Women and Madness Page 24

  Clearly, none of these women were “helped” by their seductive therapists. They were neither helped into self-definition, self-esteem, or independence, nor were they tenderly indulged or protected for their conditioned helplessness. I cannot measure how “hurt” they were by having sexual contact with their “soul-doctors.” What I can do is introduce two of the women. Both are thirty-two and are self-supporting. Joyce has a twelve-year-old daughter but receives no child support. Stephanie is a secretary; Joyce teaches in a private school. Both women speak quietly and are quietly attractive. Both are currently in therapy. Both were in therapy for the first time when the sexual contact occurred. Both fell very much “in love” with their therapist and enjoyed the sexual contact (Joyce immediately and Stephanie after nine months). Both continued paying for “therapy” for some time after the sexual contact began. Stephanie’s “affair” began after ten months of treatment and lasted for nearly a year. Joyce’s “affair” began after more than a year of treatment and lasted for five months. Joyce first saw her therapist for three months, when she was twenty-one, and then again when she was twenty-four. The therapist was in his late fifties at the time. Stephanie saw her therapist when she was thirty. Both women saw the same therapist.

  STEPHANIE: I’ve always been isolated. My older brother is an alcoholic and another brother killed himself. My sister who was so bright left school to get married and the dishes just piled up. No, I never talk to my family. I left them years ago and finished high school on my own.

  JOYCE: My parents were always threatening to lock me up in a nuthouse—when my first boy friend told me he was marrying someone else I got really hysterical and went home crying and screaming like a nut. And my parents had this thing against crying. You’re not allowed to cry. So they smacked my face and they were holding me down and they told me they’d call a nuthouse ambulance if I didn’t shut up. When I got rheumatic fever they said, no one’s ever going to want me, I’ll never get married and they went miles out of their way to buy medicine because God forbid somebody should find out.

  STEPHANIE: I started therapy because I was so depressed. I was sleeping a lot and gained a lot of weight. Life just had no meaning. I used to see him [the therapist] for ten minutes at a time in the beginning. I thought it was peculiar but I never asked about it. He gave me lots of pills for my depression and weight, and insisted I take birth control pills even though I wasn’t sleeping with anyone.

  JOYCE: I went to this doctor twice. First, after my boy friend got married. I had to drop out of school and work because my parents wouldn’t pay for it. Then I stopped when I became pregnant and the man I was living with said, “It’s a choice between your psychiatrist or me. If you want me to take care of you and the baby, you’ve got to stop seeing your psychiatrist.” Which I did. He never would marry me though. I went back for therapy when he left me about three years later.

  STEPHANIE: I always thought I was ugly, hideous, plain, plain Jane. I thought he must be crazy to flatter me so. Sometimes he used to stand over my chair as I talked. Once he chased me into a closet. After about three months he put his arm around me and kissed me on the head and said, “I love you and want to make you happy.” I was grateful for that but I didn’t believe him.

  JOYCE: The first time, when I was twenty-one, he said to me, “Do anything you want here in this office. It’s not just speaking. If you want to do something, you can act it out. Any fantasy you can act out. Some women like to take their clothes off. Some women like to jump around. You can do anything. But I didn’t feel like getting undressed and jumping around. When I went back to therapy I was working as a waitress and he [the therapist] asked me to be his secretary, but it never worked out.

  STEPHANIE: He always kissed me good-bye after a session, but crudely, never affectionately. When I tried to tell him this, he got annoyed and said, “Try to pretend you like it.” But I’d go home and cry. I hadn’t slept with anyone for nearly three years when I started therapy. My marriage—well, he was the first man I ever slept with and it ended after six months. I was never sexually satisfied.

  JOYCE: After that first passionate kiss I was really upset. I told a close friend about it who had me talk to a psychiatric resident. “Are you sure this really happened?” he said. “Yes.” “Well,” he said, “many times, a doctor might give you a little peck on the cheek and you can blow it up in your mind to be something other than that.” And I said, “No, I didn’t,” and he said, “All I can tell you is, work it out with your analyst.” Funny, I talked to another young psychiatrist, who was a friend, about it. He said, “As a professional all I can tell you is stop seeing him.” I should have listened to him but his answer left me kind of perplexed and I suppose I didn’t really want to give up the relationship. So I finally went to bed with him.

  STEPHANIE: He was always after me to lay on the couch and I didn’t want to. When I finally did he would lay down next to me. I didn’t want to sleep with him—I was very depressed after it happened. I remember thinking: Well, if I allow this then maybe he’ll be more affectionate…. He jumped right up afterwards and went back to his typewriter. He didn’t seem to notice that I was sad. That I hadn’t had an orgasm. All he said was “You don’t mind if I don’t take you home—I’ve got so much work to do.”

  JOYCE: We would start a session and then all of a sudden I would find him lying on the couch next to me. I was still paying for therapy and asked whether I should be, but very hesitantly. We never really resolved it.

  STEPHANIE: If I didn’t have an orgasm here it was my fault. He’s an analyst and should know what he’s doing. Besides, I wasn’t in a position to comment on anyone’s love-making. I’d once gone to bed with a woman, you know, but I was very frustrated and alone and couldn’t talk to him. Once I screamed, a really anguished howl, and he pushed me away, got up, dressed, and said, “Don’t you think you owe me an explanation?” He said: “There’s nothing wrong with our relationship, it’s a perfect doctor-patient relationship, a perfect working relationship, and a perfect relationship as lovers.” He had me typing letters for him—the same form letter for hundreds of different people. He made at least a hundred dollars for each letter, and gave me three dollars for typing it.

  JOYCE: I had orgasm after orgasm. Even though he came pretty fast. He treated me like a whore, just like my fantasies, and I guess it worked—sexually. Psychologically it was tearing me apart.

  STEPHANIE: When I got very distraught, I’d call him. He’d hang up on me a lot. Once I took a fistful of sleeping pills. He said, “Oh, it’s just your subconscious bothering you, don’t pay attention to it” and then he left his wife and moved into bachelor digs. The first time I went there I was absolutely mortified. He had what looked like sperm on his sheets, and there was a diaphragm in his bathroom. I asked him how could he be so thoughtless—and he said, “How can you accuse me of sleeping with another woman, just because you see a woman’s umbrella—even a woman’s diaphragm—in my apartment?”

  JOYCE: I went to his office and told him I wouldn’t be a patient any more, that he’d been mean and cruel and that it’s unhealthy. And he tried to talk me out of it. He said that he wasn’t using me and that the psychology books I read were old-fashioned. Modern-thinking people believe the way he did. When he saw I was really going to leave, he said, “I’m warning you. Nobody will ever, ever be able to help you. I am the only doctor in the world who can help you.”

  STEPHANIE: I would wait for him to call, and then he wouldn’t. Once I waited home all weekend and when he called on Monday morning it was only to make sure I’d type his letters. I couldn’t work and I felt like I was cracking up. He started to go away for weekends in the summer, after he’d promised to take me with him. I stayed away as long as I could and then, when I went back, he said he didn’t want to sleep with me any more but did want me to type a book for him.

  JOYCE: The depression, the feelings, the fear got worse and worse. A fear mostly that I was losing my mind, that I was insane…
. I was a whore because I could feel sexual. The more upset I got, the more librium he gave me. “But I’m upset about us,” I’d tell him. And then he stopped making love to me. I was hurt. I didn’t want him to make love to me and yet I was terribly hurt that he didn’t, because I thought maybe he doesn’t want me any more. He finally told me he thought it was too much for me, that I couldn’t handle it.

  STEPHANIE: You know, once we were alone together, naked, in his office. The door was locked. The bell started ringing and ringing and wouldn’t stop. It rang for nearly twenty minutes. He didn’t answer it. I was curious and I looked out the window. I saw it was a girl standing there crying. “That’s me next year,” I said to myself.

  JOYCE: A couple of months after I left him I went away for a holiday weekend in the country. I’m so used to doing everything for everybody. People would come into our house and I’d cook and clean for fifteen people, we’d put all of Larry’s friends up [her daughter’s father]. This weekend again, it was “everyone else go out to play and have a good time while I do the dishes.” I really didn’t want to, but there I was doing them. I don’t know how it was or why, but there was a safety razor above the sink. And I found myself on the floor, trying to cut my wrists. And I didn’t make a mark. I was going tickle, tickle. Then I tried to cut my wrists with my father’s razor and finally made it into the hospital. I called him [the therapist] and begged him to get me out of there. “I’m here maybe because of you.” He said, “Yes, I’ll get you into Creedmoor.”

  STEPHANIE: I couldn’t get it out of my head. So finally, I called him and asked for my money back—for all the “therapy.” He explained to me that when a surgeon makes a mistake the patient still pays. And I told him had he been a surgeon I would certainly be dead, but he wasn’t, and I’m not, and I’d please like my money back.

  JOYCE: I saw him [the therapist] only once again. I thought I was pregnant and went to him for a shot, to bring on my period. He accused me of talking about him. (I’d told the girl who originally sent me to him about what happened.) Then I think I said, “I want my money back,” and he said, “No.” I said, “I’ll blackmail you, I’ll sue.” And he said, “You can’t, you can’t prove anything. You’re crazy.” It’s been five years now. Once in a while, when I’ve gotten very depressed, and very angry, I’ve picked up the phone and called him and hysterically screamed at him “Why did you do that to me? You tried to kill me. Why? Why?”

  When I first published this chapter, some academics and clinicians quarreled with me. They challenged the chapter’s accuracy and/or importance. They said: “Maybe it happens a little, but it can’t possibly happen a lot.” Or, they questioned my motives: Did I want to tarnish the reputation of many good clinicians because a few bad apples existed? Did feminists hate men that much? One psychiatrist sued me—but he settled the suit for one dollar the day before trial.

  From 1972 on, many books and articles subsequently appeared about sex between psychiatric and psychotherapy patients and their therapists. They confirmed much of what I said in this chapter, only they refined the numbers.

  For example, in 1979, K. S. Pope, H. Levenson, and L. R. Schover published “Sexual intimacy in psychological training: Results and implications of a national survey” in the American Psychologist. In 1980, J. C. Holroyd and A. M. Brodsky published “Does touching patients lead to sexual intercourse?” And, in 1983, J. C. Holroyd published an article titled “Erotic contact as an instance of sex-biased therapy.”

  In the mid-1980s, when Dr. Nanette Gartrell attempted to further work in this area, she encountered massive hostility and resistance from the American Psychiatric Association (APA)—and she was both a psychiatrist and the Chair of their National Women’s Committee.

  In 1985, Gartrell independently found that while 6 percent of psychiatrists polled admitted a sexual relationship with a patient, that 65 percent of psychiatrists admitted that they had treated patients who had been sexually abused by their psychiatrists and that the abuse had devastated them. In 1986, Gartrell published these findings together with Herman, Olarte, Feldstein, and Localio. Also in 1986, R. D. Glaser and J. S. Thorpe published their article on “Unethical intimacy: A Survey of sexual contact and advances between psychology educators and female graduate students.”

  In 1988, the APA supported the defense of a Colorado psychiatrist, Dr. Jason Richter, who admitted that he had been sexually abusing his patient, Melissa Roberts-Henry. Defense tactics included hiring detectives to follow Roberts-Henry and, according to Gartrell, “assasinat[e] the character of the woman psychiatrist who subsequently treated Roberts-Henry.” This psychiatrist was forced to close her practice and leave the state. In 1989, Gartrell quit the APA.

  In 1989, C. M. Bates and A. M. Brodksy published Sex in the Therapy Hour. In 1990, K. S. Pope and S. Feldman-Summers published “Therapist-patient sexual involvement. A review of the research.” And, in 1993, K.S. Pope, J. K. Sonne, and J. Holroyd published “Sexual Feelings in psychotherapy: Explorations for therapists and therapists-in-waiting.” The work in this area continues, alas because the problem has not gone away.

  I was also asked to testify or consult in a number of cases around the country in which private therapy or institutionalized sexually abused psychiatric patients brought charges for malpractice or damages. One such patient had been impregnated on the ward by her psychiatrist; other such patients had been repeatedly raped on the ward by other patients. The staff disbelieved and punished the rape victims. They certainly did not treat them professionally as rape victims. (I write about this in the new introduction to this book.)

  In the last 30–35 years, it also came to my attention that in isolated instances, female psychotherapists have also engaged in sex with their male and female patients. They apparently did so less frequently than their male counterparts. However, I did hear about a number of lesbian-feminist cults that functioned from the 1970s on, with “therapist-healers” as the leaders.

  One case involved a well-known non-credentialed “healer” and feminist author, Anne Wilson Schaef, based in Boulder, Colorado. Like her male counterparts, she not only slept with her female and male “clients;” she also had some do her laundry, housekeeping, shopping, driving, and errands and functioned as secretaries. She also accepted gifts of large amounts of cash and land.

  Over the years, many women, including feminist therapists, called to tell me that Schaef was still at it or that yet another of her victims had finally broken with the cult and come to see them. I had once known and worked with Schaef and I broke with her over this very issue in the mid-1970s. At the time, I advised her to cease and desist such practices. Luckily, I kept good records of our communications.

  A woman patient, Vonna Moody, whom Schaef had moved into her home as a lover, finally sued Schaef for malpractice and for having subsequently institutionalized her. In 1992, I testified for Moody. Schaef settled with her the next day.

  If it’s wrong when men do it, it’s also wrong when women do it. No sane or moral therapist seeks to “help” anyone by sleeping with them or by exploiting them in any other way.

  * The issue of sexuality, childhood, and family life is a crucial one. The fact that we are not supposed to experience sexual pleasure with our childhood relatives, but with strangers, no doubt limits our sexuality. Nevertheless, I don’t think that remedial psychotherapy for adults is the place, time, or way to solve this particular moral mystery. Further, while McCartney is correct in condemning the originally harmful distance between parent and child, and the harmful effects of sexual repression, he is shortsighted in his understanding of the differences in treatment of male and female childhood sexuality. Female children have already been (over) exposed to heterosexual sexuality with their fathers; male children, while well nurtured maternally, are forced to severely repress their heterosexual sexuality in relation to their mothers. Few men achieve mature heterosexuality—and I don’t think sexual intercourse with a female therapist is the solution to this problem. Also, b
oth male and female children are deprived of sexuality with their same-sex parent or with other nurturant same-sex adults. I doubt whether such bisexual deprivation could be remedied for adults through “acting out” in psychotherapy.

  CHAPTER SIX

  PSYCHIATRICALLY INSTITUTIONALIZED WOMEN

  For years I was a bookstore browser. One night in a Greenwich Village store I found myself standing next to a frizzy-haired woman, classic shopping bag in tow, talking to herself out loud. “Word salad,’’ my professors would say. But it was wonderful to listen to: deep and golden and endless. At some point, I said something like “Amen” or “Right on,” or whatever the equivalent was back then. Startled, she stared at me suspiciously. Where the hell did I get off taking her seriously when the world had already made it plain to her that her safety lay in being misunderstood and not noticed … and if I were a rival victim of visions, why didn’t I just go back to my own flagpole and sit on it? She literally growled at me and walked off, taking up a lonely position at a bookstall at the far end of the store, where people resumed their pitying looks.

  Lady-Sister: To you, wherever you are, I dedicate this chapter.

  During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a number of “private madhouses” had begun to spring up “especially in and around London.” These houses were operated for a profit and accepted only those inmates whose families could afford the relatively high prices. Before long, evidence of abuses came to light. Wealthy husbands apparently viewed confinement in these unregulated madhouses as a comparatively inexpensive way of ridding themselves of bothersome wives. Daniel DeFoe began to call public attention to this as early as 1687. He exclaimed against the “vile practice now so much in vogue among the better sort, as they are called, but the worst sort, in fact, namely the sending their wives to mad-houses at every whim or dislike, that they may be more secure and undisturb’d in their debaucheries….” DeFoe goes on to say that “This is the height of barbarity and injustice in a Christian country, it is a clandestine Inquisition, nay worse. How many ladies and gentlewomen are hurried away to these houses, which ought to be suppressed, or at least subject to daily examination, as hereafter shall be proposed?” He further says that “If they are not mad when they go into these cursed houses, they are soon made so by the barbarous usage they there suffer, and any woman of spirit who has the least love for her husband, or concern for her family, cannot sit down tamely under a confinement and separation the most unaccountable and unreasonable. Is it not enough to make one mad to be suddenly clapp’d up, stripp’d, whipp’d, ill fed, and worse us’d?” He further says “All conveniences for writing are denied, no messenger to be had to carry a letter to any relation or friend; and if this tyrannical Inquisition be not sufficient to drive any soul stark staring mad, though before they were never so much in their right sense, I have no more to say….”