Gracefully
Insane: Life and Death Inside America's Premier Mental Hospital
a book by Alex Beam, columnist for The Boston Globe
From Publishers Weekly
“The insane asylum seems to be the goal of every good and conscious Bostonian," Clover
Adams wrote in 1879. The asylum she was referring to is the now legendary McLean
Hospital in Belmont, Mass., and in this fascinating, gossipy social history,
Boston Globe columnist Beam pries open its well-guarded records for a look
at the life of the storied institution. McLean is best known today for its
parade of famous patients like Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, Ray
Charles and all three Taylor children. But these notable "alumni" followed
in the footsteps of generations of privileged clientele drawn primarily from
Boston's most elite families. From its 1817 inception, McLean's trustees aimed
to provide a discreet and appropriately opulent setting for the convalescence
of the upper classes. The 250-acre grounds a scattering of Tudor mansions among
scrub woods and groomed lawns were planned by landscape designer Frederick
Law Olmsted (later a McLean patient himself). The hospital offered private
rooms, tennis courts, a bowling alley and the latest cures. Beam traces the
hospital's place in the history of psychiatric treatment, from the early days
of ice water therapies and moral management through the introduction of modern
psychopharmacology. He discusses McLean's current condition neither individuals
nor insurers can afford McLean's long-term care, and the downsized hospital
faces an uncertain future. More than a history of a psychiatric institution,
the book offers an unusual glimpse of a celebrated American estate: the Boston
aristocracy that produced, for nearly two centuries, an endless stream of brilliant,
troubled eccentrics and the equally brilliant and eccentric doctors who lined
up to treat them.
