The Fraud That Transformed Psychiatry Series, Transcript P20

Shidonna Raven
1 day ago
3 min read

July 23, 2024

Source: The Scince History Institute

Photo / Image Source: Unsplash,

Host: Alexis Pedrick

Senior Producer: Mariel Carr

Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez

Associate Producer: Sarah Kaplan

Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

“Color Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions

Psychology professor David Rosenhan made waves with his “On Being Sane in Insane Places” study, but decades later its legitimacy was questioned.

WFGD Studio

Transcript

Bill Underwood: If that were true, It would be very disappointing to me, but not so much because of what I think about psychiatric hospitals. It would be disappointing to me because of what I would think about David. David was a very important guy to me. He was a guy I really cared about and who I felt like cared about me. And so it would bother me to think that, that the David Rosenhan who could do something like that because I, I would consider that to be unethical. Obviously. But I don’t think it would change my view of what psychiatric hospitals are like, because regardless of what David did, I know what my experience was like. And it was not dramatically different, not significantly different in any way really, from the experience that he described in the paper.

Alexis Pedrick: Since Cahalan’s book came out in 2019, there’s been a push to get the Rosenhan study redacted by Science.

Susannah Cahalan: And I was really of two minds about it. At first I was against it, because I thought, what good does that do? The, kind of, the harm has been done to redact it now. I thought maybe, could there be some kind of asterisk next to it with the opportunity for discussion? But then I saw it cited without any qualification in any way. Of all things, a book review in the London Review of Books, and I was like, it needs to be redacted. I was like, this is too much. This is ridiculous.

Alexis Pedrick: David Rosenhan clearly made things up, and the study was not a legitimate scientific study. But if you throw it out completely, don’t you lose something?

Susannah Cahalan: That’s what I struggled with, because I do believe that there are a lot of truths and some beauty there too. And this idea of being seen only through your label, through the prism of your label. And how, the way that a doctor sees a patient is through the lens of how they’re described on the page in front of them. Those parts of the study which attracted me in the first place are still true and relevant and important. And that was something that in writing this book I really didn’t want to lose. I didn’t want to say, oh, this is a horrible person in a horrible paper.

Alexis Pedrick: David Rosenhan’s point about the dehumanization he saw was real.

Archived Audio of Dr. Rosenhan in Conversation: My impression generally is that when you treat people like people it has very positive effects. It’s only when we’re treated like we’re invisible, like we’re dogs, like we’re children, like we’re lepers, okay? Do lots of our hang ups come up. Do we judge people by the place we find them? Seems to me we sure do. People have said lots of things about me, Carol. Nobody’s ever suggested that I belong there. And once I got there, it took me a darn long time to convince them that I belonged out. The context plays a big role.

Alexis Pedrick: Distillations is produced by the Science History Institute. Our executive producer is Mariel Carr. Our producer is Rigoberto Hernandez, and our associate producer is Sarah Kaplan. This episode was reported by Mariel Carr and mixed by Jonathan Pfeffer, who also composed the theme music. You can find all of our podcasts as well as our videos and articles at sciencehistory.org. And you can follow the Science History Institute on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for news about our podcast and everything else going on in our free museum and library.

For Distillations, I’m Alexis Pedrick. Thanks for listening.

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