Narrative Portraits of Asylums: the Contested Authorship of Mental Illness & Psychiatric Healthcare in Contemporary Legend
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NARRATIVE PORTRAITS OF ASYLUMS: THE CONTESTED AUTHORSHIP OF MENTAL ILLNESS & PSYCHIATRIC HEALTHCARE IN CONTEMPORARY LEGEND Shannon K. Tanhayi Ahari Submitted to the Faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment oF the requirements for the degree Doctor oF Philosophy in the Department oF Folklore & Ethnomusicology Indiana University July 2019 Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Doctoral Committee _____________________________________ Diane Goldstein, PhD _____________________________________ Ray Cashman, PhD _____________________________________ Michael Dylan Foster, PhD _____________________________________ John Holmes McDowell, PhD _____________________________________ Pravina Shukla, PhD April 26, 2019 ii Copyright © 2019 Shannon K. Tanhayi Ahari iii In loving memory of my mom, for my dad, and for Mostafa. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I would like to acknowledge the generosity and patience of my dissertation committee members. Diane Goldstein, my wonderful mentor and committee chair, has been an intellectual inspiration. Pravina Shukla has motivated me along the way with her passion, kindness, and advice. I am grateful to Michael Dylan Foster not only for encouraging my intellectual curiosity, but also for challenging me to take my ideas further. I am indebted to Ray Cashman and John H. McDowell for their support and insightful comments. I am also grateful to my dear friend Henry Glassie, who in many ways has been an honorary member of my committee. During the course of my research and graduate career, I was fortunate to receive financial support from Indiana University's College of Arts and Sciences and from the Department of Folklore & Ethnomusicology, the last of which has been a welcoming institutional home in large part due to the hard work and dedication of Michelle Melhouse. Additionally, Dina Kellams and Carrie Schwier of the Indiana University Archives provided me with invaluable research assistance, not to mention a fun job on more than one occasion. My dissertation could not have been possible without the assistance of my fabulous informants. Their perspectives and narratives are really the heart of this work. In particular, I would like to recognize Nicole and Michael Kobrowski, Kirsty Allan, Caroline Hare, Madi Arnott, Keely Moreton, Mike Perrin, Ramon Miles, Liam Cupkovic, Eilian Jones, Einir Jones, Owain Jones, Iestyn Jones, Lois Jones, Clwyd Wynne, Dafydd Lloyd Jones, Nigel Edwards, Elwyn Pierce, Rebecca Kirshbaum, Adam Kimmel, Dann Allen, Rachel Goosey, Darren Holland, Damon Tait, Dave Haywood, Chantelle Welsh, Chris Conway, John Dawson, Amanda Callaghan, Tyler Evans, Amanda Posnett, Carly Suplee, Thomas Wright, Connie Lawson, Ruth v Himes, the North Wales Historical Society, the Indiana Medical History Museum, the staff of Simply Paranormal, the staff of Haunted Evenings, and others who prefer to remain anonymous. I experienced a lot of major life changes during the writing of this dissertation, not all of them pleasant ones. My friends Sophia Lee, Theron Halsey, Jeesook Lee, Kelley Totten, Emily Bryant, Meredith McGriff, Sam Tett, Chad Buterbaugh, Elise Anderson, Kurt Baer, Lydia Bringerud, Amber Aanenson, and the "Core Iranian Association" of Bloomington helped make the good times better and the tough times more tolerable. Last but not least I want to acknowledge my family. It breaks my heart that my dear mom passed away just months before I finished this dissertation. I will remain forever grateful to have had her in my life, and she continues to comfort and inspire me. I am so grateful too for my wonderful dad; my brothers Shay and Shawn; my aunts and uncles Deanie, Tom, Lynn, Merrill, and Donald. Finally, I never would have made it past chapter three without my husband, Mostafa. O, ən yaxşısıdır, və ən qədd-qamətlidir. I am grateful for him. Every minute. Every second. vi Shannon K. Tanhayi Ahari NARRATIVE PORTRAITS OF ASYLUMS: THE CONTESTED AUTHORSHIP OF MENTAL ILLNESS & PSYCHIATRIC HEALTHCARE IN CONTEMPORARY LEGEND Contemporary legends portraying brutal medical treatments, inhumane living conditions, abusive caretakers, and dangerous patients surround numerous derelict psychiatric institutions. These narratives illuminate, reinforce, and sometimes challenge mainstream conceptions of mental illness and mental health care, thus providing insight into the role of narrative in the construction, maintenance, and negotiation of stigmas and stereotypes. My dissertation examines contemporary legends—narratives set in the world as we know it that chronicle plausible, yet improbable events—presently circulating about abandoned psychiatric hospitals that have closed as the result of deinstitutionalization, a movement which saw the gradual transition away from long-term institutional health care for the mentally ill to short-term outpatient care. From January 2014 to November 2017, I conducted more than thirty interviews with individuals who have knowledge of asylum legend traditions; engaged in participant-observation on numerous supernatural-themed events that market and employ contemporary legends at six different abandoned asylums in the United Kingdom and United States; consulted media reports, hospital records, and oral histories from the former staff and patients of those same six institutions; and collected an abundant corpus of legend texts from university archives, websites, blogs, forums, social media sites, and published collections of ghostlore about abandoned hospitals. vii Drawing from this ethnographic and archival research, I argue that asylum legends provide a medium for publics to collectively engage in a dynamic process of (re)living asylums in order to discursively negotiate what mental illness is, how mental illness is caused, and how it should be treated. Further, by analyzing the contestation and reconstruction of asylum history through contemporary legend, I advance an understanding of how individuals and communities cope with the challenges of mental illness and the uncertain future of mental health care. _____________________________________ Diane Goldstein, PhD _____________________________________ Ray Cashman, PhD _____________________________________ Michael Dylan Foster, PhD _____________________________________ John Holmes McDowell, PhD _____________________________________ Pravina Shukla, PhD viii Table of Contents I. Bedlam Remains: 1 The Haunted Mental Asylum in Contemporary Folklore II. What's Haunting the Asylum? 50 Understanding (De)institutionalization through Contemporary Legend III. Checking in or Checking out? 99 “Ostensive Healing” and the Empathetic Experience of Mental Illness at Abandoned Psychiatric Institutions IV. The Gendered Experience of Madness in Haunted Asylum Legendry: 151 From Pregnant Patients, Suicidal Nurses, and Murdered Children to Madmen and Maniacal Doctors V. “Shit Runs Down Hill” from the Asylum: 192 Cursed, Contagious Places and Categories for Defining a Social Epidemic VI. Closing Doors: 240 Conclusions and Community Reactions VII. Bibliography 265 VIII. Curriculum Vitae ix Chapter I Bedlam Remains: The Haunted Mental Asylum in Contemporary Folklore The Ghosts of Bedlam In its inaugural year, 1845, The London Journal; and Weekly Record of Literature, Science and Art published a pieCe entitled "RebeCCa Griffiths; Or, Love to Madness." The journal—purveyor of mass-produced sensational news and literature, or penny dreadfuls—would eventually beCome one of the most popular publiCations of nineteenth-Century Britain (King 2004). In this partiCular pieCe, an unknown author desCriBes a tale he heard while at a dinner party. At the party, the guests beCome engaged in a friendly debate Concerning the conditions required for love to develop. One of the guests, a "grave old gentleman" who was a sucCessful London drysalter (a dealer in chemiCal products such as dyes, drugs, and food preservatives), presents a narrative he heard from an unnamed source to support his claim "that love [can] be born without encouragement and [can] exist without hope" (364). It was the late eighteenth century, aCCording to the drysalter, and a young man named Thomas Dupree, who was residing in India at the time, travelled baCk home to London to visit his uncle, Mr. Walbrook. Mr. Walbrook was a wealthy merchant who employed, among other servants, a maid by the name of RebeCCa Griffiths. RebeCCa was a "plain homely country girl, extremely neat in her attire, quiet and reserved in her manners, and of a singularly subdued, and modest air." She "waited on the young East Indian"—Thomas Dupree—"with assiduous but not marked attention" (364). However, when Dupree suddenly beCame ill with a fever, RebeCCa Cared for him "day and night . in anxious attendance" (365). Dupree reCovered and Before leaving his uncle’s home on his journey baCk to India, he gave RebeCCa a guinea to thank her for 1 her Care during his siCkness. As Dupree’s carriage pulled away from the Waldorf home, RebeCCa "was seen wildly following . running with the velocity of lightning in the middle of the street, her hair streaming in the wind, and her whole appearance that of a desperate maniaC." She ran after the carriage for some time until she was eventually apprehended and taken baCk to her employer’s home. Driven to "melancholy madness" from unrequited love, RebeCCa was institutionalized at London’s notorious Bethlem Royal Hospital—the world’s oldest continually-running mental healthcare institution,