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I was DISTURBED by this novel during my senior year

posted 16 years ago by Ember_Autumn
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I had only taken my first half of the required Health course, and I left the second half until my very last semester in high school.
It's actually a sophomore course, and not too challenging for me, so i thought it would be a nice, easy relaxing break...from the rest of my "heavier" academics.
A final reading project was assigned.The teacher provided us with a list of "health" related novels, we were to pick one and then write a report on it.
I decided to go with "I never promised you a rose garden" by Nancy Greene, I do know, that i'd read most of the titles in her selection, but whatever the reasons, other then that, I don't remember why I chose that book.
I had initially been reading it a bit at a time, but as the deadline was drawing, I started to pick up the pace, and I was so beyond horrified, I couldn't finish it, I was literally questioning my sanity, and suicidally depressed because it was so well written.
I'm not exaggerating, It was really getting into my head and messing with me, I was beginning to feel traumatized, I actually had my father pretty much, scam through the chapters, and help me write the paper...he actually ended up doing almost all of it.
I know it sounds completely ridiculous, but it left quite an impact, and now that i'm only just discovered it's a movie, i'm having weird flashbacks and getting chills in my spine.
I guess, i'm wondering if anyone else had a similar experience, perhaps not as extreme as mine, more so, they just found the story a difficult and sort of painful ordeal?!?

[–] Molly-31 16 years ago

I was fascinated by it as a child for purely personal reasons. I read it many times, each time getting more insight as to what was really going on, and I think I understand it pretty well by now (especially after having heard interviews with the author).

I think it's pretty normal for people to question their own sanity while reading this book. It's one of the themes: that the nurses and staff caring for the patients often felt that the patients were doing and saying things that were inside their own minds that they would not dare to show. Remember the nurse who left the hospital and checked into another as a patient -- also the male nurse McPherson who was loved because he treated everyone as an equal, with the same respect he accorded himself.

I think this is what she is saying: She wants people to understand that creativity and insanity are not linked, it's a mistake many people make -- but that creativity shows the health that is still present in a mentally ill person. She believes that insane people who are brilliantly creative or intelligent are those things not because of their insanity but in spite of it, and that their art, writing and so on can be something they use to explain themselves to those who want to help them.

All of these things are insights that she had working with Freida Fromm-Reichmann, who believed very much that there is no such thing as an incurably insane person and that there is health in everyone. Fromm-Reichmann learned from her as well and it's in a paper that she wrote on Deborah's case (without naming her), "Psychotherapy of Schizophrenia". It's also in "To Redeem One Person Is To Redeem The World", the story of Fromm-Reichmann's life. Maybe if you read that, you might feel better about your relationship to Deborah's struggles and achievements as portrayed in the book.