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Christmas In Purgatory: A Photographic Essay On Mental Retardation

Creator: Burton Blatt and Fred Kaplan (authors)
Date: 1974
Source: Available at selected libraries
Figures From This Artifact: Figure 2  Figure 3  Figure 4  Figure 5  Figure 6  Figure 7  Figure 8  Figure 9  Figure 10  Figure 11  Figure 12  Figure 13  Figure 14  Figure 15  Figure 16  Figure 17  Figure 18  Figure 19  Figure 20  Figure 21  Figure 22  Figure 23  Figure 24  Figure 25  Figure 26  Figure 27  Figure 28  Figure 29  Figure 30  Figure 31  Figure 32  Figure 33  Figure 34  Figure 35  Figure 36  Figure 37  Figure 38  Figure 39  Figure 40  Figure 41  Figure 42  Figure 43  Figure 44  Figure 45  Figure 46  Figure 47  Figure 48  Figure 49  Figure 50  Figure 51  Figure 52  Figure 53  Figure 54  Figure 55  Figure 56  Figure 57  Figure 58  Figure 59  Figure 60  Figure 61  Figure 62  Figure 63  Figure 64  Figure 65  Figure 66  Figure 67  Figure 68  Figure 69  Figure 70  Figure 71  Figure 72  Figure 73  Figure 74  Figure 75  Figure 76  Figure 77  Figure 78  Figure 79  Figure 80  Figure 81  Figure 82  Figure 83  Figure 84  Figure 85  Figure 86  Figure 87  Figure 88  Figure 89  Figure 90  Figure 91  Figure 92  Figure 93  Figure 94  Figure 95  Figure 96  Figure 97  Figure 98  Figure 99  Figure 100  Figure 101  Figure 102  Figure 103  Figure 104  Figure 105  Figure 106  Figure 107  Figure 108  Figure 109  Figure 110  Figure 111  Figure 112  Figure 113  Figure 114  Figure 115  Figure 116  Figure 117  Figure 118  Figure 119  Figure 120  Figure 121

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We observed adult residents during recreation, playing "ring-around the-rosy." Others, in the vocational training center, were playing "jacks." These were not always severely retarded patients. However, we got the feeling very quickly that this is the way they were being forced to behave.

48  

PURGATORY I
"In bed we laugh..."

49  

"In bed we laugh, in bed we cry;
And, born in bed, in bed we die.
The near approach a bed may show
Of human bliss to human woe."
Isaac de Benserade

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Among the things we will remember are the beds and the benches. Early in the evening, sometimes as early as 5 P.M., patients are put to bed. This is to equalize the work load among the different attendant shifts. During the day, we saw many patients lying on their beds, apparently for long periods of time. This was their activity.

51  

During these observations, we thought a great deal about the perennial cry for attendants and volunteer workers who are more sympathetic and understanding of institutionalized retarded residents. One of the things we realized was that attendants might be sympathetic, might interact more with patients, if institutional administrators made deliberate attempts to make patients cosmetically more appealing. For example, adult male residents should shave -- or be shaven -- more than once or twice a week. Dentures should be provided for any patient who needs them. It seems plausible to believe that it is much more possible to make residents more attractive and, therefore, more interesting to attendants than it is to attempt to convince attendants that they should enjoy the spectacle of unwashed, unkempt, odoriferous, toothless old men and women.

52  

Lastly, we viewed old women and very young girls in the same dormitories and old men and young boys as comrades in the day room. In the "normal" world, there is something appealing -- even touching -- about such friendships. In an institution residents would benefit by companionship from patients their own age.

53  

PURGATORY II
"The Promised Land..."

54  

"The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a wilderness."
Havelock Ellis

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About ten years ago, I made several trips to a large state institution for the mentally retarded, one not visited during the current study. I became interested in and, for several days, visited a dormitory housing severely retarded ambulatory adults -- one that was very similar in population to those living quarters discussed in Part I. However, this dormitory was different in a very important way. What made this dormitory different can best be illustrated with the following story.

56  

On the occasion of one such visit, I was hailed by one of the attendants and asked to come into the day room. The attendant called over a 35 or 40 year old, partly nude male and said, "Dr. Blatt, you remember Charlie. Charlie has learned how to say hello since your last visit. Charlie, say hello to Dr. Blatt." Charlie grunted and the attendant went into a kind of ecstasy that is rarely shown by adults and, when it is, radiates warmth for everyone lucky enough to be touched by it. It should not be misunderstood that Charlie's grunt resembled anything like a hello, or any other human utterance. In a way, this attendant's reaction to Charlie might have been considered as a kind of psycho-pathology of its own. However, we have a different understanding of it.

57  

What kind of man was this attendant? In 1938 he walked, literally off the streets, into that institution -- an alcoholic, without a home of his own, purposeless and without a future -- and asked for a job. For twenty-eight years he has served as an attendant in a dormitory for severely retarded patients at this institution. He knows every "boy" there and actually thinks of them as his children and they of him as their father.

58  

Sometimes, in despair and helplessness, we ask ourselves why were these severely retarded human beings born. When one observes an attendant of the kind we have just described, it is possible to find an answer. If not for the mentally retarded this attendant might have been a drifter, an alcoholic, much less of a person than he actually is. Would it be unfair to say that this attendant needed mental retardation in order to fulfill his own destiny and obtain the greatest good he could render to society?

59  

Mental reardation -sic- can bring out the best in some people -- as well as the worst. At The Seaside, it brings out the best in a lot of different adults who are involved professionally, inter-personally, and tangentially, with the residents. The Seaside has more of the people of the kind we have just discussed, than do other places for the mentally retarded -- notwithstanding the fact that every institution, large as well as small and those discussed in Part I as well as The Seaside, has superb and dedicated attendants and professional staff as well as its quota of mediocre and poor staff. In our opinion, The Seaside has more superior personnel and fewer of the inefficient and disinterested. We believe this is a major difference between The Seaside and other institutions for the mentally retarded.

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