Wednesday, August 22, 2007

The Gilded Cage

Benedek, Istvan
The Gilded Cage
Corvina Press, Budapest, 1965

It is a book by a psychiatrist living in the middle of the 20th century.

Diaries of three years with struggles in a mental institute in a city called GRANGE, at the first half of the 20th century where no psychotropic drug was available but Luminal.
The author remember his first meeting with the staff who were surprised to hear terms like hallucination, confusion, and others cause they don't know what it means.
Before going to the mental institute in Grange, this psychiatrist worked in a mental institute in a city called LIPOTMEZO, where he found a man imprisoned in a room for 40 years and he spent these years lying in bed, so Dr. Benedek start to think about a change in therapy and that started with his new job in Grange, where he started to treat by WORK THERAPY, after which he can find a job for the patient so that the patient is discharged.


The hardest patient to find job for them were the cultivated so he started to do lectures for them and encouraged them to do lectures themselves about anything they like and many had do lectures that amazed the staff with their abilities and also many patients attend the lectures till the room start to be small for them so the lectures started to be held in the garden.


The title of the book (the gilded cage) is taken from a poem by one of the female patients with schizophrenia....


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