructive to a sickened mind as physical abuse. This maltreatment is most often inflicted by attendants commonly termed "floaters." As one floater said: "This old place is the last on my line. I start the circuit all over again when I get kicked out of here." Some are alcoholics, working just long enough to make possible an alcoholic spree. Some need help and understanding themselves, like Dan, [who suffered from] extreme emotional detachment after his wife died. His friends took care of him, and although he has recovered, the traces of his illness remains. Such people like floaters should be pitied and helped, but ought not to be appointed to deal with the delicate aspects of human nature.
[Doctors, Nurses, and Administrators]—It is equally disturbing to realize the [faults] of some doctors & nurses. Not a few nurses & doctors treat patients with austerity & indifference. [Doctors check on rather than treat their "herd" of patients, & nurses either write daily reports & pass out meds, or callously rebuke a patient for not complaining sooner as she grudgingly cares for the patient. They sometimes regard dying patients as the opportunity to fill his bed with a new patient]. The cold indifference extends to the institutions administrators. There is no recognition that mere "coverage" of the wards by attendants may overlook the more important question of proper coverage by sympathetic persons.
At mealtime 200 patients would file into a large, uninviting room, to eat an unappetizing [conglomerate of food, served by unsanitary workers, & eaten in an unsupervised & sometimes violent atmosphere]. There is a pall of loneliness [& stress spread over all]. There is another large room in the basement, called the dungeon by the patients & used as a sick ward [during the day & for sleeping by sick & well alike at night]. It is cleaned by sluicing the floor with water, after human waste has sat on it for hours; it is left wet to the bare feet of ill patients. In the day room a floor above, monotony reigns, with a lone attendant trying to prevent arguments & conflicts. Occasionally, the attendant throws handfuls of bread or tobacco on the filthy floor & the patients scramble after it. Small wonder that patients show few signs of recovery when jumbled with others even more deteriorated.
At the head of institutional care's administration is the superintendent, frequently a political appointee who may have proved his ability as physician without having administrative experience. Heavy-handed administrators are the product of party machinery. [Even caring, good physician/administrators & cooperative employees] must still work out functions in a maze of bureaucracy, on severely limited funds. Some may point with pride to spending less than 74¢ per patient per day on [all care costs], including, medical & psychiatric care & supervision. The consciences of those who know conditions realize that the loss is too high & expenditures too low.
[Legal Proceedings and "Railoading"]—[Ancient laws that haven't been updated for a long time are a problem.] Some states require jury trial before committing a person. This legal process was proposed & championed in the 1860's by E. P. W. Packard, who had been committed to an Illinois hospital; her proposals were adopted by several states. Her "humanitarian" efforts have resulted in impediments to the mentally ill's treatment. To require each mental case to be dragged into a court is neither expedient or judicious. The terrified patient may associate court with punishment or being perceived a criminal; they may be confined alongside [convicted] criminals. The illness may be aggravated into acute states by unsympathetic jailkeepers. The dividing line between sanity & mental illness is frequently imperceptible, & shades of human conduct drift impalpably from sane to extreme abnormality; some conditions are temporary derangements. How can laymen, [including judges], be expected to judge [mental competence] in cases where [mental health] experts disagree? How can we sustain the judge's authority to commit a person, when one has no real understanding of their condition?
Some states provide for the commitment of persons to institutions with the certification of one or 2 physicians in any field. [Talented as these physicians may be], they are not necessarily qualified to commit a mental patient to a state hospital. The ordinary physician's training and experience differs from that of the psychiatrist. As a result of injudicious procedures for commitment, a few people have been "railroaded." "E. W." offered a lead in a government bombing; because of this E.W. was called to a mental hospital for observation; he was adjudged sane, [i.e. a reliable source]. Upset by his neighbor's noise, he beat on their door, and then barged in dressed only in bright red underwear; the police were called and he went to jail.
Someone in court remembered he had visited a mental hospital a year ago. He was sent back for observation & certified mentally ill. His desperate efforts to gain release, & strong protests to the Department of Justice, were seen as sickly machinations of a sickly mind. One of E. W.'s relatives requested a writ of habeas corpus be prepared for E. W. 16 years later. After talking to E. W. & searching records, the lawyer was convinced of E. W.'s sanity, & was able to have him adjudged sane. 6 months later, he was court-ordered to submit to re-examination; he died of a heart attack. There are today [other] sane men & women within our institutions, because of inadequate legal provisions. When institutions are officially inspected, primary consideration goes to the account books. Other evils include burdensome discharge procedures & incompetent social welfare machinery.
[The Fate of Healthy Patients]—Patients who have been restored to health are neglected instead of being discharged & rehabilitated. It seems only fair that patients be periodically examined, & it is a constitutional right that persons restored to health be released. Those who have no relative or friend willing or alive to take responsibility, have to devise some way to appeal to an outsider. An agency might be established for taking responsibility for those who have no other sponsors. Where there is a social welfare department, it is often the way in which patients are released & gradually rehabilitated. The long arm of the institution is slowly withdrawn as adjustment is completed. 14 states don't employ social workers in connection with their institutions. Social Welfare departments may be required to find employment for the patient. If jobs are scarce, there is little chance for those who have clearly just been discharged from an institution. Should dischargeable patients be released during periods of economic depression? Is their former mental institution the best place to shelter them?
[Society's Influence on & Assumptions about Mental Institutions]—There are other more basic influences which are insidious, subtly malignant, & found within ourselves. Here in our failure to assume responsibility is localized the crime of society, [with its outdated concepts], holdovers from the days when the sick or lagging mind was considered a devil incarnate, when towns sent their mental sufferers traveling [out of town], begging door to door. "Once insane, always insane," may have appeared true decades ago, but it is not now valid, as out-of-date as the witches cure. New treatments are now snapping sick minds back to normality.
Closely related are the strange [assumptions] people make concerning the nature of mental illness or deficiency. We are wholly wrong if we imagine that the mentally ill no longer feel little insults as deeply as do normal people. The nerves of the sick or deficient are often more sharply jarred by a petty indiscretion, [sometimes viewing them as] great breaches of faith. [Even] catatonic patients may yet be aware of all that goes on around them. Another common misconception is that most of the mentally ill are like the weird pictures of chained, shrieking monsters. [Those who imagine the] mentally ill as the blustering Napoleon, see mental incompetents as fitting butts for light-veined humor. Others fear ridicule and humiliation because a friend or relative has become afflicted. The real sufferer becomes the skeleton in the closet, locked behind the door. [Fear can also cause a newly released & newly employed former mental patient to be dismissed from psychologically healing employment because a co-worker was disturbed by his inevitably pale and sullen appearance. These crumbs of untruths and mold-touched morsels of part truths are the stale delusions that we harbor in the pantries of our minds.
[A New Era in Psychiatry]—The institution of tomorrow will be a center of mental health, a living organ in each community that reaches out to private homes & individuals. Home aid will be administered to prevent total collapse [and the "institutionalizing" of the afflicted]. Preventive mental hygiene will be the chief emphasis. A visit to the psychiatrist will be as commonplace as a trip to the dentist. Schools will have psychiatrists and social workers to investigate children behind in their studies; factories will have the same for hiring & job adjustment.
Within the institution, adequate staffs of doctors, nurses, psychiatrists and trained attendants will work cooperatively to provide quick, effective treatment. Trained attendants will come to realize the importance of their work and the necessity of satisfying patients' needs. Large recreational and occupational therapy departments will absorb a great amount of the patients' time. [There will be no agonizing, monotonous inactivity]. Quick, thorough treatment and rehabilitation will be the common practice. Physicians and psychiatrists will be encouraged to develop advanced techniques of treatment. Employees will learn 1st-hand the necessary part which their efforts play in the process as a whole. This will be the healthful home for sick and lagging minds.
The future institutions will require money, bountiful supplies of taxpayers' money, for buildings, adequate numbers of well-paid and well-trained staff, and a well-educated public. As long as there is a dormant public the progress of public institutions will lag. If the majority is ready to recognize insanity as another form of illness, & to regard our mental sufferers with the respect we give to the physically hurt, the future institution will become today's health center. Today [a growing number of the] public is being shocked into recognition of mental illness by the large number of mental wrecks this war has produced, and of the need for more progressive treatment.
[National Committee for Mental Hygiene/ Civilian Public Service]—There is an organization already established which embraces all aspects of mental hygiene from a professional & lay viewpoint. 40 years ago the National Committee for Mental Hygiene was a dream, a "hallucination," for it came from a sickened mind. Fearful that he would become an epileptic like his brother, ignorant of epilepsy's nature, unable to communicate his fears, he drove himself to throw himself from the window of his home. During the next few years Clifford Beers was mentally ill. He experienced the terrifying abuses [mentioned earlier]. During his recovery, he conceived a plan, gained the attention of interested laymen, wrote a story of his experiences, & inspired a small group in Connecticut to organize a state society for mental hygiene. This flourished & grew into the National Committee.
In WWII, conscientious objectors (COs) were given the opportunity to render alternative service; the program is called Civilian Public Service (CPS). More than 2,000 of these men and many of their wives, are helping to bolster the war-weakened mental institutions. Their "menial" services have been considered essential by these institutions' superintendents. They have brought to the patients warm and tender care in larger numbers than was done previously. Some superintendents have been heard to state that future personnel policies will exclude "floater" attendants and seek those who accept their duties as a [humane] service.
CPS efforts have resulted directly in reforms that may work lasting improvements. [In Eastern States Hospital, Williamsburg, VA; Cleveland, OH; Lyons, NJ; & Veterans Administration hospitals, the CPS has helped bring superintendent changes, mental health law revisions, & heightened public awareness to the mental institutions issue. In addition, a special program, the Mental Hygiene Program, has developed from the desire of CPS attendants to exchange views on institutional matters, raise the standards of care, & interpret institutional problems to society. They issue a monthly publication, "The Attendant," & distribute it to federal, state, & county mental institutions. Another phase of this Program is investigation, compilation, & improvement of state mental hygiene laws. 3 members of the Program are drafting a model mental hygiene law. The CPS Mental Hygiene Program concerns itself with public education. Participants in it are preparing a statement of conditions now prevailing in institutions, & making recommendations. When CPS men are released from the draft, they will drift back to their communities & their former interests. They will also be enlightened interpreters of state institutions, able to enlighten the public. They are young, ambitious, socially conscious, & anxious to help [humankind].
A gray-haired, slender, tense-looking individual in a Merchant-Marine captain's uniform appeared at a CPS unit in a mental institution and left behind a few hours worth of a prophet's wisdom. This captain was advised by a group of French monks to seek employment and education at a mental institution. He worked at an American institution until he was discharged for protesting the attendants abuse of patients. He said [to the CPS men]: "[My experience] has left me haunted by the thought that here are men and women who need help and there are so few who will come to their assistance. You men will be haunted too ... As long as your suffering brothers need help behind these walls, you will hear their cries of despair and you will quicken to their needs."
[Religious Groups, Individuals and Mental Institutions]—One of the greatest contributions [of other "haunted men" and women] might come from religious groups [like] the Society of Friends, the Mennonites, the Church of the Brethren and other denominations. Due to their energies and support, programs like the CPS's Mental Hygiene Program are promoted. Clergy can do a great deal from their pulpits to rectify [age-old misconceptions], and to counsel [the support system] of mental patients. Religious groups can visit their local institutions and provide patients with comforts which will make them feel that they are still members of society. Groups might also educate themselves and affiliate with state and national mental hygiene organizations. Each person can join the growing ranks of men and women who are waking up to the needs for mental hygiene.
The results of any one person's efforts along these lines may not seem to be important; they may even be disappointing. But the gratitude of recovered patients is incentive enough to anyone who receives such moving testimony. Before we truly conceive an enduring peace [after the current war], we must probe to the core of our malady. For the blemishes of racial discrimination, economic injustice, & conflict [of all sizes] are mere sore spots of a deeper cause. They are the superficial outbreak of the sickened mind or spirit. There must be established in the human mentality the power to face fear & conflict, the ability to curb the emotions & to fuse both thought & spirit in a concordat of strength & maturity. How can we, by observing the extremes of [mentally ill] behavior, [use those observations] to reflect on our own shortcomings? How can we give love & under-standing that will bring warmth and comfort in the solitude of the mental patients' bewildered minds?
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Prefatory Note [About the Author & Pamphlet]—Leornard Edelstein is a graduate of Syracuse University & Harvard Law School. As a part of Civilian Public Service & coordinator of their Mental Hygiene Program, he is part of Unit 49 at the Philadelphia State Hospital. This pamphlet was written in response to an award offered by Pendle Hill Publications Committee & [awarded to Edelstein & Wallace Hamilton for their pamphlets].
[Introduction]—This is the story of the mental institution. It is an ugly story of [humankind's] failure, & the undeserved suffering that springs from it. It is a plea for love, understanding, & human dignity. [One man wrote it as] the lament of thousands—sitting on wooden benches, alone, neglected, forgotten. [An account of such a place was written 100 years ago by Charles Dickens, and can be written about a modern state hospital today]. In spite of awe-inspiring advances [in the last 100 years], one of our modern mental institutions might be the very place Dickens described. These descriptions are still true for too many of our modern institutions, [involving] 10s or 100s of thousands of "forgotten men."
[A Modern Mental Institution's Evils and Their Roots]—There is evidence of patients being beaten to death while being treated for mental illness. There is also the "neck-choke" or the "towel-gag," where an angry attendant wraps a wet towel around a "difficult patient's" neck and then twists it into a tightening noose. The next Sunday, this same attendant was at the door with the patient's trusting wife, gentle and smiling, receiving a tip and praise. Other attendants will draw a chalk line, and then brutally punish anyone standing on the wrong side of it. When an attendant reports a beating, he is berated for "squealing" to authorities.
Some brutality occurs under the description of teasing and taunting, aggravating fears, [actualizing] the threats patients hear from the voices in their heads, and empty threats of depriving them of food, or "drawing and quartering at dawn." This is a type of brutality that can be as destructive to a sickened mind as physical abuse. This maltreatment is most often inflicted by attendants commonly termed "floaters." As one floater said: "This old place is the last on my line. I start the circuit all over again when I get kicked out of here." Some are alcoholics, working just long enough to make possible an alcoholic spree. Some need help and understanding themselves, like Dan, [who suffered from] extreme emotional detachment after his wife died. His friends took care of him, and although he has recovered, the traces of his illness remains. Such people like floaters should be pitied and helped, but ought not to be appointed to deal with the delicate aspects of human nature.
[Doctors, Nurses, and Administrators]—It is equally disturbing to realize the [faults] of some doctors & nurses. Not a few nurses & doctors treat patients with austerity & indifference. [Doctors check on rather than treat their "herd" of patients, & nurses either write daily reports & pass out meds, or callously rebuke a patient for not complaining sooner as she grudgingly cares for the patient. They sometimes regard dying patients as the opportunity to fill his bed with a new patient]. The cold indifference extends to the institutions administrators. There is no recognition that mere "coverage" of the wards by attendants may overlook the more important question of proper coverage by sympathetic persons.
At mealtime 200 patients would file into a large, uninviting room, to eat an unappetizing [conglomerate of food, served by unsanitary workers, & eaten in an unsupervised & sometimes violent atmosphere]. There is a pall of loneliness [& stress spread over all]. There is another large room in the basement, called the dungeon by the patients & used as a sick ward [during the day & for sleeping by sick & well alike at night]. It is cleaned by sluicing the floor with water, after human waste has sat on it for hours; it is left wet to the bare feet of ill patients. In the day room a floor above, monotony reigns, with a lone attendant trying to prevent arguments & conflicts. Occasionally, the attendant throws handfuls of bread or tobacco on the filthy floor & the patients scramble after it. Small wonder that patients show few signs of recovery when jumbled with others even more deteriorated.
At the head of institutional care's administration is the superintendent, frequently a political appointee who may have proved his ability as physician without having administrative experience. Heavy-handed administrators are the product of party machinery. [Even caring, good physician/administrators & cooperative employees] must still work out functions in a maze of bureaucracy, on severely limited funds. Some may point with pride to spending less than 74¢ per patient per day on [all care costs], including, medical & psychiatric care & supervision. The consciences of those who know conditions realize that the loss is too high & expenditures too low.
[Legal Proceedings and "Railoading"]—[Ancient laws that haven't been updated for a long time are a problem.] Some states require jury trial before committing a person. This legal process was proposed & championed in the 1860's by E. P. W. Packard, who had been committed to an Illinois hospital; her proposals were adopted by several states. Her "humanitarian" efforts have resulted in impediments to the mentally ill's treatment. To require each mental case to be dragged into a court is neither expedient or judicious. The terrified patient may associate court with punishment or being perceived a criminal; they may be confined alongside [convicted] criminals. The illness may be aggravated into acute states by unsympathetic jailkeepers. The dividing line between sanity & mental illness is frequently imperceptible, & shades of human conduct drift impalpably from sane to extreme abnormality; some conditions are temporary derangements. How can laymen, [including judges], be expected to judge [mental competence] in cases where [mental health] experts disagree? How can we sustain the judge's authority to commit a person, when one has no real understanding of their condition?
Some states provide for the commitment of persons to institutions with the certification of one or 2 physicians in any field. [Talented as these physicians may be], they are not necessarily qualified to commit a mental patient to a state hospital. The ordinary physician's training and experience differs from that of the psychiatrist. As a result of injudicious procedures for commitment, a few people have been "railroaded." "E. W." offered a lead in a government bombing; because of this E.W. was called to a mental hospital for observation; he was adjudged sane, [i.e. a reliable source]. Upset by his neighbor's noise, he beat on their door, and then barged in dressed only in bright red underwear; the police were called and he went to jail.
Someone in court remembered he had visited a mental hospital a year ago. He was sent back for observation & certified mentally ill. His desperate efforts to gain release, & strong protests to the Department of Justice, were seen as sickly machinations of a sickly mind. One of E. W.'s relatives requested a writ of habeas corpus be prepared for E. W. 16 years later. After talking to E. W. & searching records, the lawyer was convinced of E. W.'s sanity, & was able to have him adjudged sane. 6 months later, he was court-ordered to submit to re-examination; he died of a heart attack. There are today [other] sane men & women within our institutions, because of inadequate legal provisions. When institutions are officially inspected, primary consideration goes to the account books. Other evils include burdensome discharge procedures & incompetent social welfare machinery.
[The Fate of Healthy Patients]—Patients who have been restored to health are neglected instead of being discharged & rehabilitated. It seems only fair that patients be periodically examined, & it is a constitutional right that persons restored to health be released. Those who have no relative or friend willing or alive to take responsibility, have to devise some way to appeal to an outsider. An agency might be established for taking responsibility for those who have no other sponsors. Where there is a social welfare department, it is often the way in which patients are released & gradually rehabilitated. The long arm of the institution is slowly withdrawn as adjustment is completed. 14 states don't employ social workers in connection with their institutions. Social Welfare departments may be required to find employment for the patient. If jobs are scarce, there is little chance for those who have clearly just been discharged from an institution. Should dischargeable patients be released during periods of economic depression? Is their former mental institution the best place to shelter them?
[Society's Influence on & Assumptions about Mental Institutions]—There are other more basic influences which are insidious, subtly malignant, & found within ourselves. Here in our failure to assume responsibility is localized the crime of society, [with its outdated concepts], holdovers from the days when the sick or lagging mind was considered a devil incarnate, when towns sent their mental sufferers traveling [out of town], begging door to door. "Once insane, always insane," may have appeared true decades ago, but it is not now valid, as out-of-date as the witches cure. New treatments are now snapping sick minds back to normality.
Closely related are the strange [assumptions] people make concerning the nature of mental illness or deficiency. We are wholly wrong if we imagine that the mentally ill no longer feel little insults as deeply as do normal people. The nerves of the sick or deficient are often more sharply jarred by a petty indiscretion, [sometimes viewing them as] great breaches of faith. [Even] catatonic patients may yet be aware of all that goes on around them. Another common misconception is that most of the mentally ill are like the weird pictures of chained, shrieking monsters. [Those who imagine the] mentally ill as the blustering Napoleon, see mental incompetents as fitting butts for light-veined humor. Others fear ridicule and humiliation because a friend or relative has become afflicted. The real sufferer becomes the skeleton in the closet, locked behind the door. [Fear can also cause a newly released & newly employed former mental patient to be dismissed from psychologically healing employment because a co-worker was disturbed by his inevitably pale and sullen appearance. These crumbs of untruths and mold-touched morsels of part truths are the stale delusions that we harbor in the pantries of our minds.
[A New Era in Psychiatry]—The institution of tomorrow will be a center of mental health, a living organ in each community that reaches out to private homes & individuals. Home aid will be administered to prevent total collapse [and the "institutionalizing" of the afflicted]. Preventive mental hygiene will be the chief emphasis. A visit to the psychiatrist will be as commonplace as a trip to the dentist. Schools will have psychiatrists and social workers to investigate children behind in their studies; factories will have the same for hiring & job adjustment.
Within the institution, adequate staffs of doctors, nurses, psychiatrists and trained attendants will work cooperatively to provide quick, effective treatment. Trained attendants will come to realize the importance of their work and the necessity of satisfying patients' needs. Large recreational and occupational therapy departments will absorb a great amount of the patients' time. [There will be no agonizing, monotonous inactivity]. Quick, thorough treatment and rehabilitation will be the common practice. Physicians and psychiatrists will be encouraged to develop advanced techniques of treatment. Employees will learn 1st-hand the necessary part which their efforts play in the process as a whole. This will be the healthful home for sick and lagging minds.
The future institutions will require money, bountiful supplies of taxpayers' money, for buildings, adequate numbers of well-paid and well-trained staff, and a well-educated public. As long as there is a dormant public the progress of public institutions will lag. If the majority is ready to recognize insanity as another form of illness, & to regard our mental sufferers with the respect we give to the physically hurt, the future institution will become today's health center. Today [a growing number of the] public is being shocked into recognition of mental illness by the large number of mental wrecks this war has produced, and of the need for more progressive treatment.
[National Committee for Mental Hygiene/ Civilian Public Service]—There is an organization already established which embraces all aspects of mental hygiene from a professional & lay viewpoint. 40 years ago the National Committee for Mental Hygiene was a dream, a "hallucination," for it came from a sickened mind. Fearful that he would become an epileptic like his brother, ignorant of epilepsy's nature, unable to communicate his fears, he drove himself to throw himself from the window of his home. During the next few years Clifford Beers was mentally ill. He experienced the terrifying abuses [mentioned earlier]. During his recovery, he conceived a plan, gained the attention of interested laymen, wrote a story of his experiences, & inspired a small group in Connecticut to organize a state society for mental hygiene. This flourished & grew into the National Committee.
In WWII, conscientious objectors (COs) were given the opportunity to render alternative service; the program is called Civilian Public Service (CPS). More than 2,000 of these men and many of their wives, are helping to bolster the war-weakened mental institutions. Their "menial" services have been considered essential by these institutions' superintendents. They have brought to the patients warm and tender care in larger numbers than was done previously. Some superintendents have been heard to state that future personnel policies will exclude "floater" attendants and seek those who accept their duties as a [humane] service.
CPS efforts have resulted directly in reforms that may work lasting improvements. [In Eastern States Hospital, Williamsburg, VA; Cleveland, OH; Lyons, NJ; & Veterans Administration hospitals, the CPS has helped bring superintendent changes, mental health law revisions, & heightened public awareness to the mental institutions issue. In addition, a special program, the Mental Hygiene Program, has developed from the desire of CPS attendants to exchange views on institutional matters, raise the standards of care, & interpret institutional problems to society. They issue a monthly publication, "The Attendant," & distribute it to federal, state, & county mental institutions. Another phase of this Program is investigation, compilation, & improvement of state mental hygiene laws. 3 members of the Program are drafting a model mental hygiene law. The CPS Mental Hygiene Program concerns itself with public education. Participants in it are preparing a statement of conditions now prevailing in institutions, & making recommendations. When CPS men are released from the draft, they will drift back to their communities & their former interests. They will also be enlightened interpreters of state institutions, able to enlighten the public. They are young, ambitious, socially conscious, & anxious to help [humankind].
A gray-haired, slender, tense-looking individual in a Merchant-Marine captain's uniform appeared at a CPS unit in a mental institution and left behind a few hours worth of a prophet's wisdom. This captain was advised by a group of French monks to seek employment and education at a mental institution. He worked at an American institution until he was discharged for protesting the attendants abuse of patients. He said [to the CPS men]: "[My experience] has left me haunted by the thought that here are men and women who need help and there are so few who will come to their assistance. You men will be haunted too ... As long as your suffering brothers need help behind these walls, you will hear their cries of despair and you will quicken to their needs."
[Religious Groups, Individuals and Mental Institutions]—One of the greatest contributions [of other "haunted men" and women] might come from religious groups [like] the Society of Friends, the Mennonites, the Church of the Brethren and other denominations. Due to their energies and support, programs like the CPS's Mental Hygiene Program are promoted. Clergy can do a great deal from their pulpits to rectify [age-old misconceptions], and to counsel [the support system] of mental patients. Religious groups can visit their local institutions and provide patients with comforts which will make them feel that they are still members of society. Groups might also educate themselves and affiliate with state and national mental hygiene organizations. Each person can join the growing ranks of men and women who are waking up to the needs for mental hygiene.
The results of any one person's efforts along these lines may not seem to be important; they may even be disappointing. But the gratitude of recovered patients is incentive enough to anyone who receives such moving testimony. Before we truly conceive an enduring peace [after the current war], we must probe to the core of our malady. For the blemishes of racial discrimination, economic injustice, & conflict [of all sizes] are mere sore spots of a deeper cause. They are the superficial outbreak of the sickened mind or spirit. There must be established in the human mentality the power to face fear & conflict, the ability to curb the emotions & to fuse both thought & spirit in a concordat of strength & maturity. How can we, by observing the extremes of [mentally ill] behavior, [use those observations] to reflect on our own shortcomings? How can we give love & under-standing that will bring warmth and comfort in the solitude of the mental patients' bewildered minds?
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102. From one to another (by Norma Jacob; 1959)
About the Author—Norma Jacob was born, educated & married in England; she joined the Society of Friends in 1935. She & her former husband represented the Friends Service Council in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War. In 1940 the Jacobs came to America. They spent 2 years at Pendle Hill, & experimented 4 years with an intentional subsistence community in Vermont. She now lives in the Philadelphia Friends Self-Help Housing Project, and is currently administrative assistant for PA Mental Health, Inc. Man wishes to be confirmed in his being by man, and wishes to have a presence in the being of the other… He watches for a Yes which allows him to be and which comes to him from another. It is from one to another that the heavenly bread of self-being is passed. Martin Buber
[Introduction]—In the care of the mentally ill, science has rediscovered that someone who cares for another & shows it, can give help that drugs & surgery can't give. True recovery, acceptance of himself & society’s acceptance of him as a healthy person [comes with “tender, loving, care.”] The sick person who suffers the special misery of mental illness has always [inspired in] the Churches a special care, a [recognition] the unfortunate have a claim on people who seek to practice religion in the more difficult & thankless ways, [Quakers more so than others]. What will Quakers do with the new possibilities of service [in the mental health field]?
[History of Quaker Approach to Mental Illness]—An Inward Light cannot in its nature be extinguished while the body which harbors the soul still lives. From their earliest days as an organized group, they have been especially tender of the mentally ill. George Fox said to Lady Claypole about her apparent mental condition: “Whatever temptations, distractions, confusions the light doth make manifest and discover, do not look at these [worldly intrusions]; but look at the light which discovers them, and makes them manifest; with the same light you may feel over them, to receive power to stand against them.”
Quaker beliefs inhibited the fear of possession by an outside diabolical force, stronger than the person’s natural & God-given strength. The group psychosis so hideously documented in MA history couldn’t find in PA a spark to light it. When William Penn came to the New World, the best that had been thought of to protect the sick person & his community, was to place him in a tiny house, where he endured as long as his body would last.
Friends were pioneers in the establishment of the rehabilitating prison. It was prison which received the violently insane person. Quakers, like other rulers shut him away, but they did it with respect for his individual dignity. There was a realization that the person who was mentally ill was ill, not bewitched or perverse. [Early proposals for hospitals weren't followed through on until 1750], when weighty Friends led by Benjamin Franklin made an actual proposal for a hospital in Philadelphia. The PA Hospital officially opened in 1752. The mentally ill were relegated to the basement, [where they received] better than average, but still horrendous treatment. Records show that lunatics were the group from which few or none had been discharged at the calendar year’s end.
Benjamin Rush, the Father of American Psychiatry, was a [relatively] kind and humane man, who [nonetheless] ordered bleeding, flogging, and other violent interference with the body of the patient when he believed the long-range effect would be good. The Quakers in England appointed Dr. William Tuke to be head of the York Retreat in 1791. This hospital has consistently among the world’s leaders in caring for the mentally ill. In 1957, it was among 10 or 12 hospitals in the world to adopt the “open door” policy, where patients remain of their own free will. PA was among the 1st among the modern US to experiment with an open hospital.
The York Retreat was designed for members of the Society of Friends, though members of other churches would not be automatically excluded. The York Retreat sought to provide kind treatment in a sheltered environment, & encouraged patients to keep small animals as pets as a means of appealing to their better instinct. The York Retreat was the model for the Friends’ Asylum opened near Philadelphia in 1817. This hospital was “to furnish such tender sympathetic attention and religious oversight as may soothe [the patients’] agitated minds and under the divine blessing facilitate their restoration to the enjoyment of this inestimable gift.”
These pioneer hospitals were privately owned with paying patients. Those who had no money were still herded into prisons & almshouses under frightful conditions. A reigning monarch (George III) was subjected to threats, beatings, chains, & starvation in an earnest attempt to restore his wits. After Friends’ Asylum & Bloomingdale Hospital, the Quakers seem to have rested on their laurels for 100 years. Dorothea Dix’s state hospital movement across the country had little or no support from the Society of Friends. The enormous majority, well over 90% of all those who became mentally ill, remained in state and county hospitals in appalling conditions.
Friends and the other historic peace churches produced in the early 40s, part of a group of young men who refused military service & found themselves serving as attendants in state mental hospitals. [One described his experience in a pamphlet (We are Accountable; PH Pamphlet #24, by Leonard Edelstein; 1945)]. [These young men] determined not to accept the continuation of conditions repugnant to any who believed that man was made in the image of God. [In renewed medical research it was discovered that there are many different illnesses which may attack the mind, with different causes, symptoms, treatment, and hope of cure].
[State Hospitals & the New Mental Health Care Approach]—Quakers failed often in helping sick people, because their knowledge was insufficient; but they sometimes succeeded where failure might have seemed almost inevitable. They have made a beginning in helping patients in public mental hospitals; the full potential of what they have to give is still very far from being realized. Friends refused to accept that any man or woman could be irrevocably cut off from awareness of God and fellowship with God’s children. A new approach, using new drugs along with patience and perseverance, has brought some 30 and 40 year resident-patients home. Others, though they cannot leave the hospital, can mingle with their fellow-patients and do productive work.
Doctors are beginning to say that the hospital itself, its expectations or rather its failure to expect good of the patient, its rigid organization, its lack of personal satisfaction may be standing in the way of better health for those it serves. No one who has visited a state hospital can ever forget the long halls with their lines of hard wooden chairs, where people sit, mostly silent, expressionless and unresponsive. Nearly half of the PA patients never have visitors. Why should these people feel that the world wanted them? Why should they try to get well? There is nothing to do. This in its hugeness and hopelessness is more frightening than [any abuse by attendants].
[Mental Health Caregivers]—Ward attendants are the people who spend day after day, year after year in close contact with the patients. In the past few years attendants have started to win more understanding of the importance of what they do, [even when] poorly paid and little respected. There is a wide need for more and more concerned young people who will enter such service for its own sake, because they see it as a way of discharging an obligation to their fellow men.
In the past the state hospital service [has been heavily] involved in politics. More and more states are extending civil service to cover all the people who work in hospitals. Friends might think about the special opportunities of the psychiatrist at this time and in the years immediately ahead. Not so many years are needed to become psychologist, a psychiatric nurse or a psychiatric social worker. Here too the rewards in terms of satisfaction may be very great. Both the state and federal governments [see the need]; scholarships and fellowships to help in the cost of training the right kind of people are being provided.
[Open Doors and Volunteers]—Astonishing things, hopeful things, are beginning to happen in public mental hospitals, even those with ancient & crumbling buildings, outworn equipment, & a chronic staff shortage. Something which hasn't happened in many places is the opening of doors. Everybody, including the community outside was afraid. [Physical walls, &] spiritual walls are crumbling. An American psychiatrist visited the open ward of an English hospital. He spoke of this as one part of the picture of mutual respect & acceptance which he found—good relations between patients & staff; good relations between the hospital & its community.
Clifford Beers recovered from his mental illness without, or in spite of, "help" of the hospitals of this century's 1st decade. He was the citizens’ mental health movement's founder. He founded the Connecticut Society for Mental Hygiene (CSMH) in 1908, & National Committee for Mental Hygiene the next year. [The progressive attitude of the CSMH towards Non-Restraint, patient privilege, visitation of the friendless, & overseeing attendants, sprang directly from Clifford Beers’ hospital experience. He knew the mentally ill aren't a category forever doomed & separate. They are people who can live in the world if we give them the chance to come back.
Clifford Beers’ small movement has grown into the National Association for Mental Health, with divisions in over 40 states & territories. Those responsible for this achievement desire to be friends to the mentally ill. The movement's volunteer side is strong & growing stronger. The strongest link between the hospital wards, open or closed, & the community outside is the volunteer. They range from “regulars,” who come every week or more, to those who never see the inside of the hospital at all but are willing to undertake some job as undemanding as collecting and wrapping Christmas gifts. It is not so much what you are able to do as how you do it. A scientist said: “It has been reasonably demonstrated that expectations have a great deal to do with the curing of patients.”
A woman volunteer at PA’s state hospital listed some of things that were done: different kinds of monthly parties, from themes to outside talent, to birthday parties; take patients out for rides; teaching painting & ceramics; newssheet. A doctor said: “The volunteer movement showed that change in a positive direction at a state hospital is possible, & that it is primarily a matter of emotional rather than intellectual understanding. As a rule, volunteers come from the local mental health association. An increasing number of local associations now have a paid executive & a secretary. A modest amount of money comes from the community chest or from a fundraising drive in the spring. The paid executive carries out the program the volunteer board has worked out for itself.
[Community Support of Former Patients]—A MA survey of employers and unions revealed that they would welcome back the former patient, but that the other party probably would not. Fantastic fears were expressed of what might happen. Government offices would refuse to hire them until they had been out a year. In a Canadian prairie town, talking about the possibility that former mental patients, their own friends and neighbors, might recover and come home stirred up an anxious, fearful alliance against the unwelcome idea. Dr. Paul Hoch writes: “If the community is rejective, if its citizens have the feeling that these people should not be among them because they are not 100% cured, this will influence not just the patients already in the community but the chances for discharge of those still in the hospital.”
The woman volunteer mentioned earlier said: “Now we know that [going home] is a crisis … Could ordinary citizens help here, after the patients go home? Could foster homes be found for to bridge the span between release & return to family surroundings?” The ideal ex-patient group is one whose members steadily drop away as they find themselves more & more accepting & accepted by the ordinary struggling world again. It is in part Friends’ lack of love that is condemning to years of imprisonment, people who could live again in the real world. To deprive a human being of his right to develop freely as a member of a living community is a fearful thing.
[Academy of Religion and Mental Health/Conclusion]—In 1955, The Academy arose out of the growing feeling that religion, must deal with him in that rather hazy territory where body and mind shade off into each other. Above all they were concerned for a better ministry to the mentally ill. They said: “We [seek to] help bring healing to the minds and souls and bodies of the Children of God who are walking this earth in pain, fear, guilt, anxiety, sorrow, loneliness, and often in utter mental darkness. In 3 or 4 years it has demonstrated that mental illness and the things which go with it are objects of deep concern to great many people who in an earlier time [would have left the treatment of it to] doctors and attendants who professed to know little about treatment.
Churches are starting on a courageous effort to show by their actions that “we are all children of one father” is more than a pious platitude. [The same Quaker beliefs that led us to treat the mentally ill differently than most, with less brutality], should lead us to join the people who are working for what to them, is a new goal, to bring the mentally ill into full fellowship with their brothers. There must be a place for us, now more than ever, among those who are making the door of the mental hospital a door into life rather than a door into death.
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[Introduction]—In the care of the mentally ill, science has rediscovered that someone who cares for another & shows it, can give help that drugs & surgery can't give. True recovery, acceptance of himself & society’s acceptance of him as a healthy person [comes with “tender, loving, care.”] The sick person who suffers the special misery of mental illness has always [inspired in] the Churches a special care, a [recognition] the unfortunate have a claim on people who seek to practice religion in the more difficult & thankless ways, [Quakers more so than others]. What will Quakers do with the new possibilities of service [in the mental health field]?
[History of Quaker Approach to Mental Illness]—An Inward Light cannot in its nature be extinguished while the body which harbors the soul still lives. From their earliest days as an organized group, they have been especially tender of the mentally ill. George Fox said to Lady Claypole about her apparent mental condition: “Whatever temptations, distractions, confusions the light doth make manifest and discover, do not look at these [worldly intrusions]; but look at the light which discovers them, and makes them manifest; with the same light you may feel over them, to receive power to stand against them.”
Quaker beliefs inhibited the fear of possession by an outside diabolical force, stronger than the person’s natural & God-given strength. The group psychosis so hideously documented in MA history couldn’t find in PA a spark to light it. When William Penn came to the New World, the best that had been thought of to protect the sick person & his community, was to place him in a tiny house, where he endured as long as his body would last.
Friends were pioneers in the establishment of the rehabilitating prison. It was prison which received the violently insane person. Quakers, like other rulers shut him away, but they did it with respect for his individual dignity. There was a realization that the person who was mentally ill was ill, not bewitched or perverse. [Early proposals for hospitals weren't followed through on until 1750], when weighty Friends led by Benjamin Franklin made an actual proposal for a hospital in Philadelphia. The PA Hospital officially opened in 1752. The mentally ill were relegated to the basement, [where they received] better than average, but still horrendous treatment. Records show that lunatics were the group from which few or none had been discharged at the calendar year’s end.
Benjamin Rush, the Father of American Psychiatry, was a [relatively] kind and humane man, who [nonetheless] ordered bleeding, flogging, and other violent interference with the body of the patient when he believed the long-range effect would be good. The Quakers in England appointed Dr. William Tuke to be head of the York Retreat in 1791. This hospital has consistently among the world’s leaders in caring for the mentally ill. In 1957, it was among 10 or 12 hospitals in the world to adopt the “open door” policy, where patients remain of their own free will. PA was among the 1st among the modern US to experiment with an open hospital.
The York Retreat was designed for members of the Society of Friends, though members of other churches would not be automatically excluded. The York Retreat sought to provide kind treatment in a sheltered environment, & encouraged patients to keep small animals as pets as a means of appealing to their better instinct. The York Retreat was the model for the Friends’ Asylum opened near Philadelphia in 1817. This hospital was “to furnish such tender sympathetic attention and religious oversight as may soothe [the patients’] agitated minds and under the divine blessing facilitate their restoration to the enjoyment of this inestimable gift.”
These pioneer hospitals were privately owned with paying patients. Those who had no money were still herded into prisons & almshouses under frightful conditions. A reigning monarch (George III) was subjected to threats, beatings, chains, & starvation in an earnest attempt to restore his wits. After Friends’ Asylum & Bloomingdale Hospital, the Quakers seem to have rested on their laurels for 100 years. Dorothea Dix’s state hospital movement across the country had little or no support from the Society of Friends. The enormous majority, well over 90% of all those who became mentally ill, remained in state and county hospitals in appalling conditions.
Friends and the other historic peace churches produced in the early 40s, part of a group of young men who refused military service & found themselves serving as attendants in state mental hospitals. [One described his experience in a pamphlet (We are Accountable; PH Pamphlet #24, by Leonard Edelstein; 1945)]. [These young men] determined not to accept the continuation of conditions repugnant to any who believed that man was made in the image of God. [In renewed medical research it was discovered that there are many different illnesses which may attack the mind, with different causes, symptoms, treatment, and hope of cure].
[State Hospitals & the New Mental Health Care Approach]—Quakers failed often in helping sick people, because their knowledge was insufficient; but they sometimes succeeded where failure might have seemed almost inevitable. They have made a beginning in helping patients in public mental hospitals; the full potential of what they have to give is still very far from being realized. Friends refused to accept that any man or woman could be irrevocably cut off from awareness of God and fellowship with God’s children. A new approach, using new drugs along with patience and perseverance, has brought some 30 and 40 year resident-patients home. Others, though they cannot leave the hospital, can mingle with their fellow-patients and do productive work.
Doctors are beginning to say that the hospital itself, its expectations or rather its failure to expect good of the patient, its rigid organization, its lack of personal satisfaction may be standing in the way of better health for those it serves. No one who has visited a state hospital can ever forget the long halls with their lines of hard wooden chairs, where people sit, mostly silent, expressionless and unresponsive. Nearly half of the PA patients never have visitors. Why should these people feel that the world wanted them? Why should they try to get well? There is nothing to do. This in its hugeness and hopelessness is more frightening than [any abuse by attendants].
[Mental Health Caregivers]—Ward attendants are the people who spend day after day, year after year in close contact with the patients. In the past few years attendants have started to win more understanding of the importance of what they do, [even when] poorly paid and little respected. There is a wide need for more and more concerned young people who will enter such service for its own sake, because they see it as a way of discharging an obligation to their fellow men.
In the past the state hospital service [has been heavily] involved in politics. More and more states are extending civil service to cover all the people who work in hospitals. Friends might think about the special opportunities of the psychiatrist at this time and in the years immediately ahead. Not so many years are needed to become psychologist, a psychiatric nurse or a psychiatric social worker. Here too the rewards in terms of satisfaction may be very great. Both the state and federal governments [see the need]; scholarships and fellowships to help in the cost of training the right kind of people are being provided.
[Open Doors and Volunteers]—Astonishing things, hopeful things, are beginning to happen in public mental hospitals, even those with ancient & crumbling buildings, outworn equipment, & a chronic staff shortage. Something which hasn't happened in many places is the opening of doors. Everybody, including the community outside was afraid. [Physical walls, &] spiritual walls are crumbling. An American psychiatrist visited the open ward of an English hospital. He spoke of this as one part of the picture of mutual respect & acceptance which he found—good relations between patients & staff; good relations between the hospital & its community.
Clifford Beers recovered from his mental illness without, or in spite of, "help" of the hospitals of this century's 1st decade. He was the citizens’ mental health movement's founder. He founded the Connecticut Society for Mental Hygiene (CSMH) in 1908, & National Committee for Mental Hygiene the next year. [The progressive attitude of the CSMH towards Non-Restraint, patient privilege, visitation of the friendless, & overseeing attendants, sprang directly from Clifford Beers’ hospital experience. He knew the mentally ill aren't a category forever doomed & separate. They are people who can live in the world if we give them the chance to come back.
Clifford Beers’ small movement has grown into the National Association for Mental Health, with divisions in over 40 states & territories. Those responsible for this achievement desire to be friends to the mentally ill. The movement's volunteer side is strong & growing stronger. The strongest link between the hospital wards, open or closed, & the community outside is the volunteer. They range from “regulars,” who come every week or more, to those who never see the inside of the hospital at all but are willing to undertake some job as undemanding as collecting and wrapping Christmas gifts. It is not so much what you are able to do as how you do it. A scientist said: “It has been reasonably demonstrated that expectations have a great deal to do with the curing of patients.”
A woman volunteer at PA’s state hospital listed some of things that were done: different kinds of monthly parties, from themes to outside talent, to birthday parties; take patients out for rides; teaching painting & ceramics; newssheet. A doctor said: “The volunteer movement showed that change in a positive direction at a state hospital is possible, & that it is primarily a matter of emotional rather than intellectual understanding. As a rule, volunteers come from the local mental health association. An increasing number of local associations now have a paid executive & a secretary. A modest amount of money comes from the community chest or from a fundraising drive in the spring. The paid executive carries out the program the volunteer board has worked out for itself.
[Community Support of Former Patients]—A MA survey of employers and unions revealed that they would welcome back the former patient, but that the other party probably would not. Fantastic fears were expressed of what might happen. Government offices would refuse to hire them until they had been out a year. In a Canadian prairie town, talking about the possibility that former mental patients, their own friends and neighbors, might recover and come home stirred up an anxious, fearful alliance against the unwelcome idea. Dr. Paul Hoch writes: “If the community is rejective, if its citizens have the feeling that these people should not be among them because they are not 100% cured, this will influence not just the patients already in the community but the chances for discharge of those still in the hospital.”
The woman volunteer mentioned earlier said: “Now we know that [going home] is a crisis … Could ordinary citizens help here, after the patients go home? Could foster homes be found for to bridge the span between release & return to family surroundings?” The ideal ex-patient group is one whose members steadily drop away as they find themselves more & more accepting & accepted by the ordinary struggling world again. It is in part Friends’ lack of love that is condemning to years of imprisonment, people who could live again in the real world. To deprive a human being of his right to develop freely as a member of a living community is a fearful thing.
[Academy of Religion and Mental Health/Conclusion]—In 1955, The Academy arose out of the growing feeling that religion, must deal with him in that rather hazy territory where body and mind shade off into each other. Above all they were concerned for a better ministry to the mentally ill. They said: “We [seek to] help bring healing to the minds and souls and bodies of the Children of God who are walking this earth in pain, fear, guilt, anxiety, sorrow, loneliness, and often in utter mental darkness. In 3 or 4 years it has demonstrated that mental illness and the things which go with it are objects of deep concern to great many people who in an earlier time [would have left the treatment of it to] doctors and attendants who professed to know little about treatment.
Churches are starting on a courageous effort to show by their actions that “we are all children of one father” is more than a pious platitude. [The same Quaker beliefs that led us to treat the mentally ill differently than most, with less brutality], should lead us to join the people who are working for what to them, is a new goal, to bring the mentally ill into full fellowship with their brothers. There must be a place for us, now more than ever, among those who are making the door of the mental hospital a door into life rather than a door into death.
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
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