People pretended to be insane for a psychiatric study in the 1970s. Susannah Cahalan's THE GREAT PRETENDER investigates the dubious results.
, Susannah Cahalan investigates a groundbreaking mental health study conducted 46 years ago. But as her research turns up more and more questions, she begins to suspect that the study may not have been everything its author claimed.
In 1973, Stanford professor and psychologist David Rosenhan published a journal article titled “On Being Sane in Insane Places.” It detailed a study, known as the Rosenhan experiment, that focused on the experiences of seven pseudopatients who faked their way into mental institutions by claiming to hear voices saying, “Hollow, empty, thud.” Once inside, they were tasked with getting themselves out by proving their sanity; some took days, others took weeks.
As she poured over Rosenhan’s documents and notes, however, Cahalan began to suspect that the study wasn’t as rigorous as one might hope for something that’s become a touchstone in its field. In addition to being unable to identify six of the pseudopatients , Cahalan noticed that dates and numbers didn’t match up and that at least one participant was omitted because his experience didn’t fit Rosenhan’s narrative.
But the book is not without flaws. In her quest to be comprehensive, Cahalan teases out threads that bog down the text at times. It isn’t until a quarter of the way through that the Rosenhan experiment even begins taking shape, as much of the first hundred pages are devoted to discussing Cahalan’s own story and a fragmented history of mental health practices, studies and reporting.
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