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Product Description
Product Description
"The Lives They Left Behind is a deeply moving testament to the human side of mental illness, and of the narrow margin which so often separates the sane from the mad. It is a remarkable portrait, too, of the life of a psychiatric asylum--the sort of community in which, for better and for worse, hundreds of thousands of people lived out their lives. Darby Penney and Peter Stastny's careful historical (almost archaeological) and biographical reconstructions give us unique insight into these lives which would otherwise be lost and, indeed, unimaginable to the rest of us."--Oliver Sacks, M.D., Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry, Columbia University Medical Center, Columbia University Artist, and author of "Musicophilia" "The haunting thing about the suitcase owners is that it's so easy to identify with them."--"Newsweek" "In their poignant detail the items helped rescue these individuals from the dark sprawl of anonymity."--"The New York Times" "[The authors] spent 10 years piecing together . . . the lives these patients lived before they were nightmarishly stripped of their identities."--"Newsday" More than four hundred abandoned suitcases filled with patients' belongings were found when Willard Psychiatric Center closed in 1995 after 125 years of operation. They are skillfully examined here and compared to the written record to create a moving--and devastating--group portrait of twentieth-century American psychiatric care.
About the Author
Darby Penney is an accomplished poet, a national leader in the human rights movement for people with psychiatric disabilities and a former state mental health official who has experienced the mental health system inside and out....Peter Stastny, author of numerous publications, is a psychiatrist and documentary filmmaker....Lisa Rinzler is a prize-winning cinematographer (Three Seasons, Menace II Society, No Direction Home: Bob Dylan) whose photographs illustrate the book alongside reproductions of excerpted medical records and images found among the suitcase contents.
--This text refers to an alternate
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is an extraordinary, wonderful book.
Somehow, against all the odds, the suitcases belonging to the inmates of one of the enormous asylums ended up being preserved, and these are the stories if their owners.
Two things stand out; firstly the poignancy. These people went into institutions for the most banal reasons, and essentially never came out again. Whatever of their belongings actually made it to the institution remained sealed in a room, never to be reunited with their owners.
The second is the incredible feat of research. Whole lives have been reconstructed from the tiniest of clues. I have no idea how you build a life out of a pair of shoes and a set of suspenders, but the authors manage it. In addition, it is beautifully written, you can feel the loneliness, the despair, the rage, and sometimes the calm sense of acceptance so clearly, yet it never descends into sentimentality.
I feel this book restores dignity to these lost lives, as well as all those who haunt it's pages even though their stories are not told. A stunning achievement; if you have even the tiniest interest in history, sociology, psychiatric practice or a number of other connected disciplines, you will enjoy this.
Wonderful, and I hope the authors and photographer get to learn how much their hard work is appreciated.
Please excuse typos, this was done on an iblob, and it has a mind of it's own!
Somehow, against all the odds, the suitcases belonging to the inmates of one of the enormous asylums ended up being preserved, and these are the stories if their owners.
Two things stand out; firstly the poignancy. These people went into institutions for the most banal reasons, and essentially never came out again. Whatever of their belongings actually made it to the institution remained sealed in a room, never to be reunited with their owners.
The second is the incredible feat of research. Whole lives have been reconstructed from the tiniest of clues. I have no idea how you build a life out of a pair of shoes and a set of suspenders, but the authors manage it. In addition, it is beautifully written, you can feel the loneliness, the despair, the rage, and sometimes the calm sense of acceptance so clearly, yet it never descends into sentimentality.
I feel this book restores dignity to these lost lives, as well as all those who haunt it's pages even though their stories are not told. A stunning achievement; if you have even the tiniest interest in history, sociology, psychiatric practice or a number of other connected disciplines, you will enjoy this.
Wonderful, and I hope the authors and photographer get to learn how much their hard work is appreciated.
Please excuse typos, this was done on an iblob, and it has a mind of it's own!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Excellent. Gives substance to people who would otherwise have been forgotten.
Understanding the past helps us to make sense of the present.
Understanding the past helps us to make sense of the present.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
As a nursing student I have a great interest in mental health and the history of psychiatric care fascinates me. This book describes a mental hospital near New York. It really is a very moving read and I was in tears in parts of the book.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Lost lives reconstructed
What The Lives They Left Behind does is reconstruct - as far as is possible - the biographies of a few selected patients (mainly from the earlier part of the twentieth century)... Read more
Published 16 months ago by David Austin
strong anti-psychiatry bias
this book had the potential to tell personal stories in a very poignant and emotive manner. instead, the authors' anti-psychiatry bias permeates every story, and totally... Read more
Published 18 months ago by sam34
Stunning Historical Account
It is all too easy to forget the deep injustices meted out to people labelled as 'mentally ill' however, this sensitively crafted book provides illuminating details which all too... Read more
Published on 16 Sep 2009 by J. Owen
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