IF A MAN BE MAD

by Harlow Maine ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

An autobiographical, anatomical personal history of a drunk, often on the borderline of insanity, whose many attempts at resurrection provide a knock-down, showing-up of the cruelty, the contempt, or the indifference, the incompetence in the institutions and sanatoria of today, for ""if a man be mad, where can he find refuge"". This is his record, from childhood on through the two marriages which could not survive his drinking, and the various intervals in asylums. From the vicious institution in the mid-Pacific, to a midwestern ""psychiatric"" institution where paradehyde was the cure; to Bellevue (which he considers the best public hospital in America), to the Christian Inebriates Institute, to Alcoholics Anonymous, which could not hold him -- and finally to a job in a Veterans' Administration hospital where the brutality of method forced his resignation. An account which is as harsh on the man as on the institutions,- medical, military, and state. Lacks the intensity of the personal approach of The Lost Weekend or Snake Pit, but serves as a sober private and public indictment.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1947

Categories: NONFICTION