Product Description
The Boston Globe #1 bestseller and Book Sense 76 pick: A "candid and engrossing" history of "the Harvard of mental institutions," and of the evolution of psychiatric treatment. McLean Hospital is one of the most famous, most elite, and once most luxurious mental institutions in America. Its "alumni" include Sylvia Plath, John Forbes Nash, Ray Charles and Susanna Kaysen. James Taylor found inspiration for a song or two there; Frederic Law Olmsted first designed the grounds and later signed in as a patient. In its "golden age," McLean provided as gracious and gentle an environment for the treatment of mental illness as one could imagine. But the golden age is over, and a downsized, downscale McLean is struggling to stay afloat. Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam's Gracefully Insane is an entertaining and strangely poignant biography of McLean from its founding in 1817 through today. The story of McLean is also the story of the hopes and failures of psychology and psychotherapy; of the evolution of attitudes about mental illness; and of the economic pressures that are making McLean--and other institutions like it--relics of a bygone age. This is fascinating reading for the many readers interested in either the literature of madness--from The Bell Jar to Girl, Interrupted to A Beautiful Mind--or in the history of its treatment.

Amazon.com Review
Alex Beam's Gracefully Insane is a knowledgeable historical portrait of New England's McLean Hospital, until recently the mental institution equivalent of the Plaza Hotel. Fenceless and unguarded, McLean's grounds were landscaped by Frederick Law Olmsted. Amenities included tennis courts, a golf course, room service, and a riding stable. As one director said, "If you don't know where you are, then you're in the right place." Its patients have included James Taylor, Robert Lowell, and Ray Charles. It also looms large in The Bell Jar and Girl, Interrupted, written by former patients Sylvia Plath and Susanna Kaysen. Beam weaves patients' and employees' stories with an informal review of mental health treatments through the years, including lobotomies, insulin-induced comas, ice-water baths, and a ghastly device called the "coercion chair." Gracefully Insane is amiable, lively, and honest. Its many anecdotes (derived from patient records, journals, and interviews) are by turns poignant, humorous, and unsettling. --H. O'Billovitch

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 34 reviews)

The story of McLean Hospital, near Boston: Insightful and fascinating by Joseph C. Sweeney (Portland, Maine)

4 Stars
January 21, 2009
Told by The Boston Globe's wonderful Alex Beam, this book describes the history of America's most famous mental hospital. Should be read by all Americans interested in mental illness and medical history. A loving work told by one of Boston's leading historians.

The Upper Crust of Insanity by T. Burrows (New York, NY)

4 Stars
November 12, 2008
This popular history was in many ways just what I hoped it would be: colorful, weird, informative, full of kooky tales of mentally disturbed rich and celebrated individuals. It seemed to come up a little short in a couple of areas - the writing is pretty straightforward and lackluster, altho there is a very cool, dry wit at work thruout. Also, the number of colorful tales of madness are not as many as one might wish, but Beam was hampered by not having access to everyone's name and record due to privacy issues. The book starts with the beginnings of the McLean hospital and its establishment as the place for privileged Bostonians (and a few others) to check in when some real insanity developed. The author spends some time going over long-discredited therapies like hydrotherapy, full feeding, lobotomy, and others. Over time McLean changed and experienced turmoil - the 1960s was such a time there (as elsewhere), when numerous troubled, drugged up, rebellious youngsters found themselves being checked in by their worried parents. In recent years, the entire mental health business has changed and centers more now around shorter term therapies and psychopharmacology. McLean, whose bread and butter was being a dumping ground for rich families to park their most troubled members for years and years if necessary, has had to change too. They still exist, I think, but some of the glorious rolling lawns and brick mansion-like halls have been sold off. What is most interesting are the stories of some of the noteworthy lunies that show up, many of them suffering from mental illnesses that had, probably still don't have, any real cure. Here are some of the great poets of the 20th century - bipolar Robert Lowell, and suicidal sirens Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, all of whom knew each other. Writer Susanna Kaysen based her book (which was turned into a successful movie) "Girl, Interrupted", on her period of treatment. The singing Taylor family - James, Livingston, and Kate - all children of a well-known doctor, were all at one time or another, residents at McLean. One resident was a doctor's wife who stood on a hill and cast spells on the cars as they drove up to the hospital. Here is schizo Stanley McCormick, one of the richest and handsomest young men in America in the early 1900s - staggering his way thru life, unable to work successfully, too disturbed to make love to his wife, and so enamored of masturbation that he made a leather harness to keep his hands off his genitals while he slept. Another aristocratic resident was Louis Agassiz Shaw, literary and Harvard educated, the owner of a lovely mansion on Boston's North Shore. He was forced to spend the rest of his life in McLean after strangling his maid. He calmly and haughtily told the arresting officer that he did it because she was making too much noise. Another murderous member of America's aristocracy lived out her years there too: Joan Tunney Wilkinson, daughter of boxing great Gene Tunney and sister of U.S. Senator John Tunney. She, while in the throes of paranoid schizophrenia, murdered her English husband with a cleaver. Apparently a fair share of Boston's finest families have seen their relatives pass thru McLean's doors - Adamses, Lowells, Jameses. Rich crazies are not the only characters in this tale, though - some of the disturbed folks are the doctors themselves - at least 2 McLean psychiatrists were suicides, including the brilliant and popular Harvey Schein, who took his own life for unclear reasons in 1974. This is an engaging book, and even tho the subject matter is too serious for it to be strictly entertainment, it is still an informative pleasure read more than a serious study. One cannot help but think about the struggles that are depicted here, and the painful tragedy that is mental illness, and how far humanity is from truly understanding it. Still, it is good to laugh about it from time to time, and to look upon these people who were blessed with much talent and wealth, but who so lacked inner stability that they ended up in a place like McLean.

Hospital for the Rich and Famous by Gregory P. Majercik (Grifton, NC)

4 Stars
August 15, 2008
While those with severe and persistent mental illness struggle to find care, those who are from the upper echelons can be assured that there is a place for them. THAT place is brilliantly profiled in this book. Under the aegis of a ivy league college, this training hospital addresses the needs of the famously mentally ill in grand fashion. No cardboard boxes for these folks. Therapy is state of the art. Nothing is too good to address their needs, and this book should stand as a benchmark as how those who are in need of care will never experience anything like McLean Hospital just as many of the poor will never know that their illness is not so much a treatable disease as a sad social condition.

Gracefully Insane by Gwen S. Walters (Chambersburg, PA)

5 Stars
June 23, 2008
This book was nothing like I expected it to be. I had no idea so many "famous" people spent time at this institution. It was very easy to read, had a few technical terms I had to look up but I finished it in two days. Very good read...

Crazy with Class by Gary C. Marfin (Sugar Land, Texas USA)

4 Stars
July 03, 2005
Alex Beam's Gracefully Insane is written with a twofold purpose in mind. On the one hand, Beam introduces readers to the rolling hills and well-appointed grounds of a MacLean, psychiatric hospital of the rich and famous; its residents often referred to the hospital as a university, to themselves as alumni. On the other hand, through the lens of Maclean one sees the evolution of the history of psychiatric practice in America. Here, for the most part, MacClean was neither better nor worse than most. If it was fashionable to dunk patients in vats of cold water or harness them into gyrating chairs, such practices could be found. About the only fashion that could not be accomodated is that practiced today: where the emphasis is on the efficacy of pharmacological medicine. With the end of the extended observation stay, this bastion of outliers gradually loses its psychiatric niche. Still, Gracefully Insane is worth a leisurely read, if only to glimpse Ray Charles, Sylvia Plath, James Taylor and the other members of its distinguished alumni.

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