McLean 2 I find that active nervous temperaments that are full of thought and intellect want full scope to dispose of their energy, for if not they will become extremely excitable. Such a mind cannot bear a tight place . . . —Phebe Davis Introduction After spending two years and three months in the New York Lunatic Asylum at Utica, Phebe Davis wrote, “When I was in the asylum they locked me up when they pleased, but what did I care for that as long as they had no key that would fit my mouth. I knew that I should live through it all, and I told them I should, and that when I got out they would hear from me” (Geller and Harris 49). Davis self published her survival memoir in 1855—one of the first texts published by a once-incarcerated mad woman. Although most readers, and even some fellow survivors, dismissed her writing as insane babble, Davis reclaimed her voice and spoke back to the doctors, the institutions, and the society that created and supported them. She asserts, “I can wear them out, which they cannot me, and I still choose my own position” (49-50). Davis’s mid-nineteenth century America saw the rise of modern psychiatry, the earliest asylums for the insane, and extraordinary writing about madness by those who experienced it. According to Maryrose Eannace, asylum patients wrote in an attempt to “bridge the separate spheres to create a place for the mad outside the asylum walls and within the broader culture of America” (2). Cries of protest came from patients within and outside vindicating their sanity and seeking to re-educate the society that tried to silence them. In A Social History of Madness, Roy Porter affirms the intentions of Davis and other mad writers, contending, “The writings of the mad challenge the discourse of the normal, challenge its right to be the objective mouthpiece of the times” (3). The body of literature written by asylum patients in mid-nineteenth McLean 3 century America explores both definitions of madness and the institutions that continued to affect policy and treatment of the mentally ill for decades. This project focuses on the written experiences of mid-nineteenth-century asylum inmates as published in The Opal, a monthly periodical of the New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica (published from 1851-60), and the post-asylum survival narratives of Phebe Davis, Hiram Chase, and Elizabeth Packard. The expository format of asylum memoirs, especially from female survivors, allows for an expanded version of asylum life and creates a standard still used for investigating and evaluating mental health treatment in America. Mid-nineteenth-century American madness literature documents a unique period of mental health institutionalization represented by the enigmatic insane asylum. Though posited as a source of sanctuary for the moral movement1, asylums never measured up to the ideals of the doctors and proponents of the moral treatment movement in America. Mad writers represent asylum life as the complex lived experience of community, survival, and resistance to erasure—all things celebrated by contemporary scholars of mental health memoirs and literature. Mad writers from the mid-nineteenth century American asylum experiment resisted erasure through radically transgressive acts of writing and publishing to present the realities of mental health oppression. Before 1810, only a few private institutions cared for America’s mad population. Over the course of the next few decades, a “cult of asylum swept the country” (Rothman 6) and state after state constructed public institutions for the insane. The popular notion that individuals suffering distress and disorders of the mind should be removed to a place of sanctuary, a 1 “Asylum” originates from an earlier Latin version, “asile” meaning “place of refuge, sanctuary” and from Greek “asylon” meaning “refuge, fenced territory” or “asylos” meaning “inviolable, safe from violence” (Use of the term in the 1600s through the 1700s likely referenced confinement as a method for keeping the rest of society safe. After 1793, Pinel’s reformations adjusted the meaning as a place to shelter a person suffering from social, mental, or bodily defects under the guidance of medical professionals (Porter and Foucault). Daniel H. Tuke provides extensive definitions, etymology, and synonyms for medical terms used for the treatment of the insane in his 1892 dictionary. McLean 4 confinement for protection and healing, resulted in the professional growth of psychiatry and the proliferation of asylums for the insane. In conjunction with the establishment of asylums and the growth of the psychiatric profession, new ideas about treatment and curability allowed a body of mad writers and publishers trying to make sense of their experiences to enter public discourse. This mid-nineteenth-century madness literature, consisting of the writing and narratives of asylum patients and survivors, highlights progressive mental health reform and gives voice to those labeled insane. Attention to this set of literature exposes oppression at the intersections of madness with other identities. Women and the “indigent insane” were especially likely to be committed to state asylums.2 By 1850, every legislature in the northeastern and midwestern states supported an asylum (Rothman 6). In 1843, the New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica became the central location for the emerging psychiatric profession and played a crucial role in formalizing and disseminating treatment information (Reiss Letters 1). The term “psychiatry” and its associated medical specialty did not gain popularity until the twentieth century. Before then, doctors working with mentally ill patients were called “alienists” and their patients were actually viewed as “aliens” (Bhugra and Gupta 92). In the mid-nineteenth century, alienists as medical specialists studied, cared for, and helped patients overcome mental alienation as well as behaviors that alienated them from society and their true selves. Derived from Latin alienus (other) and French aliene (insane), the English version of the word alien certainly also refers to the verb alienate (to isolate or reject) and effectively describes the manner in which patients were viewed by society 2 Feminist scholars Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady, and Phyllis Chesler, Women and Madness, document historical associations of women with madness explaining that names of presumed female disorders may change form one period to the next,but association of gender stereotypes remains (Showalter 4). Additionally, madness experienced by men is usually metaphorically or directly represented as feminine. Chesler critiques gender associations with mental illness in the psychiatric profession and at one point called for reparations that address and support the specific needs of marginalized women. McLean 5 and treated by its doctors and institutions.3 Institutionalization of the insane became standard procedure and widely accepted at face value as progressive intervention with curative results. The Utica asylum housed the American Journal of Insanity, the predominant source for alienists directing asylum work and later authorized the use of the same printing press to introduce a new literary journal, The Opal, written by asylum inmates. In circulation for nearly a decade (1851-60), The Opal chronicles the daily life and literary thoughts of Utica patients and documents the trajectory of the moral treatment movement for mental health in America. Periodicals, annual reports, and public tours of asylums during this period reached an ever-increasing readership curious about madness and the ideals of utopian communities (Eannace). The new world of asylums, represented by official asylum literature, cemented psychiatric authority within a culture of optimism about madness. However, not all was as it seemed. Most critical scholarship recognizes official asylum literature as “a sanitized version of the truth” (Clark 46). Post-asylum narratives or exposés written by survivors complement the writings of The Opal and provide a more thorough view of asylum experiences. Not only does this body of madness literature effectively illustrate the asylum experience, these writers effectively engaged in resisting erasure and redefining madness and its treatments. Asylum scholars such as Benjamin Reiss explain that asylums in this era sought to produce a “sanative culture” as the primary treatment for patients. From direct work with patients, reformers such as Pliny Earle, Benjamin Rush, and Dorothea Dix brought treatment of the insane to national attention. Asylum superintendents faced intense pressure to repair minds 3 Mary Elene Wood and other scholars use “psychiatric” and “psychiatrist” provisionally as the name did not exist until the twentieth century. Wood argues that the use of the term “alienists” to refer to so-called experts and early practitioners of mental health treatments is consistent with the nineteenth century preoccupation with otherness (171). The terms “alienist” and “psychiatrist” are used interchangeably in my text. Instead of the term “alien,” I follow the philosophy of Mad Studies and refer to patients as mad or mentally ill. McLean 6 broken by modern world pressures (Castel, et al.) and used every cultural experience available for rehabilitation of inmates. Reading and writing literature became important parts of this cultural treatment, but also caused some concern, thoroughly described by Reiss: “[. . .] the weight of an enormous institutional structure bore down on the patients, and the fulcrum bearing this weight was often the pen held in the hand of a maniac” (Theaters 7). Superintendents controlled inmate access to writing tools and approved of any literature emanating from the institution.4 From his analysis of the inner workings of asylums, Erving Goffman found that everyone associated with the lunatic culture engaged in a theater of passing. Asylum patients and superintendents faced intense pressures to present themselves in their specific roles to the public, resulting in what Goffman calls an “underlife” (203) where staff and patients engaged in activities not necessarily connected with the stated mission of the institution. Survivor narratives more thoroughly document the actions of asylum staff and inmates that occurred behind the walls and doors of the asylum. Reiss argues that most scholars focus on the subversive nature of patient writing produced in relation to the “totalizing power” (Letters 3) of institutional authority. My analysis acknowledges the subversive nature of mid-nineteenth-century asylum literature while reexamining this body of work as an historical example of narratives that inform Mad Studies. I begin with an overview of Mad Studies and related terminology, with additional emphasis on the 4 Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s autobiographical short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper—and her response to its reception, “Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper”—questions controversial control mechanisms, especially the “rest cure” used by Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell in his private sanitarium outside of Philadelphia. Gilman entered in 1855 seeking treatment for a nervous breakdown following the birth of her daughter and experienced “kindly treatment for neurasthenia” (Showalter 139) including isolation, confinement, restriction from intellectual work, massage, diet, and electricity. At discharge, Mitchell told her to “never touch pen, brush or pencil again as long as [she] lived” (Gilman 271), which caused her to descend into “utter mental ruin” within three months. She survived by writing her story, “rejoicing by this narrow escape” and sending it to Mitchell, who never acknowledged it. She noted, “The little book is valued by alienists and as a good specimen of one kind of literature. It has to my knowledge saved one woman from a similar fate...It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked” (271). McLean 7 historical context of contemporary interest in madness literature. I then examine changes in mental health treatment leading up to and following the unique decade of the “moral treatment” movement in psychiatry from 1850-60. My analysis focuses on the written experiences of asylum inmates by analyzing how selections from The Opal compare to the personal post-asylum narratives of Phebe Davis, Hiram Chase, and Elizabeth Packard. These writers effectively speak back to the powerful influence of psychiatry (Morrison)—and I contend that they were true activists and that these publications mark the true origins of what would come to be called Mad Studies. McLean 8 Mad Studies and Mad Literature Madness as a social construct changes over time and culture. Nineteenth-century psychiatrists used “lunatic,” “hysteria,” “diseased,” or “idiocy” to classify madness. Although we now view these terms as outdated or culturally irresponsible, we continue to use modern substitutes including “mentally ill,” “challenged,” “or psychiatrically disabled” to the same effect. All of these taxonomies of madness operate similarly to sort normal from abnormal, sane from insane, self from other, and to affirm a false binary that results in discrimination based on mental diversity. Mad scholars and activists reclaim these terms by challenging dominant understandings of human mental and social experiences. Before delving into my analysis of madness narratives in mid-nineteenth-century asylum literature, it is necessary both to contextualize Mad Studies and to clarify some terminology. Tobin Siebers argues that “mad and crazy are offensive terms, but they are also rhetorical indicators” of the ways society views human distress (qtd. in Price xi). Margaret Price explains that these terms, frequently used in conversation, also frame madness culturally within specific stereotypical images such as the homeless person muttering on the bus or the hospitalized figure with a medicated gaze. Contemporary ideas of madness stem from common assumptions of mental illness reinforced by media images: violent insanity associated with the threat of mass shootings, extraordinary insanity represented in figures like mathematician John Forbes Nash, Jr. as portrayed in the film A Beautiful Mind, the quirky or difficult person illustrated by millennials demanding mental health days and safe spaces, or the outlandish and popular madness of celebrity outbursts on social media. Elizabeth Brewer claims that “Coming out as mad, rather than mentally ill, makes a statement about how one views their experience and the nature of mental difference” (16). Mad McLean 9 scholars and activists contest the psychiatric profession’s word choices related to the embodiment and epistemology of human distress. Nineteenth-century American asylum superintendents, or alienists, led the investigation and discussion of the causes of insanity. The American Journal of Insanity published specialized terminology with fairly precise definitions: “mania,” “dementia,” “melancholia,” and “disease of the brain with organic lesions” (qtd. in Rothman 110). Modern word choice (reflected in a discussion thread from a March 2011 listserv for Disability Studies and Humanities) includes “disabled,” “consumer/survivor/ex-patient,” “mental illness,” “personality disorder,” “neurodiversity,” and others (qtd. in Brewer 16). A comparison of these lists illustrates that interpretations of insanity rest within the historic period and that insanity remains a significantly contentious issue as a cultural construction. The varied listed causes and symptoms of patient madness evidences the social construction of the term. Diagnostic tools such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and International Classification of Diseased (ICD) are in their fifth and eleventh revisions, respectively. Lawrence Davis argues that even the titles of these manuals identify disordered states of minds or deviations from the normal in detail approaching the absurd (Price 3). Diagnosticians rely on a set of behaviors or patient stories to identify curable dysfunctions, including insomnia, anxiety, depression, or compulsions, often related to patient sleep disturbance, substance abuse, or stress. Despite decades of scientific effort in developing diagnostic criteria, publishers of these manuals expressly state that they cannot match all conditions that occur in the human experience, thus they include labels such as “other/unspecified.” Early psychiatry similarly sought to report likely causes of mental illness among their patients, including “ill health,” “religious anxiety,” “masturbation,” “excessive study,” “blows on the head,” “political excitement,” “disappointed ambition,” “intemperance,” McLean 10 and even “going into cold water” (Rothman 111). While these may seem absurd or arbitrary, 19th century alienists nonetheless published their findings and established general theories that established a credible profession. Mad scholars use these examples and others to critique psychiatry and related institutional labels that subject individuals to discrimination and oppression rather than allowing individuals to choose their own labels or position themselves in society. The origins of Mad Studies (and its associated scholars and activists) originate in the “psychiatric society” (Castel et al.) that emerged in North America in the 1960s and 1970s following World War II and movements to redefine and reform mental health treatments. The mental health profession experienced a rebirth with an arsenal of biogenetic theories and technologies, including the first antipsychotic drugs that exerted a powerful influence over public and private life. Menzies et al. describe this as a movement to “psychiatrize contemporary culture,” and, as they go on to explain, “[f]rom our private thoughts to our love lives to the workplace to the world of entertainment and consumption, it seemed that no sphere of late 20th-century life fell beyond the mandate of mental medicine to refashion self and civilization, and to make us all happy, actualized, docile, and safe” (4). This ever-expanding influence of psychiatry did not go unopposed. Survivors of the mental health system, allied with scholars and activists, mobilized against institutional psychiatry by condemning power and coercion based on misunderstood or haphazard diagnoses (Thomas Szasz), labeling mental hospitals as “total institutions” (Erving Goffman) comparable to concentration camps and prisons (Goffman, Ken Kesey, David Rothman), and calling for an end to sex-role stereotyping in mental health (Phyllis Chesler, Elaine Showalter). McLean 11 Despite Mad liberation movements in the 1960s and 1970s, later decades witnessed a seemingly insurmountable response from psychiatry in the form of extensive diagnostic systems, corporatization of drugs, and increasingly popular calls for re-institutionalization of the insane to manage increasing social issues in the community (e.g. poverty, crime, and violence). Voices of dissent, more diverse than ever, continue to contribute a remarkable body of literature that refutes these measures. Richard Ingram argues that Mad Studies as a truly revolutionary discipline and “in/discipline” has the potential to unsettle the existing paradigms of psychiatric power. The in/disciplined nature of the movement centers on the voice of insiders, uniquely situated with personal knowledge and connection with others. While Brewer’s contention that “naming one’s relationship to madness, disability, or both is always a negotiation of risk and benefit” (19), doing so eliminates neat boundaries within and without institutions that maximize understanding and change. Peter Beresford argues that delineating madness as a unique subject of study “offers us all much greater hope of making sense of what goes on within us and what affects from the outside, how the two interact, and how their relationship may be made a much more positive and humanistic one” (qtd. in Menzies, et al. xi). At the intersection of individuals and a powerful system of discrimination, the Mad Studies scholars challenge and influence “the very languages, thoughtways, and social practices by which we collectively determine what it means to be ‘normal,’ worthy, and even human” (Menzies, et al. 20). Mad Studies not only critiques psychiatry and its associated policies and practices, but, more importantly, explores the language and experiences of mad people. Mad Studies focuses on a simple claim: listen to mad people and look at madness from their perspectives. McLean 12 Critical analyses of literature through this lens offer alternative conceptualizations of the human experience that elevate the often-overlooked voices and lived experiences of people considered mad. Madness as a social issue rather than a medical problem may seem new or unfamiliar in contemporary literary criticism, but its basic tenets found support much earlier in the mad writing of asylum patients during the early foundations of psychiatry amidst rapid changes in mid-nineteenth-century America. McLean 13 Rise and Fall of “Moral Treatment” in Psychiatry In 1851, the editors of The Opal selected the image of Philippe Pinel for the cover of their first publication in magazine format (see fig. 1). Pinel received an eight-page treatise in the journal, celebrating his contributions to the current asylum philosophy. The extended essay begins by referencing Pinel’s unchaining of the lunatics during the French Revolution: “Our readers may be familiar with the name and history of this remarkable man. To no other is the present humane policy of our institutions indebted” (The Opal “Introduction,”vol. 2, 17). The writer continues, citing a narrative of Pinel’s influence published in London in 1850, as follows: In the frightful prison of the Bicetre, the universal practice was to load the lunatic patients with heavy chains, which remained on for the remainder of their lives, and to immure them in dark, unwarmed, unventilated cells. Towards the end of the year 1792 however, Pinel, after having urged the government to allow him to unchain the maniacs at the Bicetre, but in vain, went himself to the authorities, and, with much earnestness and warmth, advocated the removal of this monstrous abuse. (17) Fig. 1. Cover of The Opal. Illustration of Philippe Pinel, founder of the “moral treatment” movement in France, from the hand of W.H. Green, Esq. artist of The Opal, New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica, Vol. 1, No. 1. New York State Archives, Identifier NYSA_B1480- 96_V1-N1_001. McLean 14 In a politically symbolic act reminiscent of the storming of the Bastille, Pinel spent weeks removing the chains of oppressive treatment in the French asylum and thereafter cemented his place—along with the similarly-minded English Quaker, William Tuke—as the founder of the practice of the practice that would be known as “moral treatment.” These initiatives signaled a shift in thinking about madness and the treatment of the insane that would soon gain currency in North America. Pinel and Tuke advocated for the removal of patients from the noise and disturbances of modern society. Following the tradition of insanity as a uniquely “English malady” (Showalter) caused by the national traditions of commerce, culture, ambition, and intelligence, American reformers identified democracy and independence as crucial influences on a growing epidemic of madness (Rothman). Tony Robert-Fleury’s 1876 painting illustrates Pinel’s lingering humanitarian influence on nineteenth-century asylum reform (see fig. 2). Pinel and his male colleagues and supporters look on as an unthreatening female asylum patient is freed from her chains. Pinel stands commandingly as other woman patients lie on the ground around him. One tears at her clothing, another stares vacantly while chained to a wall, and a third significantly kisses the doctor’s hand.5 The image of Pinel freeing the insane from chains, particularly his sympathetic treatment of patients and rational philosophy of reconstructing the mental world, captured the revolutionary vision of psychiatry and appealed to leaders of the new republic in 5 Elaine Showalter notes that Robert-Fleury’s painting offers a unique perspective on the connections between women and the confinement of madness. Pinel removed the chains of male inmates in 1793, but only “got around to the women” in 1800. Showalter argues that the painting represents sanity with male figures and insanity with “a beautiful woman whose disordered body and mind are exposed--and opposed--to the scrutiny of the man who has the authority to unchain her” (2-3). Showalter and Phyllis Chesler thoroughly document the statistical overrepresentation of women among the mentally ill. McLean 15 America. However, the application of moral treatment in the form of warm food and clothing and the abandonment of restraint were enough. In Madness and Civilization, Michel Foucault identifies two major historical events that define the treatment of madness in Western culture: “The Great Confinement” (xii) of the mid-seventeenth century and the liberation of the Bicetre by Philippe Pinel in 1793. These two events capture Enlightenment philosophies that encouraged states and nations to take charge of their unemployable and mentally ill, which led to confinement of patients in public institutions rather than in homes, and a break in what Foucault calls the “undifferentiated experience” (ix) and common language of sanity and insanity that existed prior to 1793. Foucault’s theory suggests a pervasive change in the social understanding of madness and an increased feeling of undesirability of cohabitation for the sane and insane. In other words, society further separated individuals labeled as insane from their homes, communities, and even from each other within institutions such as hospitals and prisons. Eannace argues that the nature of confined madness in Europe goes beyond Foucault’s theories Fig. 2. “Pinel Freeing the Insane,” 1793. The painting, completed more than three quarters of a century after the event, was part of the widespread asylum reform movement in later centuries. Tony Robert-Fleury, British Museum, 1878,0713.264 McLean 16 in a complex and dynamic system of both communal or “mad among us” models and institutional models with varying degrees of segregation and incarceration (11).6 However, both Foucault and Eannace concur that European communities horribly mistreated the insane with various methods of both confinement and erasure. Prior to Pinel, confinement of the mad focused on protecting society rather than on curing insanity. Foucault identifies Pinel’s liberation of the chained asylum patients as the moment that empowered medical professionals rather than the liberated oppressed: “the man of reason delegates the physician to madness” (x) and “the man of madness communicates with society only by the intermediary” (xi) of psychiatry, with a language established on the basis of patient silence. Pinel’s reform medicalized the dialogue about madness in society and vested authority in alienists rather than in diseased patients. By the 1830s, American alienists “calculated that insanity was increasing significantly in their society, not being cured” (Rothman 110) and that they needed to use their expertise to effect reform.7 In a uniquely American chain of events, reformers led by Dorothea Dix “plunged in with great energy and commitment to try and set things right” (125) through scientific observations and political action. A well-known force in conversations about national health, Dix reported the observed deficiencies of care for the insane to state legislatures who, in turn, formed 6 During the last half of the twentieth century, women’s madness narratives became a subject of investigation for scholars of the first and second waves of the Feminist movement. Primarily, these studies examined Victorian literature to identify madness as a modality of female oppression in a patriarchal society. Gilbert and Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic is perhaps the most prominent example, in which the authors argue that female characters embody a dichotomy of “angel” or “monster,” with the madwoman falling under the latter classification, and advocate the need to move past this dualism. Asylum memoirs provide interesting examples of such literary moves as well as representations of the complex methods of confinement identified by Eannace. 7 In The Manufacture of Madness, Thomas Szasz denies the existence of mental illness as a fact of nature and defines it as the result of labels fabricated by psychiatrists to advance their profession and endorsed by society as a way to resolve problematic relationships with people. From Szasz’s perspective, American alienists’ move to reform the treatment of mental illness in the nineteenth century proves the ideal moment for the developing profession to create lasting influence. McLean 17 investigative committees whose findings overwhelming agreed with Dix. The Association of Medical Superintendents (AMS), organized in 1844, focused on building asylums. They published the American Journal of Insanity (AJI) and by 1851 had established resolutions and policy statements that produced a system for organizing and managing asylums that was remarkably efficient but “remained unalterably fixed to its original program, becoming a stumbling block to experimentation and innovation” (Rothman 135). In theory, moral treatment recognized the insane as “victims of forces beyond their control, not to blame for their misfortunes (Rothman 125-26). Asylum superintendents, using experimentation rather than research, paradoxically did not focus on curing the society that they identified as the cause of madness (Eannace 12). In practice, they established an asylum model similar to other American utopian projects based on gentle, parental care of patients in a disciplined and controlled environment. Generously funded by state legislatures and wealthy donors, and with the support of charitable public sentiment toward mad people, members of the AMS “established the guidelines for translating confinement to cure” (Rothman 137). Elaine Showalter defines moral treatment, explaining, “The triple cornerstone of psychiatric theory and practice were moral insanity, moral management, and moral architecture” (29). First, the moral asylum program required the prompt removal of the insane from the local community. Dr. Waddell, superintendent of the New Brunswick asylum wrote, “No insane man recovers at home” (qtd. in Menzies, et al. 38). Alienists, motivated to prove themselves as a new specialty, developed a public relations campaign that sold asylum life and their expertise to the public through published papers and annual meetings with legislators and community leaders. Second, the asylum must be located in rural, tranquil areas, away from the corruption of busy urban environments. Thomas Kirkbridge, superintendent of the Pennsylvania Hospital for McLean 18 the Insane, developed what would come to be known as the “Kirkbridge Plan” for all mid-century American asylums featuring a massive center building several stories high and separate wings at right angles that separated men and women (Eannace 40-41). Such isolation of patients from their community—and from each other—allowed alienists to retrain patients’ social behaviors without the need for restraints. The third and most important element of the moral asylum program focused on the daily routines of patients. According to Rothman, the asylum needed “to control the patient without irritating him, to impose order but in a humane fashion. It has to bring discipline to bear but not harshly, to introduce regularity into chaotic lives without exciting frenetic reactions” (138). Superintendents devoted time and attention to what public hygiene. Reiss explains, “[. . .] the asylum was not just a space for restoring the rationality of the insane; it was also an institution devoted to the purification and rationalization of culture” (Theaters 8). Upon entry, asylum staff divided patients into wards based on presenting behaviors and, often, social class. Higher order wards allowed for parties, contact with the opposite sex, walks in the country, reading, worship, and writing. Lower order wards, reserved for the most serious cases and indigent mad, sought to eliminate patients’ guilty pleasures and the lower cultural practices which likely landed them in the asylum, including drink, gambling, masturbation, idleness, and, especially for women, hysterical crying, listless torpor, and social improprieties. Rather than writing and intellectual work, lower ward patients engaged in manual labor. Asylum superintendents acted as father figures in the important scheme of moral treatment efforts to direct patient minds along healthy avenues of thought. Superintendents read scriptures aloud during evening gatherings and organized lectures about the importance of contributing to the asylum household. Foucault observes that asylums formed a microcosm that McLean 19 symbolized bourgeois society and its values in “the relationship of family and children structured by a theme of paternal authority, the relationship between fault and punishment around the theme of immediate justice; and the links between madness and disorder around the theme of social and moral order. It was here that the origins of the doctor’s power to cure [and control] were to be found” (507-08). Asylums controlled patients and, significantly, over time they controlled the definitions of madness. The mad had little influence in determining these policies, designing reform, or even in raising awareness. Medical professionals and their corresponding political reformers spoke exclusively for and about the mad except for one small opportunity that presented itself at the Utica Asylum. Superintendent Amariah Brigham accepted the superintendency at Utica during the asylum’s pre-opening stage in 1842. Already an established authority on the progressive moral treatment of the insane, he soon became a leader in asylum medicine through publications and successful treatment of patients. Rothman, citing from the asylum’s annual reports explains that asylum rules under Brigham included, “Under all circumstances be tender and affectionate; speak in mild, persuasive tone of voice [. . .] Violent hands are never to be laid upon a patient, under any provocation (149). Although part of the establishment of the profession of psychiatry, Brigham maintains distinction as an early ally for the mad writing. According to Eannace, Brigham set a strong precedent not only by establishing humane policies and encouraging mad research by personally funding the creation of the AJI, he also published materials from patients and former patients (64-65) in an effort to create avenues of communication between patients and the outside world. Brigham’s efforts, he hoped, might destigmatize madness. His own articles include extracts from patient writing. His patients had full access to the AJI and other psychiatric materials related to their own treatments. He valued patient writing and arranged for McLean 20 patient use of the AJI print shop. Although he did not live to see the publication of The Opal, he set in place the means for publication under the tenures of the similarly supportive Nathan Benedict and even the antagonistic John Gray. Gray’s eschewing of moral treatment and Brigham’s policies in favor of medicalization of madness and his own policies of autocratic management and censorship allowed for only a brief window where the writers, calling themselves Opalians or Asylumians, could use their own voices to influence societal ideas of madness. Gray and other like-minded superintendents established a lasting paradigm for the medicalization of madness and dehumanization of patients with science that focused on pathology rather than humanity. Superintendents’ increasing identification with science and ever increasing patient numbers gradually diminished the therapeutic communities in asylums and effectively silenced asylum writers and publishers. With its ten-year run, The Opal comprises a unique body of mad literature that exposes the ills of institutionalized medicine during the period. With imbrications of self-definition, community, reform, and survival, this asylum literature offers an alternative discourse on the history of institutionalized madness. McLean 21 Conversations on Madness and Mad Writers In the first issue of The Opal, writers and editors set themselves to the task of redefining the ideas of madness circulating in mid-19th-century popular culture. Opalians sought inclusion and acceptance and they were received with mixed reviews. Asylum memoirs published by survivors reference the practical applications of new treatments. Asylum annual reports and censored pieces published in The Opal document inflated success stories of optimistic physicians. Inmate exposés uncover the unsightly day-to-day life for most inmates. Combined, this body of madness literature affected the establishment and supervision of long-term mental health practices in America. The New York Evening Post’s initial review, included in The Opal, reads: A CRAZY NEWSPAPER.-- “The Opal” is the name of a monthly paper to be issued by inmates of the New-York State Lunatic Asylum. It is edited and printed entirely, we believe, by those who are commonly considered as crazy. --But judging by the contents of the first number, we do not discover half as many signs of craziness in it, as we might in several other of our exchanges. The lunatics of the Utica Asylum know too much to put their madness in print.--They give us poetry, essays, tales, speculations, and anecdotes, and all of an average sanity, to say the least. (“The Editor’s Table,” vol. 1, no. 1, 7) By printing a lucid, coherent literary journal similar to other popular or sane publications, Opalians upset readers’ expectations. To the general public and their subscribers, the Opalians explained: “The Opal” will be published at the New-York State Lunatic Asylum, on the first of each month, and regularly mailed to Subscribers at 50 cents per annum, payable in advance. McLean 22 We think we may safely say, that our arrangements are such as to secure its regular issue for one year; its continuance after that period must, in great measure, rest on the degree of favor which our kind friends, the Public, may bestow upon it. Its contents will be the production of patients, which being considered, must, we believe, disarm criticism of its venom. As a literary curiosity we beg to recommend “The Opal” to all Bibliomaniacs. (“The Editor’s Table,” vol. 1, no. 1) In their introduction to the new literary journal, Opalians challenged the literary constructs of madness by writing within a narrow confine between what many viewed as normalcy and eccentricity. The journal debuted by adhering to what Opalians and asylum supervisors likely deemed socially acceptable literary and business techniques, an appropriate blend of attention to business operations and the self-deprecation expected of writers residing in a state charitable institution. Opalians positioned themselves both with relative publishing sophistication and a surprising bit of self-deprecating humor, acknowledging the curious public sentiment on madness and aligning themselves with other bibliomaniacs, a clear play on words carefully associating anyone reading of their journal with the inmates who showed similar obsessive tendencies for reading. This introduction expresses Opalians’ desires to destigmatize and redefine mental health issues in a public space. The Opal began publication during a decade called the “Golden Age of Periodicals,” a period of intense interest in periodicals, which saw about six hundred contemporary periodicals in circulation (Mott qtd. in Eannace 95). In a time when most new publishing ventures failed within the first two years, The Opal experienced a ten-year run. New York state not only subsidized costs, but also supported a cultural moment when the stereotypes of madness in society allowed Opalians and their supervising physicians to trade on the curiosities of their McLean 23 audience. Despite the harsh circumstances imposed upon them by asylum isolation, these mad writers consumed and reviewed the literature and politics of the day, used the printing press and other technological developments in printing, and entertained the public through its miscellany. The Opal, “devoted to usefulness,” as indicated on the journal title page, simultaneously entertained its readers and challenged assumptions about the limitations of the insane. The Opal editors recognized similarly obscure periodical issues from asylums, such as the Retreat Gazette, a newsletter published by a patient at the Hartford Retreat and ending when the patient was cured and left the asylum, and The Entertainer, a weekly publication of inmates writing from the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, which had limited circulation (“The Editors Table,” vol. 2, 192). Only The Opal survived and benefited from an extended subscription and exchange list. The explicit purpose of the periodical was to acquire means to supply a patient library. The curious and philanthropic response was strong, resulting in numbers reported in Superintendent Benedict’s annual report just over a year after publication. Benedict reports, “The amount of reading matter we are able to place in the hands of the patients is very large” including exchanges of 220 weeklies, four semi-weeklies, eight dailies, and 32 monthlies and 650 volumes of standard works (qtd. in Eannace 117). Such success led to better ink and paper and an increase in length to about 300 pages per volume through the sixth iteration. In the second edition, editors reported a list of 900 paid subscribers, a list comparable to many popular periodicals. Eannace’s thorough investigation of patient casebooks from the Utica Asylum with fragmentary mentions of involvement in The Opal provides some insight into the mad writers of journal. For the most part, they were “of better than average education” private pay residents likely of the first ward rather than indigent patients (90). Because they resided in wards with McLean 24 privileged communication and social interaction, Opalians may have formed a type of “writer’s colony” (90). Most pieces in the journal are unsigned, but Eannace estimates that perhaps more than fifty mad writers contributed overall with a core group of about half a dozen men and women who consistently printed, wrote, and solicited submissions over the ten-year run. Reiss notes that critical analysis of The Opal provides “an elliptical record of the lives, thoughts, and experiences of the authors” (“Letters” 2-3) and suggests that asylum moral treatment policies did provide a respite and significant opportunity for mad writers to have a voice. Reiss explains that it is not always clear whose voices we are hearing, as most of the writing was published anonymously or with authoritative editing (Reiss “Listening” par. 4), but the voices nonetheless remain culturally relevant because they provide a more accurate representation of human experience than readers would have from merely reading official asylum reports. The Opal provided credibility for mad authors and introduced a version of mad writing in a public forum. Eventually, The Opal ended. The novelty wore off, subscriptions declined, the exchange system was discontinued, and some patient writers may have succumbed to the progress of their mental infirmities within the oppressive environment. Superintendent Gray’s increasingly autocratic methods may have proven too much for the editors. The Opalians consistently included the statement, “Edited by the Patients,” which likely represented superintendent Benedict’s initial goal for helping patients discover their own voice and usefulness as a moral treatment cure. As Gray’s supervision increased and freedom to write and express ideas decreased, Opalians lost the established connection to the outside world and each other and their means for defining their own relationship with madness. The fifth volume includes this additional statement: McLean 25 We deem it proper to say, here, that its articles are all written by patients, and under no other ‘supervision’ or restraint than their own genii. The beloved and honored Superintendent, nor either of his estimable Assistants interpose any control or direction in the production of the brains or pens of the contributors to the OPAL—that is, they do not advise or supervise in the matter, farther than to express their decisions that such and such individuals, thus desiring--and many are here, somehow seized with author-mania, who never before thought of the thing--may be furnished with writing materials and opportunities to ‘improve their gift.’ Every one thus furnished, writes, ‘what is written;’ each article appears, and such alterations only, as the principle editor, or the printer, might properly make in similar cases regarding punctuation, &c. (“The Editor’s Table” vol. 5, 188) Being furnished with materials and opportunities proves the obvious contradiction here. It may very well be true that Gray regularly and increasingly disallowed writing and the privilege of remaining on the first floor ward with access to the patient library. Patient Phebe Davis sarcastically describes the superintendence of the asylum and the possibility that some long-term patient writers found themselves silenced during the fading years of the asylum: There is a class of incurable patients in the institution that have been there a long time, that are capable of retaining a great many facts relative to the by-gone treatment of the house; it was from such minds that I derived that most reliable knowledge in regard to the former proceedings in the house, and very much too that cannot be published. Dr. Gray is a beautiful character to superintend that institution; I have not told it all yet. Them [sic] devils did not like the idea of my leaving that place alive, rightly named hell. (91-92). McLean 26 The actual source of the demise of The Opal remains a mystery, but likely originates in a combination of all multiple factors alluded to in public reports, survival narratives, and the coded language about restriction that appeared more often in later volumes of The Opal. While physicians and Opalians published in journals and generally refrained from explicitly describing anything other than the saintly and humanitarian aspects of the asylum, other patients risked liberty and reputation to reveal the darker reality of life inside the asylum. First-person survivor narratives in the exposé form specifically document widespread unjust and abusive asylum practices. In Mad Literature: Insane Asylums in Nineteenth-Century America, Emily Clark examines the ways patient inmates subverted institutional power and oppression. Clark argues that these transgressive writers established public identities to “oppose the stereotypical perceptions of the mad” (42). Like the Opalians, Davis, Chase, and Packard not only recognized fallibility in diagnosing insanity, but actually capitalized on dispelling popular myths of madness to influence change. Any identification of a relationship to madness means a negotiation of risk and benefit for patients. Survivor narratives, evidenced by the selections analyzed here, include the following common literary devices: personal definition of madness, detailed personal history, journey to the asylum, and witness statements corroborating distance from madness. Unlike Opalians whose identities remain unknown, survivors made strong representations that distanced themselves from actual or perceived mad identities. Chase noted that he never had a sick day, never lost a meal, and never laid down on the bed during the day, rejecting the characteristics that typically marked insanity in the asylum. Davis proposes that, rather than insanity, her social status, lack of protection, and exhaustion from overwork led to her admission at Utica. Packard never admitted to insanity, testifying on paper and in court, “I was in perfect health and of sound mind” (15) and McLean 27 at the asylum she refused to recant her religious beliefs, to submit to the tyranny of doctors, or to surrender her conscience to her husband’s dictations in order to obtain a release. According to Reiss, writing from within the confines of the asylum actually provided some protections for the Opalians who “were in some senses rhetorically liberated from their own civil death” (Letters 19) where they were able to develop stable literary personas free from the literary marketplace. Reiss’s logic suggests that writers deemed mad have no right to freedom of speech other than what their audience reads with charity and, as such, Opalians suffered less public scrutiny. This protection afforded to Opalians might explain the long-term success of The Opal, and certainly explains the material disadvantages faced by survivors writing from a position of recovered sanity. A cloud of suspicion hung over the works of former patients made stronger by superintendents who argued that such exposés provided evidence of lingering pathology (Ray, qtd. in Reiss Letters 17). Former patients had to expend their own social and financial capital to publish, distribute, and persuade readers to engage in their narratives. Mary Wood explains that the formulaic nature of survivor narratives serves a purpose for former patients who “faced the problem of how to create self-narratives that would be read as legitimate, as sane, when they themselves had been labeled insane” (11). To partially address these issues, survivors went into great detail about their mad identities. Former Utica patient Phebe Davis included witnesses of her character on the inscription of her book, Two Years and Three Months in the New York Lunatic Asylum at Utica. While not easily identifiable today, these names likely represent upstanding citizens, and at least two include their medical credentials, alluding to some corroboration of her recovered state of mind. Hiram Chase admits his hesitancy in even mentioning his time spent in an asylum because he McLean 28 worries about how it may tarnish his reputation. His narrative ends with two character testimonials that certify his abilities as a current pastor, his apparent physical and mental health, as well as his honest character evidenced over 30 years of acquaintance. Again, one of these testimonials comes from a credentialed physician. Elizabeth Packard, making a case for what she calls “the legalized usurpation of humans rights” of women by insane asylums, includes a unique character witness. In the preface of her narrative she explains that “the facts herein stated have been authenticated and corroborated by the Illinois Investigating Committee” appointed by the state legislature and the state court who acknowledged the writer and witnesses as “competent,” and “In point of intelligence, character and credibility, they are as worthy of belief as other witnesses on whose testimony in court, the property, character, liberty and lives of suitors daily depend.” Survivors relied not only on their writing skills, but also on reliable witnesses, to evidence their distance from madness. The relative ease with which families and neighbors incarcerated their loved ones in asylums proves the most disturbing similarity amongst all of the survivor narratives and illustrates the ways the profession of psychiatry influenced public sentiment on madness and asylums. Chase, Davis, and Packard unsuccessfully relied on what would prove to be flimsy legal protections and they each internalized the popular notion that asylums would support their healing through rest and compassionate support. They did remarkably little to prevent their own admissions and later used these stories to debunk asylum myths and redefine madness. With her “nervous system destroyed by overdoing and ill-treatment” as a working class teenager in a sewing shop, Davis found little protection within her community (9) and explains that asylum life would provide room, board, and rest after her grueling hours of employment. While walking for her health, a neighbor on the street informed her that the local magistrate had McLean 29 an order for her commitment to the asylum. Having recently sold some clothing in order to buy furniture and set up house for herself, she considered the health and financial benefits of asylum life as generally touted in the community and right away sold her furniture and made arrangements for her own transportation and necessities for admission. She transported herself to the Utica asylum and reported to the magistrate that she “had seen the institution, and the location was beautiful, the air salubrious—just an atmosphere as my constitution required during the warm season of the year—and I felt perfectly safe in regard to the treatment, for I knew it could not be much worse than such as I was receiving daily” (20). Her rational behavior defies stereotypes of insanity and even Davis notes, “How odd, that a lunatic woman should be allowed and even obliged thus to transact business for herself!” (19). Davis, like other asylum survivors, noted that she went readily into the institution because she “had heard so much said in commendation of the institution and of the kind treatment that patients received there” (18). Her first impression that “all was not right in that Asylum” proved sadly true. Packard entered the Illinois asylum despite her protected status as a wife, mother, and leader in her community. Perhaps as a result of previously published survivor narratives, Packard vehemently opposed asylum admission but could do little to halt her journey to the asylum. At the time of her admission, Packard and the reverend Theophilus Packard had been married for 21 years and had six children together. He claimed her religious views threatened his children and the community and used her religious writings as evidence of her insanity and reason for admission to an asylum. Even after he told her of his intentions to take her to an asylum, Packard did not try to flee or seek refuge, but rather remained in the home and continued her domestic obligations to him their children. She sought legal advice from a friend and local attorney who advised her that the legal system would provide protection to a woman of her status, which McLean 30 proved false. After a “sleepless night of evil forebodings,” two physicians interrupted her morning routine to check her pulse. Without allowing her to answer any questions about her health status and then citing her half-dressed state as evidence of insanity, they certified her admission within three minutes (43). She allowed the men, along with the local magistrate, to escort her to the public train depot where her friends and neighbors gathered to see her off as if she were embarking on a leisure trip. Despite her internal struggle, she yielded to what she called her “feminine weakness” and resolved to accept her fate and enjoy the train journey (58). She explains, “I held onto my husband’s arm, as he guided my footsteps up the massive stone steps, into my dreary prison” (50). Later, the asylum doctors refused to acknowledge her obviously rational state of mind. She found herself a “legal nonentity” (75) as the state laws required Packard’s consent for her release and asylum doctors privileged his word against even their own observations. After being introduced to the asylum doctors in a luxurious waiting room and office, Packard found herself alone in a cell with nothing but a “hard narrow settee” and her own astonishment at the lack of protections against solitary confinement (59) in the asylum. She reports: I found that my personal liberty, my personal identity, were entirely at the mercy of Mr. Packard and Dr. McFarland; that no law of the Institution or of the State, recognised my identity while a married woman; therefore, no protection, not even the criminal’s right to self-defense, could be extended to me; and therefore I must intelligently yield up all hopes of my personal liberty, so long as Mr. Packard and Dr. McFarland lived and agreed in keeping me imprisoned” (77, emphasis mine). Although Davis and Packard came from different social classes, they found themselves similarly victimized by public ignorance and an increasing reliance on supposed psychiatric experts. The McLean 31 Packards’ parting scene especially illustrates public reliance on false notions of compassion in the asylum. Packard pleads with her husband and the doctor but both men attribute her emotions to madness. Her husband remarks, “I hoped we should have a pleasant parting?” and resigns himself that he feels sorrowful because “She is such a good wife” but that ultimately asylum incarceration is “for her good” (72). Regardless of the good intentions of doctors and their moral treatments, which had been misrepresented to the public by The Opal and official asylum publications, Davis and Packard had little recourse. Chase’s status as a clergyman and the legal rights afforded his gender could not overcome these notions of madness or stop his asylum admission. Friction within his congregation wore heavily on him, and as he explains, it “threw me into a diseased state of mind” (12). After suffering for a period of time with social isolation, restlessness, and failed appetite, he asked his wife to fetch a doctor. Two doctors visited him and then amongst each other determined to get a warrant from the judge to take him to the Utica asylum. Chase reports that, after a night’s rest following the treatments of the physician, he woke feeling better. However, church leaders and men in the community arrived to escort him to the train depot. He had lost his personal liberty simply by admitting to poor health and eliciting treatment from local doctors. Despite his resistance and rational explanations to the contrary, everything he did or said simply confirmed his insanity. Upon admission to the asylum, Chase writes, “I saw that I had been deceived; that I was torn from home without my consent; was to be shut up with raving maniacs, and probably die with them. I saw how cold and unfeeling men could be when a little power was given them; I felt that the world and the church had turned against me” (23). He assumed that he could enter the asylum peacefully and that the law and doctors would see his McLean 32 version of events; however, he found that it was not necessary for asylum doctors to even consult with other doctors, judges, jurors, or even the patient to force incarceration. Chase documented cases of fellow inmates who readily consented to asylum admission because they had come to believe that asylums compassionately cared for patients. Media representations of asylum, even in The Opal, proved harmful and misleading. Of the profession of psychiatry and the asylum institution, Chase declares, “Here a grand field is opened for operation for designing men and women and for speculation” (28). Upon arrival at the asylum and later when contemplating his memoir, Chase obviously recognized the influence of asylum superintendents to raise money and invest in a public relations campaign in their best interests. Unfortunately for many patients, their public writing and fundraising did little to prevent mistreatment of admitted patients who lost their connection to the outside world. Instead of providing sanctuary as advertised, asylums actually provided a perfect design for staff to victimize patients deprived of legal rights. Chase and other asylum survivors sought to change the public representations of asylums and the power afforded their superintendent doctors. In the third volume of The Opal, an anonymous writer penned a plea for subscriptions in order to increase the patient library at Utica. The piece also includes interesting commentary on public perceptions of madness. The Opalian writes, “Painful, indeed, is the ignorance under which people labor with regard to Asylums or the minds therein; and when crowds come here to see, how aptly could this scripture be applied,—‘what went ye up to see? A reed shaken with the wind?’” (122). The writer acknowledges an increased interest in the everyday workings of the asylum, referring to the large numbers of day trippers who come to view the patients out of idle curiosity. Citing popular notions that overstudy and mental stimulation lead to madness, makes the case that the public needs to broaden their understandings of madness and mad patients. McLean 33 Using language learned from alienist proponents of moral treatment, the Opalian explains, “The minds of men are as various as their tastes, and require very different degrees of cultivation” and then suggests that reading as a prescribed, supervised treatment quiets the mind and renders the soul tranquil (“The Opal Library,” vol. 3, 121-22). This writer seems to provide the evidence of curability desperately sought by alienists in their need for public support and private donations. Within this appeal for subscriptions, typical in The Opal, the writer provides coded insight into madness and the treatment of patients. To his fellow Asylumians, he advises, “‘Wise heads keep their mouths close’” (123) and appeals to the public: “The sooner the heart of insanity is reached the better, the sooner the restoration to the duties of life obtained, the better for individual, for Asylum, and the State” (124). He notes that the course of study prescribed by asylum doctors does not compare to the “freeness of collegiate life,” adding, “still it must be allowed that appearances, which are very deceitful, are here truly characteristic of a respectability that will bear probing” (123). This is a challenging piece to interpret. Although the writer appears to be redefining mental health and seems to be endorsing the moral treatment of patients, he also alludes to a degree of elision about the inner working of asylums and the motives of doctors, perhaps suggesting that it needs real probing through public investigation. Opalian writing about asylum life generally appears cheery with romanticized poems and editorials sharing the highlights of their asylum residency: holiday celebrations, community outings, and opportunities for worship and work. However, Reiss argues that much of The Opal writing “conveys detachment, airiness, a dematerialized portrayal of life and writing” (Letters 15) in a way that actually points to what is missing or what is hidden. The coded writing of Opalians proves a less progressive voice about madness when compared to the survival McLean 34 narratives. Davis, Chase, and Packard each provide examples of dissonance between the portrayal of asylums in public discourse and the actual inner workings that affected patients. After observing a female attendant striking a female patient and hearing her report to the superintendent that the resulting bloody lip was a self-inflicted bite, Davis determined to survive and tell the story. Risking his reputation as a recovering lunatic, Chase felt compelled to publish his story “To warn the good people of the state of New York to never send their wives, their children, or any of their dependents to a State institution for the cure of any disease of the body or mind, where the patient is confined by bolts and bars by legal sanction, and where the sole power over the patient is vested in one man, whose word is law” (9). Packard likewise wrote “to fasten the public eye upon this evil, as the great germinating cause of the insanity of the present age” (Preface) and to refute the popular idea that asylums are for the good of the patient or society. Survivor narratives contain detailed and corroborated evidence of the mistreatment of asylum patients with descriptions fitting the gothic genre. Without going into too much detail, it is important to note that survivor narratives concur when describing inadequate patient accommodations, clothing, and food, and the forms of punishment and other abhorrent treatment of patients strategically enacted behind the moral treatment facade and asylum walls. Eannace argues that even the coded writing of The Opal reinforces patient accounts of being purged, bled, McLean 35 tortured with water, force fed, and sometimes locked in the infamous Utica crib” (see fig. 3). The crib consisted of wooden slats and bars that encased the patient and provided little space for movement. Not overlooking the importance of these treatment details, this analysis focuses on the ways in which asylum patients subverted asylum policies and public sentiment about madness to write about madness and to ultimately resist silence. The exactness in the descriptions of their treatment exemplifies the proliferation of treatment models established by the emerging psychiatric profession and the widespread subversion of patient voices in response. Chase writes about the illusion of success created by proponents of moral treatment asylums, explaining, “My object in writing this sketch, is not to find fault or pick flaws with this institution, for there is no institution in the land of whatever character, but has its enemies--this is all understood; but because this is so, it does not follow that an institution cannot become rotten, and that the people have not rights to investigate its secret workings” (149). Davis also takes note of elements of secrecy apparent during her time at Utica, especially connected to the supervising doctors who wielded powerful influence over patient communication and public information. She writes, “When strangers are present, Dr. Benedict is all complacency, and very much a Fig. 3. Utica crib used to restrain patients. Described by Davis and others as a treatment for disruptive patients. Developed by Superintendent Amariah Brigham as implemented in asylums across the country after the 1850s. Although viewed as progressive compared to shackles and straightjackets and as a method to prevent suicide, the crib’s actual use remains controversial. McLean 36 gentleman in his deportment, and his natural tone of feeling is extremely nice,” (44) but she also notes that he actually ignored patient reports of discomfort and abuse, “for if [doctors] were to acknowledge that they believed the patients, and then treated them as they do, after hearing their different complaints, it would look as though they designed to treat them wrong just as they do” (24). Like Davis, Chase also recognizes a discrepancy between public representations of asylum work and reality. To accurately describe his experience at Utica, Chase uses the term “captivity” and explains the subversive treatment he received as a prisoner: Could the beams of these prison houses speak out, and could the stones cry out of the walls of some of those upper back halls in the asylum at Utica, the revelations of the woes and suffering of humanity would so shock and astonish the outward world, that instead of classing this institution with the humane and benevolent institutions of the country, it would be classed with those ancient bastiles which have furnished a history of the most cruel and bloody tragedies ever acted under the sun! (31). Survivors unanimously noted the varieties of privileges and treatments afforded patients residing on each of the 11 wards. Higher numbered ward residents experienced extreme treatments in the form of fetters, irons, and the infamous Utica crib. Restraints in next level wards consisted of seat tie downs and straight jackets or perhaps muffs to inhibit masturbation. Only residents of the first and second enjoyed social interaction with members of the opposite sex, library access, and writing materials. Private pay patients, those that Eannace acknowledges as the likely sole contributors end editors of The Opal, constituted a very small number of patients at the asylum. Chase’s experience illustrates what Opalians would have likely experienced with access to the library and time to write only if he obeyed orders, asked no questions about his treatment, and made no McLean 37 complaint. He explains, “To judge of the inmates of the asylum, and the workings of this institution by inspecting this hall, would be a deception” (77). Superintendents, in fact, deceived the public by only allowing public tours of the upper halls where patients received the best treatment and by allowing Opalians to write glowing reviews of the Utica asylum, a “city set on a hill, presented in its original design, in our humble opinion, of the most stupendously magnanimous institutions--the humanity of genius could invent” (“Editor’s Table” vol. 4, 308). Yet, even in this piece, the editor suggests that changes in the foundation and officers of the asylum have been somewhat numerous and that the original superintendents act as beacons and guides to their followers with the hope that the doctors will “arrive to the statue of perfection and humaneness” (308). Again, when compared to the writings of Chase and Davis, this passage at the end of the fourth year of The Opal suggests a decline in operation or at least a coded recognition of a lack of humanity in the institution. In the first edition, the editor referred to asylum practices as a “harvest of minds” wherein doctors carefully supervised patient access to learning to afford healing. In this later edition, the Opalian editor uses the metaphor darkly, writing, “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and the sere and yellow leaf approaches to warn us of the decline of the season” (307). Based on Chase and Davis’ descriptions of asylum operations, this Opalian might be referencing his or her own punishment and movement to a ward to languish or the ultimate demise of the publication and a once-intentioned method for destigmatizing madness. Chase came to the conclusion “that the life of the patient in that institution is counted of no value, and that many pass away from that place, that the manner of their coming to their end will never be known in this world” (134) and that a mad patient “was blank in all matters of opinion” (145). Only through the highly scrutinized and supervised pieces in The Opal and the McLean 38 expose narratives of asylum survivors can mad writers reclaim their identities. Writing allowed these marginalized patients to define madness themselves. Opalians used the authorized printing of their journal to code messages to the public and each other. Eannace identifies one particular story written for The Opal that uses humor to send a nonthreatening message about asylum life. The patient writer describes taking tea with villagers on a special off-grounds visit, commenting, “our facilities for seeing genteel society had of late been rather limited” (“The Editor’s Table,” vol. 2, 253). Doctors rewarded patient behavior with visits to the village where patients could meet important people and be observed as recovering. The Opalian writes, “Our natural aptness soon led us to observe an evident and momentarily increasing inclination on the part of some of the guests, to be uncommonly sedate! In fact, it reminded us forcibly of the pleasure (!!) of sitting at the “Doctor’s Table” so called, at home!” (253). Eannace explains that the story embeds a “wicked laugh at the pedantic and pompous doctors of the asylum who put their patient-dinner guests to sleep” (212). Although trivialized through humor, the story and its embedded message speaks to the forcible use of patients by doctors to build up their own practices. Davis’s desire to share her story of madness proved stronger than asylum rules and she documented her experience in coded notes on scraps of paper she hid in her work-box. Davis explains that when she left the asylum, she copied the notes about the treatment of fellow patients and used them, explaining, “what my work-box would not hold my head did, and the old box, and head too, are the places from which I now take extracts” (80). One note described the asylum attendants, “hired help who threatened to take the life of another” patient (79). Davis noted names of specific patients who disappeared after residing in the lower halls and reports, “The reputation of the house is the first consideration, and not the welfare of the patients. If there McLean 39 is anything likely to get out, the leaks are soon calked in a hurry” (80). Patients like Davis who tried to complain or write about their experiences had their papers confiscated and their mail and other communications restricted. Chase responded stoically to ill treatment by asylum doctors and staff to ensure access to books and writing materials. Despite his apparent conformity to moral treatment methods, he used his experiences to question the definition of insanity and to encourage public investigation of asylums. Packard saved a copy of the religious writings that challenged her husband and led to her asylum admission. This document, as well as her documented reproof of asylum practices, remained hidden between the glass and the board of her mirror. Worried that she might disappear into a dungeon ward and never be seen again, she saved these documents with the hopes that someday someone would find her writing, and it would be a vindication of her mysterious death and sanity (89). Eventually, Packard used these documents in a court of law, which led to new laws and policies governing asylum admission for women and children. As a member of the clergy, Chase often heard stories about asylum life from his parishioners. Prior to his own admission to the asylum, he attributed these stories to rumor and “the wild freak of a disordered mind” (7). His opinion on the propriety of keeping people in asylums mirrored those of the public: “the doctors were the most wise and skillful men in the world; that the nurses and attendants were well skilled in the business; that great care and patience were exercised over the patients, and that no stone was left unturned to soothe and comfort these unfortunate victims of insanity” (8). Chase even noted that his interactions with donors who boasted highly of the value and utility of such public institutions persuaded him to donate himself. He notes with irony the fact that he financially supported an institution that later deprived him of his dignity and freedom. McLean 40 Although Chase and his fellow survivors seemed unaware, the Opalians had hinted about life in the institution. Their city on a hill, once used as a metaphor for moral treatment and curability of the asylum, actually represents a cautionary tale to those outside to conform to standards of normalcy. One patient-writer complains of the Dickensian nature of the asylum, writing, “Such a city set on a hill is this Asylum--such independent wonderful persons are the Asylumians, that it is deemed a matter of consideration whether this noble temple of humanity, should not be converted into a grand theatre, and that Mr. Macready be invited over to superintend it “The Editors Table,” vol. 2, 217). The sarcasm cannot be missed. The writer recognizes that orderly society created by the doctors demonstrates am unattainable utopian ideal. Several months later, a recovered Opalian writes about her reentry in the world, lamenting: How often and how justly may we allude to the circumstances, that the reputation of the man who has passed a period of months here, is so damaged on his reappearance to the world, that really respectable people are loth to employ him,--how many times a day is he made to feel that a return to an untainted life is almost impossible! (“The Editors Table, vol. 2, 348) Given this description, the success of Davis, Chase, and Packard in returning to society and finding means to publish their memoirs seems exceptional. Their middle class standing likely gave them the legitimacy to be accepted and supported by the individuals who later served as character witnesses in their narratives. Perhaps most significantly, mad writers from The Opal and in survivor narratives prove credible given their unified voice and memorable experiences. As a whole, Opalians and survivors provided evidence of improper and hidden asylum practices McLean 41 and highlighted the dangers of allowing an influential profession like psychiatry to define and silence large numbers of people. McLean 42 Conclusion From literary and historical perspectives, mad writers of the mid-nineteenth century hold a singular place in the social and cultural record of America. Opalians openly communicated their definitions of madness to the outside society, even if supervision required coded language. Asylum survivors coped with the horrors of their incarceration by writing and remembering with a desire for publication and reform if they defied the odds. All of these writers wrestled with their mad identities, those thrust upon them from an increasingly powerful social institution and their own internal worries. Davis acknowledges her breakdown and need for ongoing social support. She never returned to the community in Syracuse that influenced her incarceration. Chase also admits his own mental and physical frailties and seems hyper-aware of his performance as a clergyman and recovering lunatic. Packard, although incensed by her treatment and lack of legal rights as a woman, suggests that asylums remain to address the needs of the “real” insane populations and suggests reform as a way forward in her travels and speeches across the country. Every mad writer addressed their erasure, the loss of voice and credibility attributed to their status as a lunatic and asylum patient. Their worries are conspicuous in this selection from the editor in the last volume of The Opal: “But what shall we write, so as to have our words pleasant and acceptable, as corresponding with the eternal impulses of destiny? Who believes in destiny? Who believes in anything?” (“The Editors Table,” vol. 8, 274). Their stories can be read with hope, as if they are reaching out to any who might read or discover their history. All mad writers, like Davis and Packard, documented their experiences in the hope that they might live to tell the tale or at least leave some evidence to witness their existence. McLean 43 Their mad literature represents a unique record written entirely from a patient perspective that begs exploration and raises the question of how it may be read today. To some extent, writing helped some Opalians and survivors regain sanity and remain connected to the outside world. However, alienists and their psychiatric progeny never recognized the resiliency of their patients nor included their voices in systemic reform or individual treatment. Davis, observing her fellow patients, concludes, “When I compare the inferior class of women that Syracuse affords with the great noble wrecks of mind that I saw in the Lunatic Asylum, I feel as though the world was a cypher without them” (qtd. in Geller and Harris 50). To fully understand what it is like to be a mental patient in 1850 or today, we must listen to and believe in mad writers. While contemporary American psychiatrists no longer rely on cribs or walls to confine madness, years of disempowerment and erasure of those with mental illness spills over into public policy, healthcare, employment, and virtually every aspect of our current social and cultural ideas of madness. As Foucault and others describe, doctors retain and exercise much of the power and influence over patient needs, medication, and rules of communication about treatment. Historical mad writing reminds us all to be distrustful of public discourse on mental health and our own history of alienation. 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