The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays

by Esmé Weijun Wang

Though nearly all the statements a psychiatric patient can make are not believed, proclamations of insanity are the exception to the rule. “I want to kill myself” generally holds water, and a therapist who hears those words is legally required to disclose them to prevent client self-harm. In a study hypothesizing that sane people could easily be hospitalized under certain conditions, researcher David Rosenhan and his associates claimed to have auditory hallucinations, and were consequently held in different psychiatric facilities for an average of nineteen days—this, despite being neurotypical and exhibiting no symptoms while hospitalized. All but one of the pseudopatients were released with diagnoses of schizophrenia, and were released only on the condition that they agree to take antipsychotic prescriptions. If not for Rosenhan’s credibility as a scientist and the ensuing publication of his 1973 paper “On Being Sane in Insane Places,” those diagnoses could have dogged Rosenhan and his compatriots for life. Unlike me, Rosenhan ultimately proved to the doctors he had duped that he was, really and truly, a Stanford researcher.