Mar 8, 2009
My younger son has just finished reading Sylvia Plath's
The Bell
Jar and commented that it was not only an extraordinary
literary work but also, of course, a source for rare insight into
the complications of mental illness. This reminded me of a
conversation (not so much a formal interview, you understand) I had
a few years ago with the fabulous and extraordinary author, Joanne
Greenberg, who as Hannah Green wrote I Never Promised You a Rose
Garden.
This work is a fictionalized
depiction of Joanne Greenberg’s own treatment experience decades
ago at Chestnut Lodge Hospital in Rockville, Maryland, during which
she was in psychoanalytic treatment with Frieda Fromm-Reichmann.
The book takes place in the late 1940s and early 1950s, at a time
when Harry Stack Sullivan, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, and Clara
Thompson were establishing the basis for the interpersonal school
of psychiatry and psychoanalysis, focusing specifically, though by
no means exclusively, on the treatment of schizophrenia.
Greenberg has written that :-
"I wrote [I Never Promised You a Rose Garden] as a way of describing mental illness without the romanticisation that it underwent in the sixties and seventies when people were taking LSD to simulate what they thought was a liberating experience. During those days, people often confused creativity with insanity. There is no creativity in madness; madness is the opposite of creativity, although people may be creative in spite of being mentally ill."
(From the National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy website)
At the time of recording, Joanne Greenberg's just published
novel was 'Appearances'. In this conversation, she also discussed
not just mental illness, but also creativity, the role of
'Underwood', how she creates her stories, how she writes 'sex',
personal memories of a vicarious brush with Sylvia Plath, and a
great deal more.