After recieving her exam results, Sister Luc is sent to a Mental Sanitourium and she is shown a room in which they're women locked into baths in great distress. The Mother Superior explains that this is what happens to the violent cases.
I was wondering why this was done and what exactly it was. Any help would be much apreciated.
'The truth is rarely pure, and never simple' Oscar Wilde
mayve it was seen as a form of therapy.
shareI saw an old movie once called "The Snake Pit," starring Olivia De Havilland. It was made in the 1940's and was about life at a mental hospital. Patients who couldn't settle down (usually new patients) were forced to get into a bathtub and a canvas cover was fitted over it, leaving only the head exposed. Then water was constantly run through the tub by large pipes. The idea was to calm the patient down (don't we all love a soothing bath?). In the movie, some patients remained in the tub for several days before they were sufficiently calm. Bizarre, right?
In Jacqueline Susann's book "Valley of the Dolls," the character Neely O'Hara is taken to "the baths" when she first enters rehab. This is in the book, not the movie.
I'm glad you posted because I thought of bath scene THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS when I saw the topic title.
I don't mean to contradict, but it the scene is in the original movie and the VHS tape I have of it. Neely (Patty Duke) pokes her toe through the canvas cover, rips it upwards and starts screaming from pain.
Maybe the scene was deleted for television and/or some video releases?
The scene of Nealy (Patty Duke) getting hydrotherapy treatment is in the film version of Valley of the Dolls.
shareremember this was in the time before psycho-farmacology. Mental illness which could not be hidden inside the family's home, had to be institutionalized.
shareSpeaking as a nurse, our treatment of mental illness has only become rationalized in the last 20-25 years or so, until as a previous poster said, the invention of psychopharmacology. Baths were a treatment (both warm and ice cold, thought to "cool the passions"), also spinning cages or chairs, and electroshock applied indiscriminately, as well as 'insulin shock therapy' (OD'ing on insulin) and other things that now-a-days would be regarded as simply torture.
shareour treatment of mental illness has only become rationalized in the last 20-25 years or so
I mostly agree, except that the change began in the early 1950s, when Thorazine (the first anti-psychotic) came out. That was a huge change and the start of a tidal wave of change. And treatment still isn't very rational, it's just that we have a lot of effective drugs that we can try.
Before 1950, the situation for people with brain disorders was indeed horrific -- actually far worse than shown here. We call it "mental illness", but there's nothing mental about schizophrenia, manic-depressive illness, and other such conditions. They are brain disorders, pure and simple. Psychological treatment does not work for brain disorders.
So when the only drugs in use were alcohol and opium (which dulled the pain for a while but did not treat the condition at all), people were desperate to find treatments for those afflicted. As horrific (and usually ineffective) as these treatments were, they were serious attempts to help people whose untreated condition was even worse. This movie shows a little of the torture of the attempted treatments but less of the torture of the diseases -- Archangel's is far, far from the worst.
There are still no blood tests for these brain disorders. We have only a general idea of what causes them. The names (schizophrenia, bipolar, etc) are only umbrella designations for large groups of factors which interact in complex ways. Our knowledge of brain function, though vastly improved in the past half century, remains primitive. In 200 years, our descendants will look back on our knowledge of brain function, as we look back on our ancestors' knowledge of infection 200 years ago.
Edward
I visited an old hospital in Copenhagen once that had some of the restraint chairs and such that "lunatics" were kept in. Sometimes strapped into a sitting-up wooden chair for a SOLID YEAR. It was claimed the treatment was effective.
Anyway, long-term confinement in a "restful" posture seems to be a time-honored tradition when treating the crazy.
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I was flipping channels today and came upon this movie on TCM. (It was Audrey Hepburn day.) This scene happened to be showing, and it FREAKED ME OUT!!! VERY disturbing!! I hope I don't have nightmares. Thanks for the explanation; it makes perfect sense, since these things happened back then.
shareThey were boiling the patients. Locked them into bathtubs filled with water so hot they were screaming. I got so upset I could barely breathe; I walked out in the middle of that scene and never tried to finish the movie.
And the sad part is, this kind of thing was actually done back then. Saw and Hostel are one thing; they're not realistic. But people actually did this kind of thing. I can't imagine how anyone ever actually thought this would be theraputic.
Cross my heart, smack me dead, stick a lobster on my head.
Hot baths are a very good therapy (preferably with bubbles and a good book, maybe something non-alcoholic to sip) for what ails you. Stay in the water until you prune.
Now in a mental hospital, under a doctor's care that may be different.
I figure that if these patients didn't get therapy, it'd be a hell of a lot worse (literally) when they die. Just think of it as Purgatory on earth. That's just my view.
And WHY wasn't Archangel in one of the tubs if she was that dangerous.
I was horrified by this scene in the movie. Do you know how panicked a person could become if everything but his/her head was covered and immobilized in a container for days on end? Imagine being buried in the sand with nothing but your head protruding -- for days. Scary!!
That would drive me mad if I wasn't already.
It's horrible to think what those patients endured.
I too was horrified by this scene. Sister Luke was told the nun who sat in the room often stayed for eight to 10 hours at a time. I wondered what that nun was being punished for that she should have to endure the unending screaming and suffering of the patients. It would surely have driven her insane.
shareIn the book, that nun went crazy. (I think it was that nun -- anyway, it was some nun.)
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Nah, the only nun that went crazy was the Abbess, she was a bug on poverty and started ripping up ancient manuscripts.
Sister Marie, the one who supervised the baths, was probably not being punished. It was probably something she volunteered for so she could get more obedience and humility. (Thinking something like... these guys are Jesus too, I'm here to help them.)
Sr. Marie was the one who got the knife in the back. This is NOT shown in the film, although everybody thinks it is. Very likely this is because anyone who has read the book remembers that scene vividly. It is described in detail and it's very easy to imagine A. Hepburn coming in and finding her, getting a quick grip on herself, pretending she's just thinking "oh, she fell asleep", quietly checking her pulse while pretending to read her notes, then quietly going to summon help, acting like nothing whatsoever has happened.
You've got me?! Who's got you?!
Aha. Been a long time since I read the book. I remember the scene where Sister Luke looks at a female lunatic patient and is struck by her walk, her posture, her gestures, and recognizes them as those of a nun. Then she realizes: it is a former nun.
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Yeah, that's the Abbess. She wears a paper bag for a coif. She actually gives Sr. Luke a lot of good advice.
You've got me?! Who's got you?!
There are still mental institutions -- they just go by different names like "behavior centers" and "boot camps for teens", "treatment facilities" and "group homes for autistic adults". And they still do things like this, and worse. Look up the Judge Rothenberg Center -- that's the one you hear about. Psychiatric abuse is alive and well.
Let's just say that God doesn't believe in me.