Listen free for 30 days
-
Gracefully Insane
- Life and Death Inside America’s Premier Mental Hospital
- Narrated by: Matthew Josdal
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wish list failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Gracefully Insane
Buy Now for $22.26
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's Summary
Its landscaped ground, chosen by Frederick Law Olmsted and dotted with Tudor mansions, could belong to a New England prep school. There are no fences, no guards, no locked gates. But McLean Hospital is a mental institution - one of the most famous, most elite, and once most luxurious in America.
In its "golden age", McLean provided as genteel an environment for the treatment of mental illness as one could imagine. But the golden age is over, and a downsized, downscale McLean - despite its affiliation with Harvard University - is struggling to stay afloat. Gracefully Insane, by Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam, is a fascinating and emotional biography of McLean Hospital from its founding in 1817 through today. It is filled with stories about patients and doctors: the Ralph Waldo Emerson protégé whose brilliance disappeared along with his madness; Anne Sexton's poetry seminar, and many more.
The story of McLean is also the story of the hopes and failures of psychology and psychotherapy; of the evolution of attitudes about mental illness, of approaches to treatment, and of the economic pressures that are making McLean - and other institutions like it - relics of a bygone age.