****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
Crazy people are interesting.The rich fascinate us. What better, then, than a treatize on both? Unfortunately, this effort barely escapes the "fluff" designation. An often jaunty read that at times suffers from a painfully linear exposition, the book wavers from gleeful gossip column tattle-taling on the lives of people wholly forgotten to an unnecessarily extended exposition on the treatment of spoiled hippy offspring of well-to-do parents, the latter still adhering to the principle reason behind the asylum's century-long existence - to painlessly "disappear" family members who have proven something of an embarassment. Though it lodged its share of full-blown psychotics, McLean primarily served as a convenient getaway for wealthy hysterics, many of whom, through upbringing or inbreeding, were simply too ineffectual or eccentric to deal with the world and its pains. Mental illness can be a voluntary choice if one has the financial luxury of turning one's back on the difficulties of normal existence and, as long as the bills were paid, the hospital was more than willing to indulge - for a lifetime if desired - the melodramatic, the pathologically self-absorbed or the merely incompetent or unwanted. It was a warehouse, if an obscenely confortable one, and the extraordinary lack of competent psychiatric care available at the institution is evident as its history unfolds in these pages, from the almost constant lack of respect from the medical community over many decades to the almost apocalyptic suicide epidemics that occasionally raged through the facility. I suppose we should be happy that the more wan elements of the privileged sector of our society have a nice place to go where they can strum guitars, write smug bad poetry, cut themselves and seduce themselves into suicide with the full blessing of their jailors, but what we have here is the ultimate ship of fools. Where I come from, we quickly return lily-hearts like these to full sanity with a swift beating and strenuous physical work with too much overtime to allow self-introspection. It's a great cure, but that's another story. The book is at once detailed and half-hearted in its account of these limpid souls as they very gradually fade away into evanescence. It's odd to see the very really sadness of these lost lives juxtaposed with jolly accounts of their pathetic and ridiculous public performances as they slide into oblivion. What's astonishing is the cachet attached in Boston high society to a brief, self-imposed incarceration at this exclusive retreat, a sort of ticket-punching that extended well into the 60's, by which time McLean had lost all sense of respectability in the medical realm. The caretakers, interestingly, come off equally poorly. Sex and plagiarism scandals abound, questionable treatments are the rule rather than the exception, and the doctors are just slightly behind the patients in the long lines to leap from upper story windows. This isn't great literature, more a B-class summer read. Perhaps the problem lies in the subject matter. How does one infuse relevance into the lives of people who have long abandoned any sense of relevance of their own?
