ECT

Soaring beyond the cuckoo's nest: health care reform and ECT.

Fitzsimons LM, Mayer RL.

Department of Biological Psychiatry, New York Psychiatric Institute, NY 10032, USA.
PMID: 8667304 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Reading in a course

Reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in an undergraduate, US healthcare course.

Metcalf J.

College of Nursing and Health Science, George Mason University (MS: 3-C4), 4400 University Drive, Fairfax, Virginia 22030, USA. jmetcalf@gmu.edu
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a modern classic in American literature by Ken Kesey, was used to complement conventional assignments in Healthcare USA, an undergraduate survey of the American healthcare system at George Mason University. The book contrasts perceptions of reality between a group of psychiatric patients and the institutional staff. It also depicts a power struggle between patients and staff and illustrates how patients can be enslaved by the healthcare system itself. The purpose of the assignment was to prompt student reflection upon both the contrasting realities and the power conflicts between patients and staff. Several examples of student responses are presented.

PMID: 17249478 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Artistic Approaches

On the Differences between Scientific and Artistic Approaches to Qualitative Research
Elliot W. Eisner
Educational Researcher, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Apr., 1981), pp. 5-9
doi:10.2307/1175121

ECT

*Medical Student Knowledge and Attitudes Regarding ECT Prior to and After Viewing ECT Scenes from Movies.*

Journal of ECT. 18(1):43-46, March 2002.
/ Walter, Garry M.D. *+; McDonald, Andrew M.D. ++; Rey, Joseph M. M.D., Ph.D. +; Rosen, Alan M.D. + /

* Abstract:*
Summary: We surveyed samples of medical students in the United Kingdom (U.K.) and Australia, prior to their psychiatry placement, to ascertain views about electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and the effect on those views of watching ECT scenes in movies. A 26-item questionnaire was constructed by the authors and administered to the students. At set times during the questionnaire, students were asked to view five movie clips showing, or making reference to, ECT. The clips were from Return to Oz, The Hudsucker Proxy, Ordinary People, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Beverly Hillbillies. Ninety-four students participated in the study. Levels of knowledge about the indications, side effects, and mode of administration were poor, and attitudes were generally negative. Viewing the ECT scenes influenced attitudes toward the treatment; after viewing, one-third of the students decreased their support for ECT, and the proportion of students who would dissuade a family member or friend from having ECT rose from less than 10% to almost 25%.

(C) 2002 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Inc.

Impact

Impact of the film, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," on attitudes towards mental illness.

Domino G.

PMID: 6635061 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Theaterverslag

Theaterverslag Nederlands
One flew over the cuckoo's nest

Teaching

Teaching Medical Sociology through Film: Theoretical Perspectives and Practical Tools
Bernice A. Pescosolido
Teaching Sociology, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Jul., 1990), pp. 337-346

Five models

Five Models for Thinking About Disability:
Implications for Policy Responses
H. Rutherford Turnbull III and Matthew J. Stowe
zie pdf

This article advances five models for thinking about disability. Each has
various degrees of relevance to policy, and each reflects various disciplines
that affect policy. The article defines each model, indicates the disciplines or
other sources of the model, and demonstrates the relevance of each to policy.
The five models are Human Capacity, Public Studies, Cultural Studies, Ethical
and Philosophical Studies, and Technology Studies

Links

Category:Disability Culture - Disapedia

This has been the top request for a new section from all the feed back that I have gotten. So if you know of a work add it. Try an add some information for it. Warning though not all the images of the disabled depicted the media listed below is positive. So don't get mad if there is something with disability you don't like.

Artikel

Re-engaging the Body: Disability Studies and the Resistance to Embodiment
Snyder and Mitchell Public Culture.2001; 13: 367-390

Feminist...

Elizabeth J. Donaldson - The Corpus of the Madwoman: Toward a Feminist Disability Studies Theory of Embodiment and Mental Illness - NWSA Journal 14:3

5. The previous film, David and Lisa (Perry and Heller 1962), is based on the study by psychoanalyst Theodore Rubin (1961). See also the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Kesey 1962) and the subsequent film (Forman and Douglas 1975). In Cuckoo's Nest, the patients fall into two categories: those in therapy appear to suffer from socially-produced ailments and are distinguished from the chronic (real?) patients, who seem to fall outside the realm of discourse, sympathy, and redemption. This is a point that Mitchell and Snyder also discuss (2000, 173-4).

FlowerPower

literature: Definition and Much More from Answers.com

Flower Power to Popular Fiction
Starting with the 1960s all labels and historical subdivisions become increasingly haphazard, not to say arbitrary. Styles, influences, and ideologies mix freely as 40,000, and then 50,000 new titles are published annually in multi-million editions, glutting the literary market. Day-Glo colors mask the culture of black humor, forged among the Vietnam genocide, political assassinations, drug and sexual revolutions, and race riots spilling out of inner-city ghettos. Where Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) branded America as an oppressive mental institution in a fit farewell to the 1950s...

Bondage

Robert Coover: the metaphysics of bondage.
From: The Modern Language Review | Date: 10/1/2003 | Author: Hume, Kathryn

The author examines Robert Coover's use of the grotesque and scenes of bondage to portray the metaphysical in his novels and short stories.
Robert Coover: the metaphysics of bondage

Throughout Coover's work, we find evidence of a vision--a concept of humanity and society--that fits Frye's demonic vision. Coover is by no means alone, obviously, or Frye would not have inductively gathered the evidence he did for such a shared set of values found in writers from the Renaissance to the twentieth century, including Ben Jonson, George Orwell, and Franz Kafka. In American Dream, American Nightmare, I devote a chapter to contemporary novels in this vein: Reed's The Free-Lance Pallbearers, The Public Burning, Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time, Acker's Blood and Guts in High School, Ellis's American Psycho, Mailer's Why are We in Vietnam?, Dworkin's Mercy, Vizenor's Bearheart: The Heirship Chronicles, and Silko's Almanac of the Dead. (21) Most Burroughs novels belong in such company. For all that these novels share similarities of demonic site, demonic eroticism, ironic myths, and images of bondage, they are quite unlike one another. To take but one index, some have political agendas, some have social, and some ethnic.

Inmates

Een interessant boek:
Insanity As Redemption in Contemporary American Fiction: Inmates Running the ...
Door Barbara Tepa Lupack

This is an account of how five key novels of the 1960s and 1970s emerged from their culture, taking "madness" as a key theme. The works concerned are: "Catch-22", "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", "Slaughterhouse-5", "Being There" and "Sophie's Choice".

Mentale beelden

Mental Images: Psychoanalysis on the Screen - New York Times

There are plenty of popular films that are less flattering to the profession. Those betes noires include "Cat People" (1942), in which the doctor doesn't believe his female patient really turns into a cat during love-making, but tries to cure her delusion by seducing her; "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975), in which only the patients are normal, and "Dressed to Kill" (1980). In the last, the psychiatrist turns out to be a homicidal transvestite, "the first homicidal transvestite psychiatrist in American cinema," said Professor Gabbard.

Clinical Psychology...

Clinical psychology goes beyond the Cuckoo's Nest - Knox College News
March 06, 2007

Knox College senior Ashley Bunnell '07, and a handful of other psychology students, are finding out that clinical work goes beyond reading Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by immersing themselves in clinical psychology term. They are also finding out that, by today's standards, the Miss Ratcheds are merely characters in a book.

institutions

All Things Britney Spears - Thread No. 8 - Page 2 - Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community

There is a very good reason why there was a move away from institutionalization, not just for people who experience mental illness but for all people with disabilities who used to be routinely institutionalized. Anyone remember "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"? I agree that tossing people onto the street is not the right solution, but neither is going back to institutionalization. As a person who experienced institional living for 8 years as a child (as a result of physical disability) and as a student of disability studies, I speak from experience. Proper community supports for people who experience disability and their families is what is needed and this is where resources should be allocated - not in warehousing human beings - IMO.

Film als cursus

Een voorbeeld van een cursus:

ENGL3433

States of Mind: Disability, Cognitive Impairment and Exceptionality in Contemporary Culture, Session 2007-2008, Semester 2
Dr Stuart Murray

The disabled or exceptional subject is often spoken and written of as being caught in a double bind: supposedly lacking in some essential capacity that denotes humanity, and yet also all too visibly and excessively human by virtue of an inherent difference. This module will examine a number of novels and films, dating from 1961 to 2003, which represent cognitive impairment as an example of such disability/exceptionality. It will specifically focus on four neurobehavioral conditions – schizophrenia, Tourette’s syndrome, aphasia and autism – that have frequently been a source of fascination for both practitioners of art and contemporary culture more widely. In doing so, it will address a number of key issues – technology, individuality, masculinity, sentimentality, genre and narrative form, and a concern to define ‘the human’ – that recur throughout the presentation of mental impairment.

Texts for essential Purchase

1. Ken Kesey, One flew over the cuckoo's nest (Picador)
2. Janet Frame, Faces in the water (Women’s Press)
3. Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn (Faber)
4. Elizabeth Moon, Speed of dark (Orbit)
5. Mark Haddon, The curious incident of the dog in the night-time (Jonathan Cape)

Medical Sociology through Film

Bernice A. Pescosolido, Teaching Medical Sociology through Film: Theoretical Perspectives and Practical Tools
JSTOR: Teaching Sociology: Vol. 18, No. 3 (Jul., 1990), pp. 337-346

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0092-055X(199007)18%3A3%3C337%3ATMSTFT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-2

Abstract

This article sets an agenda for the teaching of medical sociology by providing a pedagogical approach and set of tools that can be used in the classroom. Specifically, I argue that we need to push our students away from dualistic or relativistic thinking toward the ability to apply the sociological perspective in health, illness, and healing and to understand its limits as well as its promise. This type of teaching can be accomplished through a style that requires students to actively participate in the classroom. One way to do this, particularly in large classes where other strategies are not feasible, is to use feature films as "cases." The key advantage to this teaching strategy lies in its critical match with current students' high visual literacy. I focus on three substantive topics: mental illness, death-dying, and the political economy of illness. I supply details on films and support materials. The appendix provides a short annotated list of other films (and other resources) available on both these and a variety of other medical topics.

Literature and Medicine

2004 Archives Part III of III - Literature, Arts & Medicine Interest Group

Hollywood has had a long-standing love affair with
psychiatry (Gabbard and Gabbard, 1999; Schneider, 1987, 1977). Dating
from the first psychiatric film, Dr. Dippy's Sanitarium (1906), almost
500 movies dealing with the specialty have been made. While the film
industry has demonstrated a particular fascination for depicting
psychotherapy, physical treatments including electroconvulsive therapy have also
been featured (McDonald and Walter, 2001; Walter, 1998). Indeed, some
of the major psychiatric films--The Snake Pit (1948), One Flew Over the
Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Frances (1982) and Shine (1996)--have prominent
convulsive therapy scenes. (See the Table for a selected chronology of
films depicting ECT.)

Models

H. Rutherford Turnbull III and Matthew J. Stowe, Five Models for Thinking About Disability:
Implications for Policy Responses. pdf

This article advances five models for thinking about disability. Each has
various degrees of relevance to policy, and each reflects various disciplines
that affect policy. The article defines each model, indicates the disciplines or
other sources of the model, and demonstrates the relevance of each to policy.
The five models are Human Capacity, Public Studies, Cultural Studies, Ethical
and Philosophical Studies, and Technology Studies

Nurse Stereotypes

Nurse stereotypes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Films to teach the Social Context

David J. Connor Lynne M. Bejoian, Pigs, Pirates, and Pills: Using Film to Teach the Social Context of Disability.
Teaching Exceptional Children 39 no2 52-60 N/D 2006

Interessant in het algemeen met aandacht voor de film:

High School: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
For the third selected unit, which specifically targeted the concept of institutionalization, the students in our course cited One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) as an excellent choice for high school students or adults. The film treats many dense, interconnected issues, including a discussion of antisocial behavior, a description of what happens when a person is institutionalized, and the longstanding conflation of criminality and mental illness. In studying the roles, responsibilities, actions, and reactions of characters, one important theme to explore is the favoring of scientific knowledge over other forms of knowing and the implications for all members of the community--but especially for those with the disabled label. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest also illustrates many serious issues, including the taken-for-granted extreme levels of surveillance to which those with disabilities are often subjected, inappropriate experimentation and "treatments" for those who are deemed mentally ill, and overreliance on pills to control people who act differently from the norm. In addition, the movie offers clear instances in which the self-interest of services ostensibly designed to support people with disabilities contributes to the maintenance of inequities, with those who run the services--no matter how well intentioned they are--upholding the status quo.

Disability Studies

Re-engaging the Body: Disability Studies and the Resistance to Embodiment
Snyder and Mitchell

Public Culture. 2001; 13: 367-390

format

FILM IN REVIEW; 'Manic'
By DAVE KEHR
The New York Times.
Published: April 25, 2003

The script, by Michael Bacall and Blayne Weaver, doesn't break new ground dramatically: this is essentially the ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'' format applied to sensitive adolescents, à la ''Girl, Interrupted.''

Myths

Gabbard, Glen O (2001), Psychotherapy in Hollywood cinema. Psychiatry And The Arts. Australasian Psychiatry. 9(4):365-369, December 2001.

Abstract:
Objective: To describe the portrayal of psychotherapy in Hollywood cinema. This may reveal popular myths and fantasies about this therapeutic modality.

Conclusions: The perceived omniscience of psychiatrists is both envied and feared, and psychiatrists are continually denigrated to neutralise these feelings. Movies reflect this process by seeking to show that psychiatrists have the same human frailties as everyone else.

Feminist critique

Darbyshire P. (1995), Reclaiming 'Big Nurse': a feminist critique of Ken Kesey's portrayal of Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Nurs Inq. 1995 Dec;2(4):198-202.

Nurse Ratched or 'Big Nurse' in Ken Kesey's counter-culture novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is one of popular culture's most arresting and memorable images of the nurse. She is, however, deemed to be remarkable primarily for her malice and authoritarianism. This paper argues that such a purely realist reading fails to fully appreciate the significance of the character of Nurse Ratched. A feminist critique of the novel contends that the importance of 'Big Nurse' is less related to how realistic/unrealistic or good/bad she is as a nurse. Nurse Ratched is important because she exemplifies all that traditional masculinity abhors in women, and particularly in strong women in positions of power and influence. This paper explores the stereotype of 'Big Nurse' and argues that Kesey's vision of her ultimate 'conquest' is not a progressive allegory of 'individual freedom', but a reactionary misogyny which would deny women any function other than that of sexual trophy.

Best Bad Girl

De bad guys zijn inmiddels bekend, maar de meiden kunnen er ook wat van. Wie is de beste bad girl? Stem nu en maak kans op een prijs.

Nurse Ratched (One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest)

25 ( 5.7% )

Satire

The Breasts of Big Nurse: Satire versus Narrative in Kesey's "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest"
Laszlo K. Gefin
Modern Language Studies, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Winter, 1992), pp. 96-101

Stigma

Stigma Continues in Hollywood
by Steven H. Hyler, M.D.

June 2003, Vol. XX, Issue 6. Psychiatric Times

Rebellious Free Spirit

Negative stereotypes of patients with mental illness have a long history in Hollywood. Inaccurate portrayals have an important and underestimated negative effect on the perception of people with mental disorders--by the public, legislators, families and patients themselves. In this update of a 1991 presentation given by Glenn Gabbard, M.D., Irving Schneider, M.D., and myself, I will review some of the common stereotypes seen in film and television and discuss several recent films that perpetuate such myths.

Representations of this stereotype are found in film characters such as R.P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), as well as in many of the patients (peripheral characters) in films such as The Dream Team (1989) and The Couch Trip (1988). One of the more memorable recent film characters is Melvin Udall (played by Jack Nicholson) in As Good as It Gets (1997).

Cursus

Een cursus waarin de film gebruikt wordt als reflectie op diverse thema's.

Psychology and Literature
Ms. Haslach
Fall 2007
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: An Introduction

Directions: Answer the following questions using the following resources.

If you use one of the Web resources, please PARAPHRASE your responses for each; do not cut and paste.

• Brief film shown in class entitle “Great Books: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”.
• http://kclibrary.nhmccd.edu/kesey.html
• http://www.answers.com/topic/counterculture
• The printed materials from eNotes.com attached to this page.

QUESTIONS:

1. Provide 3-5 points from Kesey’s biography (birth and death, where he lived, where he worked, went to school, etc.)

2. Who are The Merry Pranksters and how is Kesey associated with them
   

3. What was the 1960’s Counterculture all about?

4. What parts of Ken Kesey’s life experience influenced him in writing One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?

5. How did critics and audiences receive One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and what other adaptations exist?

Resources

Psychology Resource Center for Students

Girl, Interrupted revisits the themes of Milos Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Whether the patients are men (Cuckoo's Nest) or women (Girl, Interrupted), the setting public (Cuckoo's Nest) or private (Girl, Interrupted), some things never change. The health care professionals have neither competence nor compassion and are at war with their "crazy" inmates. Girl, Interrupted, like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, contains some unfair stereotypes of patients and professionals and often strays beyond the bounds of credibility.

Epilepsy Stereotypes

Epilepsy Stereotypes Abound in Movies

Film Industry Depictions Don't Match Up With Modern Medicine.
WebMD Medical News

Nov. 21, 2003 -- The dramatic potential of epileptic seizures has been a favorite source of inspiration for filmmakers. But new research suggests that the film industry hasn't caught up with medicine and continues to depict ancient beliefs and stereotypes associated with epilepsy. A survey of 62 international films that deal with epilepsy found the condition is still commonly linked with demonic or divine possession, genius, lunacy, and delinquency.

Bibliografie

Tina Burke presenteert een interessante bibliografie bij haar artikel:

Works Cited

Awakenings. Dir. Penny Marshall. Perf. Robert DeNiro, Julie Kavner, Penelope Ann Miller, Robin Williams. Columbia Pictures. 1990.

Fleming, Michael and Roger Manvell. Images of Madness: The Portrayal of Insanity in Feature Film. Associated University Presses: London, 1985.

Levers, Lisa Lopez. "Representations of Psychiatric Disability in Fifty Years of Hollywood Film: An Ethnographic Analysis." Theory and Science. 2001. 20 Apr. 2002.

McCreadle, Marsha. "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: Some Reasons for One Happy Adaptation." Literature/Film Quarterly. 5: 2 (Spring 1977). 125-131.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: Dir. Milos Forman. Perf. Danny DeVito, Louise Fletcher, Jack Nicholson. Fantasy Films. 1975.

Safer, Elaine B. "It's the Truth Even if it Didn't Happen: Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Literature/Film Quarterly. 5:2 (Spring 1977). 132-141.

Schwartz, Morris S. and Emmy Lanning Schockley. The Nurse and the Mental Patient: A Study in Interpersonal Relationships. Russell Sage: New York, 1956.

Seger, Linda. The Art of Adaptation: Turning Fact and Fiction into Film. Henry Holt: New York, 1992.

Sodowsky, Gargi Raysircar and Roland E. Sodowsky. "Different Approaches to Psychopathology and Symbolism in the Novel and Film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Literature and Psychology. 37 (1 & 2): 1991. 34-42.

Butler, Tina (2005), 'The Methods of Madness: Representations of Inmates, Authorities and the Asylum in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Awakenings'.

This paper focuses on the concepts and representations of the institution and the inmate, and how films, even when presenting in a seemingly sympathetic tone, have often served only to further stigmatize both entities.

Perception of the mentally ill, the environments in which they are housed and those who care for them has been largely determined and influenced by filmic representation. In American cinema, representation of the asylum in film has been a recurrent theme. There were 34 feature length US productions featuring scenes of psychiatric hospitalization between 1935 and 1990 alone (Levers). The institution has traditionally been vilified in these representations, both in the space itself, as well as the inhabitants-the inmates and employees. The asylum, by its detachment from mainstream society is a place that has been otherized. Two films that offer distinct manifestations of this realm are One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Awakenings.

zie verder

Screen stereotype

Een terministic screen creëert een manier van kijken en handelen, zie hierover Ivie rond terrorisme:

“…for every perspective on reality, as Kenneth Burke underscores, is a terministic screen that simultaneously enables and disables our collective action, a set of blinders that both directs and misdirects our attention, equipment for living together that easily degenerates into a trained incapacity and an appetite for victimage”. Robert L. Ivie, Profiling Terrorism.

Terministic screen wordt ook beschreven vanuit stereotypen rond sex rollen etc. De definitie is ook bruikbaar rond de geestelijke gezondheidszorg in het algemeen:

Colleen M.Keough, Sexist Language: Terministic Screens and Transcendence.

Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Communication, Language, and Gender Conference (5th, Athens, OH, October 15-16, 1982). Zie de website voor het volledige artikel.

The most appropriate vehicle for examining the role of language in producing sex role stereotypes and sexism is Kenneth Burke's concept of the terministic screen, a definition of reality that directs the attention of the audience along a certain line of thought. Thus, once a linguistic term is accepted as reflecting reality, the term influences the selection and deflection of future observations. Burke's theory of dialectics provides a corollary to this discussion, treating ideas and action as paired or polar terms that can be viewed as being discontinuous, separated by different interpretations of a sitatuion. Transcendence allows discontinuous terms to be synthesized by a common term that dissolves the discontinuity into a new unity. The melding of both these concepts provides the rhetorical underpinnings for a theory of how language can affect behavior and attitudes viewed from this perspective: sexist language causes sexism by acting as a discontinuous, terministic screen. The problems caused by sexist language can be transcended by a nonsexist language. Unfortunately, such a rhetorical analysis will remain only theoretical until there is a greater adoption of nonsexist terms as the accepted form of American English. (HOD).

Kahn: Onze Hersenen

René Kahn, Onze Hersenen. Balans

Daklozen, zwervers, junks. De overspannen buurman. De stille drinker. De obsessief poetsende huisvrouw. De eenzame zonderling. Zijn ze door allerlei ongelukkige omstandigheden vastgelopen, maatschappelijk mislukt, verslaafd, uitgestoten? Of is er iets anders aan de hand?
In het prikkelende Onze hersenen toont psychiater René Kahn overtuigend aan dat veel van de mensen die wij vreemd vinden, onaangepast, ‘anders’, niet in de eerste plaats door hun omstandigheden zo zijn geworden. Menselijk gedrag, of wij het nu als normaal beschouwen of als abnormaal, wordt niet bepaald door sociale of familiale omstandigheden. In de meeste gevallen, zo betoogt Kahn, is het een verandering in de hersenen die een ander soort gedrag bepaalt.
René Kahn, die de afgelopen decennia baanbrekend onderzoek heeft gedaan naar hersenveranderingen bij de mens, komt in Onze hersenen tot verrassende uitspraken en verhalen. Hij schetst een nieuw beeld van het menselijk gedrag, waardoor de lezer een geheel andere kijk krijgt op ‘abnormale’ mensen.

Beeldvorming psychologie

Ublad Online > interview
over de beeldvorming van de psychiatrie.

René Kahn:

Helaas wordt in de media nog vaak een heel stereotiep beeld van de psychiatrie gegeven. Pas zat ik bij Pauw en Witteman en ook zij lieten de twee meest bekende karikaturen zien, een filmpje van Woody Allen waarin een psychiater met zijn patiënt over levensvraagstukken praat, en een fragment uit 'One flew over the cuckoo's nest', met een psychiater als een soort gemankeerde kampbeul. Vooral het beeld van de psychiater als man met een baard die de zieleroerselen van zijn op een sofa liggende patiënt probeert te doorgronden, is hardnekkig. Dat beeld is ontleend aan de psychoanalyse van Freud, maar psychoanalyse heeft niets met psychiatrie te maken, het is psychologie. Het verschil is dat psychiatrie over ziekte gaat en psychologie over normaal menselijk gedrag. Natuurlijk, de boeken van Freud zijn fantastisch geschreven en als verklaringsmodel voor hoe mensen met hun emoties omgaan is de psychoanalyse een boeiende theorie, maar voor de psychiatrie is de praktische waarde nul, want niemand heeft ooit kunnen aantonen dat psychoanalyse zieke mensen beter maakt.

In dit boek schrijf ik over psychiatrische ziekten aan de hand van verhalen van patiënten. In mijn vorige boek, over de hersenen, had ik hier en daar al kleine patiëntenverhaaltjes geschreven en mijn oudste dochter zei op een gegeven moment: waarom schrijf je niet meer van die verhaaltjes, die vinden de mensen het leukst. Vandaar mijn keuze om in dit boek te beginnen bij concrete patiënten en op basis van hun verhaal de diepte in te gaan. In de media is mij verweten dat ik er te veel een successtory van heb gemaakt, maar volgens mij valt dat wel mee, want in drie van de negen verhalen heeft de behandeling maar beperkt resultaat gehad. Bovendien vraag ik me af waar die journalisten hun deskundigheid vandaan halen. In sommige kranten las ik: zo succesvol als Kahn het voorstelt is de psychiatrie helemaal niet. Dan denk ik: hallo, werk jij in dit vak of werk ik in dit vak?

Debat over/via Cuckoo's Nest

Volkskrantblog - Blogger - Pauw&Witteman

Toen kwam René Kahn aan het woord, psychiater van beroep en voorstander van de elektro-shock bij psychiatrische patiënten. Om te laten zien wat een elektro-shock is en wat de uitwerking bij een patiënt is, werd gegrepen naar een scéne uit de Hollywoodfilm 'One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest' uit 1975 met Jack Nicholson als patiënt. Hoe haalt het duo het in zijn hoofd! Veel beter waren de beelden van échte patiënten die een heuse elektro-shock kregen en dat zag er behoorlijk angstwekkender uit, maar die beelden waren alleen op de achtergrond zichtbaar, terwijl Jack in grootbeeld bij de kijkers thuis werd getoond.

Kahn vertelde dat de wetenschap pas sinds enkele jaren 'een beetje weet heeft' over de exacte uitwerking van de elektriciteitsstoot, maar werd daarover niet door Pauw&Witteman onderbroken en nader aan de tand gevoeld.