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1-800-Elsie Venner · 1-800-1800

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  like his kind of landmark contribution here is that maybe
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  mentally ill people are
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  not sinners and maybe they're not necessarily responsible for
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  the way they are and
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  like maybe there's some he doesn't like genes and dna obviously
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  weren't even terms
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  yet but he's like maybe something in their family histories
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  made them this way
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  maybe they had some sort of trauma that made them this way and
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  he's not advocating
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  necessarily for like being kind to those people but maybe of
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  not seeing them as
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  SPEAKER_00: morally responsible for being crazy
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  So dad,
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  what,
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  how does this fit into your history of psychiatry as a field?
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  SPEAKER_01: You know,
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  SPEAKER_01: I was thinking about this a little bit because in part,
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  SPEAKER_01: we tend to,
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  SPEAKER_01: when we're looking at historical characters to,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: push our current knowledge of what happened back onto them.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: we have to kind of try and think about what was,
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  SPEAKER_01: Holmes did not know what was going to happen in
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  neurology and psychiatry and psychology disciplines that
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  weren't even really invented.
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  SPEAKER_01: So we see him as anticipating those things, and he clearly was.
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  SPEAKER_01: But he was his own character.
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  SPEAKER_01: Just like,
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  what does it mean that he published this book at the eve of the
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  Civil War,
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  SPEAKER_01: completely ignoring the massive events of the day,
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  SPEAKER_01: right?
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  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he was in his own bubble, right?
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  SPEAKER_01: But I think part of it is, if I think about it, is that
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  SPEAKER_01: What we think of as contemporary psychiatry,
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  SPEAKER_01: where we work with individuals to help them recover or do well or thrive,
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  SPEAKER_01: that's a very different concept than,
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  SPEAKER_01: A,
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  how the severely mentally ill were easily identified and
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  segregated or treated or
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  SPEAKER_01: killed or whatever was done to them.
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  SPEAKER_01: But of course,
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  SPEAKER_01: the vast population of people who benefit from treatment,
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  SPEAKER_01: as we understand it,
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  SPEAKER_01: don't require living in an asylum or jail and are not unable to function.
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  SPEAKER_01: And Elsie Benner is an archetype of that kind of future patient,
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  the person who lives at home and goes to school and takes care
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  of herself in a
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  SPEAKER_01: certain way,
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  SPEAKER_01: even though she's highly eccentric,
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  SPEAKER_01: unorthodox,
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  SPEAKER_01: and has a lot of problematic interpersonal behaviors, right?
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  SPEAKER_01: But we don't think that she's bad.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's,
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  SPEAKER_01: I think,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: a lot of the book is really more engaged with theology than medicine,
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  SPEAKER_01: right?
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  And these lengthy,
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  and I think somewhat dull disputes between the doctor character
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  and the
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  the one of the ministers you know are kind of arid um but
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  that's the core of the
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  discussion which is and you point that out in your introduction
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  what's is this sin
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  or crime is this responsibility or not does are all people
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  vulnerable to this he's
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  trying to argue that case right i think we're first just
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  extricating ourselves from
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  SPEAKER_01: that legacy which of course
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  SPEAKER_01: as a contemporary psychiatrist,
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  we still haven't extricated ourselves from because people are
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  constantly telling me
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  how they shouldn't be taking antidepressants because really
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  they could do better on
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  SPEAKER_01: their own.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like,
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  SPEAKER_01: maybe you could,
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  SPEAKER_01: and I hope that you do,
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  SPEAKER_01: but perhaps you also have a problem that requires antidepressant,
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  SPEAKER_01: right?