Back in the 1970s a study by the sociologist Rosenhans and his students (under the above title) made headlines. Rosenhans had his students, all perfectly sane, go to the admissions offices of a couple of psychiatric hospitals, complaining of (fake) symptoms, like hearing voices. All the "pseudopatients" were admitted and immediately dropped their symptoms and acted sane. They sat around the ward taking notes of their experiences, which, at one institution, was described as "engaging in writing behavior." After varying periods of time all the pseudopatients were released, most with a diagnosis of "schizophrenia, in remission." The reason the study made headlines is that it seemed to blame mental illness on society, a hip and fashionable radical idea at the time. It's been pretty thoroughly discredited by now because of various methodological flaws, except among some die-hards. But this movie could have been written in five minutes by one of those die-hards.
The whole story is rigged. Victoria Principal, a paragon of sanity, is assaulted by her father-in-law, the greedy drunk snobbish grasping goaty Robert Vaughan. She tells her somewhat dullish husband and, on the advice of a distracted but smarmy quack, she admits herself to a psychiatric hospital that thrives on patients who are covered by medical insurance. The staff have reassured her that she can leave whenever she wants, make phone calls, receive visitors, or whatever, but -- you know what? They're lying. They get rid of her husband pronto, then take her behind locked doors where they shoot her full of drugs and keep her in a bare room with no toilet and no chocolates on the pillow. Not even a pillow. Not even a bed, come to think of it.
The staff are a lot of ogres. They refuse to provide her with sanitary napkins, won't allow visitors, tear her away from the phone when she tries to call for help. She -- this is just terrible -- she even loses her baby. A walking zombie.
Her husband is a lawyer. When he again visits and insists on seeing her they demand to know who he is. "I'm her lawyer!" he claims. Then, upon further inquiry, he admits, "Well, I'm her husband." Nurse Diesel tells Victoria that her husband is here but he's delusional and dangerous so she shouldn't see him. Once again hubby is given the bum's rush while he helpfully flails about like a raving lunatic shouting, "I'm her husband! I'm her lawyer! I'm her husband AND her lawyer! I have rights!"
Finally she gets out and is admitted to a kindlier gentler institution where the head shrink gives her a baseball bat and tells her to whup this mattress while shouting accusations at her husband as if it were he instead of a rolled-up mattress she was belaboring. Of course, after such catharsis, she recovers but has to come to terms with the fact that her husband is blind to her needs and to his own father's flaws.
But why go on? The heroes are heroes and the villains are villains and the husband is the "good German" of the piece who finally sees what a blind weakling he's been.
I haven't warned about spoilers because I didn't think any warnings were needed. You can see the end coming a mile away. It's hard to imagine anyone sitting back and taking this retrograde garbage at all seriously, except maybe Rosenhans, who may have leaped up and clapped all the way through it. It -- how do the kiddies put it? -- it "sux". I don't want to waste anything resembling eloquence on this claptrap. It isn't bad enough to be amusing, but it's easily bad enough to make one ashamed of being a TV viewer.
The whole story is rigged. Victoria Principal, a paragon of sanity, is assaulted by her father-in-law, the greedy drunk snobbish grasping goaty Robert Vaughan. She tells her somewhat dullish husband and, on the advice of a distracted but smarmy quack, she admits herself to a psychiatric hospital that thrives on patients who are covered by medical insurance. The staff have reassured her that she can leave whenever she wants, make phone calls, receive visitors, or whatever, but -- you know what? They're lying. They get rid of her husband pronto, then take her behind locked doors where they shoot her full of drugs and keep her in a bare room with no toilet and no chocolates on the pillow. Not even a pillow. Not even a bed, come to think of it.
The staff are a lot of ogres. They refuse to provide her with sanitary napkins, won't allow visitors, tear her away from the phone when she tries to call for help. She -- this is just terrible -- she even loses her baby. A walking zombie.
Her husband is a lawyer. When he again visits and insists on seeing her they demand to know who he is. "I'm her lawyer!" he claims. Then, upon further inquiry, he admits, "Well, I'm her husband." Nurse Diesel tells Victoria that her husband is here but he's delusional and dangerous so she shouldn't see him. Once again hubby is given the bum's rush while he helpfully flails about like a raving lunatic shouting, "I'm her husband! I'm her lawyer! I'm her husband AND her lawyer! I have rights!"
Finally she gets out and is admitted to a kindlier gentler institution where the head shrink gives her a baseball bat and tells her to whup this mattress while shouting accusations at her husband as if it were he instead of a rolled-up mattress she was belaboring. Of course, after such catharsis, she recovers but has to come to terms with the fact that her husband is blind to her needs and to his own father's flaws.
But why go on? The heroes are heroes and the villains are villains and the husband is the "good German" of the piece who finally sees what a blind weakling he's been.
I haven't warned about spoilers because I didn't think any warnings were needed. You can see the end coming a mile away. It's hard to imagine anyone sitting back and taking this retrograde garbage at all seriously, except maybe Rosenhans, who may have leaped up and clapped all the way through it. It -- how do the kiddies put it? -- it "sux". I don't want to waste anything resembling eloquence on this claptrap. It isn't bad enough to be amusing, but it's easily bad enough to make one ashamed of being a TV viewer.