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Christmas in Purgatory: A Photographic Essay on Mental Retardation
This classic photo essay of legally sanctioned human abuse in state institutions was written and photographed (1965) long before the current right-to-treatment lawsuits on behalf of institutionalized people.
121 pages, Spiral-bound
First published June 1, 1974
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
March 3, 2022
inch resting
but actually what the fuck
but actually what the fuck
March 14, 2019
I just found out that my mom worked in a mental institution in the 70s. We talked about it at great length and then she told me about this book she owns. I immediately read it and it’s so eye opening and just amazing to see.
February 18, 2024
the story about the girl with cerebral palsy, the adult’s involuntary offer of a hug and the child accepting it where at this point they weren’t known to do much but act in anger was powerful. love is in all of us when we have the patience to find it.
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May 30, 2024I don't really have a particular star rating.
May 9, 2017
I read this book many years ago when I first began my journey into the world of developmental disability and dementia. I have been in this field now for nearly 27 years and it still astounds me how little I know and how much I have yet to learn.
This book was suggested to me from a mentor of mine many years ago when I first started my job. He was a really progressive thinker and an excellent teacher and advisor. Coming from a background of being a bouncer, I was used to dealing with (in many ways) people with diminished capacities. I learned well and quickly how to read people and to anticipate what and how they would do things, self injurious and otherwise.
Christman is Purgatory is a powerful read and the images held within are a testament on where we can never return to. The state of how we used to think about, provide treatment to, and care for those who were born different is a powerful statement about us as a people, as a nation. We have come so far since then, and its realized in life expectancy among those mentioned above, and the quality of care they receive.
This has to be brought up, but right now there is a new attitude amongst caregivers, at least where I work and in the environs of many other places near where I work and in the world, I believe. People are newer and younger and I don't want to say that this is the problem but I have to speak about this how I feel. With people these days being so absorbed in self and technology, the intrinsic nature of a caregiver has changed. This is not only seen in younger people, because I have seen folks my age and older just as immersed in their cell phones, Facebook and Instagram. I swear, and this may be my age talking, but our humanity and personality and identity as groups, family and communities are suffering right now.
This book shows a different time and the unseeable within. It shows a place and pictures where care was not given and compassion was of a different and very lacking flavor. These days we see some of the same, though for different reasons. Now it feels as people don't care not because they don't want to, but because they have no time to care, and this is where we fail as caregivers. If you don't have time to care, how can you be a caregiver?
Yeah this book makes me think and makes me feel and speak about things that I feel very strongly about. We want to wall up and send our different and elderly away from us. What does this say about us as a culture? Pretty sad, I feel...
Sorry for the over wordy opinions, but it just had to come out.
Danny
This book was suggested to me from a mentor of mine many years ago when I first started my job. He was a really progressive thinker and an excellent teacher and advisor. Coming from a background of being a bouncer, I was used to dealing with (in many ways) people with diminished capacities. I learned well and quickly how to read people and to anticipate what and how they would do things, self injurious and otherwise.
Christman is Purgatory is a powerful read and the images held within are a testament on where we can never return to. The state of how we used to think about, provide treatment to, and care for those who were born different is a powerful statement about us as a people, as a nation. We have come so far since then, and its realized in life expectancy among those mentioned above, and the quality of care they receive.
This has to be brought up, but right now there is a new attitude amongst caregivers, at least where I work and in the environs of many other places near where I work and in the world, I believe. People are newer and younger and I don't want to say that this is the problem but I have to speak about this how I feel. With people these days being so absorbed in self and technology, the intrinsic nature of a caregiver has changed. This is not only seen in younger people, because I have seen folks my age and older just as immersed in their cell phones, Facebook and Instagram. I swear, and this may be my age talking, but our humanity and personality and identity as groups, family and communities are suffering right now.
This book shows a different time and the unseeable within. It shows a place and pictures where care was not given and compassion was of a different and very lacking flavor. These days we see some of the same, though for different reasons. Now it feels as people don't care not because they don't want to, but because they have no time to care, and this is where we fail as caregivers. If you don't have time to care, how can you be a caregiver?
Yeah this book makes me think and makes me feel and speak about things that I feel very strongly about. We want to wall up and send our different and elderly away from us. What does this say about us as a culture? Pretty sad, I feel...
Sorry for the over wordy opinions, but it just had to come out.
Danny
October 17, 2007
One of the most disturbing books I have ever read. This pictorial book -along with a number of TV exposés started the whole de-institutionalization movement of the mentally ill and disabled in the United States (for better or worse).
July 24, 2018
I feel a bit as though I am cheating in listing this a book I read; however, given that it was (1) mandatory for a 20 hour course on special education in American schools and (2) I have a mandatory paper on it, I feel justified in it counting towards my Goodreads total.
The infamous story of the Willowbrook facility in Massachusetts as one of the driving forces in why the American education system introduced special education services for students is phenomenal. This book, littered mostly with photos and some truly moving quotes also provides some background regarding what happened in such a horrendous place. The book is moving and chilling.
Discovering that every one of the patients here would later be diagnosed with hepatitis is scary. Even after Kennedy's visit here, little changed until a photographer illegally visited and filmed the atrocities. It's scary to think the ways we justify not providing what students and families need, all with the guise of having the best intentions.
I am beyond thrilled my professor began our class on the history of Special Education in America with this piece of contextual evidence. Eye-opening and it makes any educator remember that special education is a service, not a place...in any school...we educate children. All of them.
The infamous story of the Willowbrook facility in Massachusetts as one of the driving forces in why the American education system introduced special education services for students is phenomenal. This book, littered mostly with photos and some truly moving quotes also provides some background regarding what happened in such a horrendous place. The book is moving and chilling.
Discovering that every one of the patients here would later be diagnosed with hepatitis is scary. Even after Kennedy's visit here, little changed until a photographer illegally visited and filmed the atrocities. It's scary to think the ways we justify not providing what students and families need, all with the guise of having the best intentions.
I am beyond thrilled my professor began our class on the history of Special Education in America with this piece of contextual evidence. Eye-opening and it makes any educator remember that special education is a service, not a place...in any school...we educate children. All of them.
April 13, 2019
I stumbled upon this looking for works by the historian Fred Kaplan. The Fred Kaplan here is a different person, but his candid photos of institutionalized, mentally handicapped children is the affecting and indicting core of this work. As part of RFK's investigation of the state of mental health care in America's institutions. Herein are children chained, fece-stained walls and general abandonment -- "inhumanity" as we call the all-too common human behavior. It actually seems that life teaches us inhumanity is commonly human...
From the front matter:
From the front matter:
This classic photo essay of legally sanctioned human abuse in state institutions
was written and photographed (1965) long before the current right-to-treatment
lawsuits on behalf of institutionalized people.
[...]
As Camus once wrote:
"Perhaps we cannot stop the world from being one in which children are tortured,
but we can reduce the number of children tortured."
November 13, 2018
You don't read this for the writing.
It was a valuable expose at the time (1960s), though the response to it was slow to gather. It was the Willowbrook School revelations almost ten years later that changed the harrowing landscape.
The author was convinced that keeping the names of the institutions "profiled" here secret was the best path because, he argued, they were not exceptions but representative of facilities across the country. But the anonymity apparently allowed the prevalence of these conditions to persist more than the author hoped. That said, Purgatory was important and its publication is still considered a watershed event.
It was a valuable expose at the time (1960s), though the response to it was slow to gather. It was the Willowbrook School revelations almost ten years later that changed the harrowing landscape.
The author was convinced that keeping the names of the institutions "profiled" here secret was the best path because, he argued, they were not exceptions but representative of facilities across the country. But the anonymity apparently allowed the prevalence of these conditions to persist more than the author hoped. That said, Purgatory was important and its publication is still considered a watershed event.
February 29, 2024
This should be required reading for new teachers because it is a pivotal document in the evolution of special education in the United States. It is critical to remember where we came from - a system of institutionalizing children with special needs while providing them with little or no educational opportunities. Fair warning that the pictures are very disturbing, depicting horrific, inhumane conditions.
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June 26, 2025I can’t just slap a review on a historical document. But I can leave a note that while this work played a role in de-institutionalization in the US, our prison systems have picked up right where institutions left off, and it’s not like this issue is behind us (https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/...)
April 23, 2023
I read this in college in one of my SPED classes. I found myself drawn to it each time I visited the library. It is beautifully horrible and a reminder of how cruel humans can be to those who are different. 10 out of 10 recommend
September 19, 2024
Christmas in Purgatory was a very emotional yet informative book about the realities of disabled people's treatment in mental institutions. Even though each section had a short essay explaining context or an anecdote, the pictures were clearly louder than the words. Very moving.
May 20, 2025
to read this book is to be repulsed; to read this book is to well new depths of love for all of man.
September 2, 2016
I find institutional history fascinating. It's not just a history of institutional care, but of society and what was observed as acceptable and normal. Below are my favorite quotes:
The question one might ask is, Is it possible to prevent these conditions? Although we are convinced that to teach severely retarded adults to wear clothes one must invest time and patience, we believe it possible to do so-given adequate staff. There is one more require- ment. The staff has to be convinced that residents can be taught to wear clothes, that they can be engaged in purposeful activities, that they can learn to control their bladders. The staff has to believe that their "boys" and "girls" are human beings who can learn. Obviously, the money and the additional staff are vitally important. However, even more important, is the fundamental belief that each of these residents is a human being.
“Our troubles emanate not from biological idiots but from social ones; and social idiots are produced by society, not by genes. It is therefore the social, not biological, therapy that is indicated”
Ashley Montagu
Children must be helped today, for in too few tomorrows children become adults and residents become inmates.
The question one might ask is, Is it possible to prevent these conditions? Although we are convinced that to teach severely retarded adults to wear clothes one must invest time and patience, we believe it possible to do so-given adequate staff. There is one more require- ment. The staff has to be convinced that residents can be taught to wear clothes, that they can be engaged in purposeful activities, that they can learn to control their bladders. The staff has to believe that their "boys" and "girls" are human beings who can learn. Obviously, the money and the additional staff are vitally important. However, even more important, is the fundamental belief that each of these residents is a human being.
“Our troubles emanate not from biological idiots but from social ones; and social idiots are produced by society, not by genes. It is therefore the social, not biological, therapy that is indicated”
Ashley Montagu
Children must be helped today, for in too few tomorrows children become adults and residents become inmates.
May 5, 2016
Great expose on the early treatment of people with intellectual disabilities. The author really calls out the need for change during a time where change wasn't warrantied or desired. The author compared how institutions mistreated patients as almost inhuman and an institution that showed love and compassion to help patients learn and grow.
December 3, 2007
wow. that is all one can say.
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May 17, 2019So sad and very disturbing that treatment and behavior went on to patients living in these facilities.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews