Mad in America…or just Mad.
The healing hand is commonly known as a “mothers touch;” gentle, pure, healing. But what exactly is the healing hand? According to sources the healing hand is when “the practitioner alters the patient's energy field through an energy transfer that moves from the hands of the practitioner to the patient:” (Medicaldictionary.com) The healing hand of kindness is what Robert Whitaker entitles the second chapter of his book Mad in America. (Whitaker, 19) No, the healing hand is not the topic to my essay, but it is the first step in coming to terms with the why this chapter is just mad. When you combine two terms, both in relative meaning, it turns into a contradiction. The healing hand is kind. Kindness is a friendly act toward another. So where is the contradiction?
The first section of the book describes accounts from a man names Benjamin Rush, from his book Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind. (Whitaker, 21-22) It describes patients being treated as animals: beaten, sedated, and verbally abused. (Whitaker, 22) This was the healing hand for many patients until 1793 when, as the book describes, was the lunacy reform in Europe. “Moral treatments,” and I use that phase sparingly, included, one pound of bread a day, extreme heat and cold weather in concrete cells, and sedation. Physician
Philippe Pinel thought by talking to his sedated patients he was connecting with them, understanding their sorrows. He described this new interaction as such:
“I have nowhere met, except in romances, with fonder husbands, more affectionate parents, more impassioned lovers, more pure and exalted patriots, than in the lunatic asylum…”(Whitaker, 27)
Then again, another reform was born with the Quakers in 1817. Why would their need to be a reform for mental patients? Thus begins the contradictions. Quakers borrowed the medical philosophy from Aeschylus “Soft speech is to distemper’d wrath, medicinal.” (Whitaker, 33) My mother would call this “philosophy” being a push-over, or someone with a weak mentality.
The reader does not see the contradiction until a section entitled Moral treatment in America.(Whitaker, 24) The writers project here is to explain the evolution of mental asylums in America. Philadelphia Quakers opened the first Moral- treatment asylum in 1817, while the first public asylum opened in Worchester, Massachusetts in 1833. There was a blueprint for these asylums, as they were kept small to provide care to roughly 250 patients. These patients were able to get their fill of fresh air and find in solace in tending the graceful flowerbeds and gardens. Although they paint this perfect picture in which they provide a setting for their patients to take their time into bettering themselves, these asylums are in fact the complete opposite. (Whitaker, 25)
When these asylums were established, these “professionals” decided to adapt the Quaker roots of moral treatment. The overall purpose of this treatment was to provide patients with the opportunity to appreciate living in a gentler world with happiness. With that said, Quakers never really believed that these patients would ever recover. Therefore, these “professionals” decided to stray away from the Quaker style of caring for their patients. Hartford Retreat, in reference to the Quakers, stated “have placed too little reliance upon the efficacy of medicine in the treatment of insanity, and hence their success is not equal to that of other asylums in which medicines are more freely employed.” (Whitaker, 28) Through this is when asylums had begun changing their methods, resulting in treatment that “is feeble compared to the lofty conceptions of truly combined medical and moral management.” (Whitaker, 29) Although this was in part of a backlash against medical practices, medicine was now reclaiming it as its own.
Rather than allowing these patients to progressively improve, they instead medicate their patients which causes them appear as walking stone figures; Figures that cooperated without a beating or other harsh treatments. Medicating patients became known as “soothing irritated nerves.” (Whitaker, 37) Neurologists believed that by numbing certain nerves one could cure mental sickness. However, asylums did not have the technology in order to determine the exact location of the “irritated nerves.” During this time period, centers would have such tools as scopes and probes to potentially remove infected parts through explorative surgeries, however such surgeries were very dangerous to the patient. The treatment of mentally ill patients in this manner was seen as the “act” of healing rather than a scientific understanding of the biology of madness.
Thusly we return to the writers project. Through the eyes of Robert Whitaker we have examined how the idea of a “healing hand” is actually not very healing; At least not in the definition of a mothers touch. I believe the mental asylums of the 17th century were highly misconstrued and even more misrepresented. Portrayed as welcoming, mental healers, where patients had the opportunity to recover and grow yet what actually happened was far from relaxing and building. This is where readers connect the contradictions in how on paper, mental asylums were the perfect solution to an unknown problem, however within the hidden walls, treatment was skewed beyond the average viewers visibility. Patients are called by numbers or other demeaning names that assist them in disconnecting with the personality they had prior to entering the system. Then they are medicated, or beaten to the point where obedience is the only option and then after numerous coaching sessions patients are told to live, act and think a certain way, which takes away from their moral right to live, act, and think freely and at their own accord within the means of societal rules. At the end of the “healing” process, patients were destructed that to call them by the name they entered the system in would be an injustice to the new person that was reemerging to the world. That would be just Mad.

Works Cited

1. "Healing Touch - definition of Healing Touch in the Medical dictionary “ Medical Dictionary. Web. 16 Sept. 2012. <http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Healing+Touch>. 2. "Purdue OWL: MLA Formatting and Style Guide ." Welcome to the Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL). Web. 16 Sept. 2012. <http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/>. 3. Whitaker, Robert. "The Healing Hand of Kindness." Mad in America: bad science, bad medicine, and the enduring mistreatment of the mentally ill. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Pub., 2002. 19,21,22,24,25,27,28,29,33,37. Print.