Some thoughts about A Beautiful Mind and I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

Usually, I'm not a big fan of filmatizations. Especially when I've read the book before I watch the movie, and when the book's emphasis is about more complex psychological contexts watching the movie often has been a bit of a comedown. An example of such a, in my opinion, somewhat failed adaption is A Beautiful Mind with its rather exaggerated and twisted presentation of "hallucinations", meant to help the audience understand the phenomenon, but actually more fit for obtaining the very opposite effect. And indeed, some stylistic faux pas, one would think directors like Bergman and Tarkovsky for instance had taught the cinema to avoid a long time ago. But, well, on the one hand we have Bergman's and Tarkovsky's feel for subtle nuances, on the other Hollywood's preference for broader strokes of the brush. Like comparing apples and oranges.

Another thing that can give me a kind of comedown experience is when the movie consciously twists the text's "message", exploiting the book's, author's or protagonist's popularity in order to get its own "message" out. This too, A Beautiful Mind is an outstanding example to illustrate, abusing John Nash's celebrity status, letting his character state, that he takes the "newer medications", while we all know that the real John Nash didn't take neuroleptics other than when he was forced to, like during hospitalizations, and never after 1970.

The producers excused their distorting the historical facts, and said they didn't want people to toss out their drugs. In the meantime, the movie doesn't at any point directly state that John Nash didn't take drugs over longer periods. Thus there should be no need to mention the matter at all. Unless the idea was to exploit John Nash's popularity for the benefit of the psych drug industry. On the contrary, I'd say. Given the fact, that Nash did recover, while recovery on neuroleptics virtually never occurs, the truth should have been mentioned.

So, all in all it was with reservations that I ventured into watching the filmatization of Joanne Greenberg's novel I Never Promised You a Rose Garden the other day.

Except for in a single sequence, the visualization of Deborah's "hallucinations" is created in a more subtle way than John Nash's in A Beautiful Mind, and thus more endurable and credible. Never mind that it left me with vague associations to Timothy Leary and Woodstock, just as the decorations, costumes and requisits represent a somewhat strange blend of the 1950ies and the late 1970ies.

Although the movie's last sequences seem a bit rash - and it has to be considered that the standard length for movies, that rarely was exceeded, was 90 minutes back in 1977, the movie's production year - and, compared to the novel, a little superficially happy-ending-like, the movie manages to avoid the all too broad strokes of the brush, and, and this is really an achievement the subject taken into account, it avoids to descend into the melodramatic.

Based on a novel as complex as Joanne Greenberg's, a filmatization can hardly be anything but fragmentary. Nevertheless, the movie succeeds to make the best of its 96 almost-standard minutes, both because it focusses on some of the most essential themes of the novel, and not least because of the actors' brilliant performance (Kathleen Quinlan, Bibi Andersson - oh well, a Bergman-trained actress...), and I was positively surprised to see the novel's basic "message" unchanged.

A comment at YouTube says what the novel teaches us is "to have COMPASSION with the mentally ill". I replied: "What both the book and the movie teach us is that so-called "mental illness" is a choice (out of necessity though). Not a chronic brain disease. And they both teach us that we should make it possible for people to choose freedom, like Frieda Fromm-Reichmann made it possible for Joanne Greenberg. Instead of indefinitely locking them up in helplessness and dependency with toxic chemicals and hopeless messages about defective genes and chronic brain disorders."

I was surprised, but I'd also forgotten all about the movie's production year, 1977, that is about the fact that the movie was shot at a time in history when psych drugs didn't yet play the everything else overshadowing role they do play today, and when psychological and psycho-social causes still were considered. Interesting and refreshing in this context is that the dialogue doesn't get stuck in diagnoses and other crudenesses. Although "psychotic" appears from time to time, "schizophrenia" for instance isn't mentioned one single time throughout the entire movie. Probably also this a 1977-phenomenon.

Although it can by no means replace reading the novel itself, a filmatization of Joanne Greenberg's autobiographic novel that is well worth watching.

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden at YouTube.

Beyond Belief

Beyond Belief. Alternative Ways of Working with Delusions, Obsessions and Unusual Experiences, by Tamasin Knight, with a preface by Rufus May, is now available as a free download at peter-lehmann-publishing.com.



I've only had a short glimpse at Rufus May's preface so far, but the book certainly looks like great reading. Here's the description from Peter Lehmann's website:


"Tamasin Knight's first book Beyond Belief explores ways of helping people who have unusual beliefs. These are beliefs that may be called delusions, obsessions, or another kind of psychopathology.
• Psychiatric treatment attempts to remove these beliefs by medication and other methods. The new approach described in Beyond Belief is different. It is about accepting the individual's own reality and assisting them to cope and live with their beliefs.
• Beyond Belief explains the new approach in a very readable format.
• Many psychological techniques to cope with unusual beliefs are described. These include strategies to reduce fear, strategies to increase coping and problem solving techniques.
• Ideal for mental health professionals, service users/survivors and carers.
"Beyond Belief offers us a ground-breaking way of helping people deal with unusual beliefs. In Bradford we have found this publication it to be extremely helpful to service users, workers and as the inspiration for a new self help group. I am sure that this publication will enable more people to benefit from this knowledge and approach and help us change the way we as a society approach beliefs we find unusual." (Rufus May; Clinical Psychologist, Centre for Citizenship and Community Mental Health, Bradford University, England)"

An overdue book

In a recent blog entry, Ron Unger asks if anyone knows about a book for people with mental health problems on how to "manage" their family. Personally, I don't know of any such book. I only know about tons of books for families on how to manage their "mentally ill" offspring, and I think, a book for people with mental health issues on "managing" their family is overdue, and I hope, it will be written, as Ron's blog entry suggests it may be.

I myself am in the - as I choose to see it - lucky position, that my parents both died quite a long time ago, before it became clear that I had "mental health issues" that would require professional intervention, and that the only family I have left are some French(wo)men, whom I've never had any contact with.

In one of my first therapy sessions, my therapist asked about the whereabouts of my parents - of course the ulterior motive was to get them involved. (Or maybe that was just my "paranoia", instantly smelling a rat?? I don't think so.) My immediate, (survival-) instinctive, and not at all thought out reaction was panic - to put it mildly - followed by an enormous relief when I, after some seconds, that seemed to last an eternity, spent in terror, recalled, that they were dead, and thus couldn't be involved at all. Phew!!!

I've pondered a few times over how my folks probably would have reacted. There's no doubt whatsoever, that my mother would have welcomed the opportunity to re-establish a relationship where I would have been totally dependent on her. When I was in my twenties, she once said, she thought it a good idea if she could keep me under her surveillance and completely cut off from the outside world for at least a couple of years, so she could put my screwed up head straight. Not that this was the only time, she'd say stuff like that. But it was probably the clearest statement on how she saw things, she ever made. - And the system seriously suggests it's all biological??? No what the system's polemics call "bad parenting" involved??? I just wonder.

So, that she abstained from asking me to see a professional certainly wasn't because she didn't realize something was wrong. But, unfortunately (for her - luckily for me) she wasn't aware that a more and more purely biological model was about to be adopted by the mental health system during the '80ies. The thought, that she might be blamed, kept her from seeking professional help on my behalf. "Freud" was a naughty word at our house. She would have loved the biological model! A potential NAMI-mother. Without doubt.

My father... I don't know. I never really knew that man, although he lived at our house, and was married to my mother.

And how did I "manage" this mother-terrorist long-term? Well, I withdrew, to my safe-places, both inside and outside myself, to Munich, and eventually to Denmark. The geographical cure - that didn't work out, not even when she died, since the problem remains the same, as long as it isn't addressed directly.