Michel Foucault's history of madness tries to discover the origins of modern psychiatric practice, and raises questions about its meaning and validity. At the center of his critique is Foucault's claim that modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgments. Indeed, what psychiatry presents as the 'liberation' of the mad from mental illness is in fact 'a gigantic moral imprisonment.' Foucault may [exaggerate], but his essential point requires serious consideration. Psychiatric practice does seem to be be based on implicit moral assumptions in addition to explicit empirical [e.g., scientific] considerations. And efforts to treat mental illness and be society's way of controlling what it views as immoral, or otherwise undesirable, behavior. Not long ago, homosexuals and women who rejected their stereotypical roles were judged "mentally ill." [Foucault showed that], while the term "normal" sometimes signifies merely what is usual or average, in discussions of mental illness, it most often has normative force." (Normative means it has the power to establish a social standard of behavior).
Your post should be a paragraph-long application of this idea to one patient in the novel. Are they "really" mentally ill (whatever that means) or are they victims of someone else's "normative force"? In other words, are they simply being denied the freedom of self-determination, and forced to conform to someone else's ideas of morality and normality? Foucault believe that "where there is power, there is [always] resistance" - so how do these characters resist the power of the psychiatric establishment in the hospital? Kesey wrote the novel around the same time Foucault was doing his analyses, so these ideas apply to the kind of asylum Nurse Ratched runs in the story. That should make it easy to find connections. A good post depends on using a particular character's situation to show them. Make sure you have two quotations in the post, one from the above quote and one from the novel. Good luck! THIS ASSIGNMENT IS DUE BY SATURDAY 8/30 @ 12:00!
114 Comments
Sophie Navarro
7/27/2016 04:34:11 pm
The main person that comes to mind with the idea of wrongfully placed as mentally ill would be Randle Patrick McMurphy. He is in the ward because he is thought to be mentally ill, and in the end of the novel, he goes through a lobotomy. He goes through this because he was seen to be too mentally unstable and aggressive. However, throughout the story, he isn’t shown with any real mental illness. Although he did show brute force when he was angry or going against someone (especially the Big Nurse). However, he is basically the victim of society’s normal force. McMurphy was an ordinary con man who, yes, has done many bad things in his life. His main priority in the ward was to oppose the Big Nurse and break the system. As Foucault believed, "where there is power, there is [always] resistance". He started the resistance against the Big Nurse. In fact, he threw her off her game so much that because the fact that “McMurphy’s presence still tromping up and down the halls and laughing out loud in the meetings and singing in the latrines… She couldn’t rule with her old power any more” (Kesey 269).
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Jack
7/30/2016 06:49:51 pm
One of the best examples of a victim to this system is Billy Bibbit. Billy was a mostly quiet patient, and he was the true victim of normative force alongside McMurphy. When Foucault was talking about society trying to suppress the people deemed outside the norm, he said “”while the term "normal" sometimes signifies merely what is usual or average, in discussions of mental illness, it most often has normative force." This quotation applies especially to Billy because it hints throughout the book that he is a victim of severe nervousness and oppression, by no possible standard is he dangerous, Nurse Ratched is the one that takes advantage of Billy’s extreme fear and nervousness when she mentions his mother, she knows that Billy severely fears and loathes disappointment, she twisted his quirks into making him commit suicide. While Billy shows some signs of sadness and depression, he is not one of, if there are any, of the mentally ill patients. He is a victim of the system’s normative force, specifically Nurse Ratched’s. If Billy was left to his own devices, allowed in the environment with people like McMurphy that he flourished in, he would be happy. It was the suppression of Nurse Ratched and the ward’s normative force that threw him over the edge. One thing that is said by McMurphy in the novel that seriously etches and purveys the normative force and society’s hypocritical expectations in the book (especially because he comes from the outside) is “What do you think you are, for Chrissake, crazy or somethin'? Well you're not! You're not! You're no crazier than the average asshole out walkin' around on the streets and that's it. ” This really shows how oppressive and hypocritical society’s expectations are on people like Billy and McMurphy.
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Steven White
7/28/2016 10:12:12 am
"Modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgments." In this statement Michel Foucault argues that modern psychiatry is not solely based off of scientific fact, but that it is also based off of what society perceives as normal versus what society thinks is abnormal. Ken Kesey supports this claim through the character in his novel, Harding, who was signed into the hospital because he refuses intercourse with his wife. Throughout the story the reader is able to infer that Harding is gay, which, at the time of the novel, was perceived as bad or wrong because it was different. Harding wasn't actually mentally ill at all; society just ousted him from the community because he likes something different than what the gender roles of an 'average' male outlined. By placing him in the mental hospital society is trying to make him conform to their beliefs, while he is totally capable of making his own decisions. Many characters resist the hospital's ways by following in McMurphy's footsteps. They try to embrace their sexuality, and McMurphy also helps them regain some confidence, which is exactly what the hospital is trying to get rid of in the other patients. Harding hopes to soon rebel in a way special to himself. "He asked what about us, why didn't we just up and get our clothes on and make it out with him? 'I'm not quite ready yet, Mack,' Harding told him... 'I'll be ready in a few weeks. But I want to do it on my own, by myself, right out the door... I want them to know I was able to do it that way.' " (Kesey, 257) In this quote, Harding is explaining to McMurphy why he won't leave just yet. Harding wants to do it by himself, the traditional way, to show the mental hospital, and society, that he is an able person. It would be Harding's way of showing defiance and resistance against the hospital. It's his way of showing that although he was shamed by everyone for being different, he is able to be a functioning person within society, even though he is seen as different. When he walks out the door he wants to feel that he has beaten the shame brought upon him, and that would be his ultimate act of rebellion.
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Aidan Butler
7/28/2016 11:37:38 am
The famed historian Michel Foucault said "Modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgments." In other terms he was arguing that modern psychiatry is based off of what the majority of the public thinks is normal and not the science in which they say they are studying. In Ken Kesey's novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" we see many characters wrongfully accused of being insane and placed in the asylum. The character that stands out the most to being wrongfully admitted is Randle Patrick McMurphy. McMurphy chose to be admitted into the hospital because he didn't want to work for six months which clearly tells us that he is not insane and doesn't deserve to be held there. We can see Randle becoming rebellious and isn't actually insane when we "loses" his clothes and says ""No?" He looks down at the part of the towel she's eye to eye with, and it's wet and skin tight. "Towels against ward policy too? Well, I guess there's nothin' to do exec—""(Kesey 87). He is doing this to defy Nurse Ratched and to make the other patients feel rebellious. We can see that he is not truly insane because his motives are to create chaos and shift the power into the hands of the patients. No truly insane patience's have the thought process to rebel against the nurse. People would think that McMurphy is insane because he does "crazy" things that a normal person wouldn't do. McMurphy does these things not because he is insane but because he believes in freedom and that people should be able to do what they like as long as it isn't hurting anyone else. Throughout the story we can see that Randle McMurphy isn't insane and was placed in the asylum because he doesn't conform to the social norms of society.
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Brendan Loftus
7/28/2016 12:21:51 pm
“Efforts to treat mental illness and be society's way of controlling what it views as immoral, or otherwise undesirable, behavior” Michel Foucault points out that the purpose of the psychiatric industry is flawed. Instead of trying to help those who are mentally ill, asylums instead force change upon the patients, and those who refuse to change are referred to as dangerous and dismissed out of hand. The end of R. P. McMurphy is an example of such punitive treatment. He is the prime resistance to Nurse Ratched’s rule and constantly harasses her throughout the entirety of the novel, and in their final climactic “duel”, McMurphy attacks Nurse Ratched, breaking her dictatorship over the ward. McMurphy is quickly suppressed and carted off for a lobotomy. He returns a shadow of his former self. McMurphy was ripped from his body so “the Big Nurse could use it as an example of what can happen if you buck the system” (270). The lobotomy was in no way meant to cure McMurphy of any madness or mental illness he might of had. Rather, it was to punish him for his aggressiveness and his audacity in challenging Nurse Ratched’s authority. McMurphy simply refused to let the ward conform or break him, and that was what led to his death and liberation of the other patients on the ward. Psychiatry is nothing more than society taking behaviors it sees as unfavorable and destroying them and the struggle between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched takes this thought to a much smaller, and more intense battlefield than can be described in a paragraph.
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Ray Forbes
7/29/2016 11:05:11 am
In the novel "One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey. Many people in mental hospitals are accused of being mentally ill or insane when they really do not deserve to be kept there. During the 1960's, if people weren't the normal they could have been sent to an insane asylum to have themselves be "treated for mental illness and be society's way of controlling what it views as immoral, or otherwise undesirable, behavior." For example, Harding is gay. Because this was not accepted in the 1960's he was convinced that he was not normal and should be in a mental hospital. This is not fair. This was "society's way of treating someone different" (Kesey 294). Harding battles this unfair rule by checking himself out of the ward and paving the path for other patients to leave as well.
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Ethan Christensen
7/28/2016 03:49:37 pm
"All I know is this: nobody's very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down." In the novel 'One flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' by Ken Kesey, many are wrongfully accused of insanity and are locked up for that reason. "Modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgments." Nurse Ratchet, the all powerful dictator-like nurse in the mental hospital is extremely prevalent in the story. She just tries to put down the patients instead of actually helping them. She believes that she is inherently better than them just because of her uniform. It's all changed when McMurphy challenges her rule. This triggers a chain effect of events eventually leading to the liberation of the patients. This story really shows the flaws of medicine and human nature.
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William Watson
7/28/2016 04:05:50 pm
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Aidan Lyons
7/28/2016 07:02:19 pm
Like a wave that smashes suddenly into a boat silently rocking in the gentle, calm night, Randle Patrick McMurphy shook the world. Well, he shook multiple worlds actually. He shook the worlds of Dale Harding, Charles Cheswick, Nurse Ratched, Martini, Chief Bromden, Doctor Spivey, Billy Ribbit, and, eventually, himself.
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Ashleigh Lloyd
7/28/2016 08:24:00 pm
The historian Michel Foucault questions the ideas and beliefs of modern psychiatric practice and deciding whether or not it is valid. He believes that people can be put into asylums because it is believed that that doing something immoral in society’s general opinion. The author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest”, Ken Kesey, also explores similar ideas in his novel. After an attempted suicide to be free from his mother, the character Billy in the novel, controlled by his mother, was put in the asylum. During a secret party in the asylum, the previously stuttering and nervous Billy became more outgoing and found his voice after having the freedom to do what he choses, like opening his and other patient’s beer cans and spending the night with a prostitute. In the morning when he is found with the prostitute, he did not flinch before introducing her. After Miss Ratched invoked his mother into the conversation and explained how this would “disturb her terribly”, Billy went back to his old personality and stuttered out “duh-duh-don’t t-tell, M-M-M-Miss Ratched” (Kesey 264)! Billy found courage, but what he did was looked at as immoral by Miss Ratched, so he was not able to become his true self. Foucault explains that “efforts to treat mental illness [can] be society's way of controlling what it views as immoral, or otherwise undesirable, behavior.” Both Michel Foucault and Ken Kesey explore how modern psychiatric practice can be dictated by beliefs, either through vocalizing their thoughts or creating realistic situations where the psychiatric power is abused.
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Alexa Kirkpatrick
7/29/2016 07:58:28 am
Mental illness is hard to judge because it isn’t as easy as looking at an X-ray machine and pointing out a broken bone. Whether somebody is mentally ill or not is judged by what people think is normal and “healthy.” In the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey the character Randle McMurphy many people believe that he should not have been in the asylum. The character is outspoken and sexual which at that time was not “normal.” Throughout the book we are shown how he really doesn’t seem as challenged as the other people in there. “He says that the Big Nurse is just a bitter, ice-hearted old lady,” Even though all the other patients were terrified of her, McMurphy saw her as someone who was flawed and someone who was not this all powerful creature but just a human. His mind wasn’t weak but strong to see what was behind her and I believe that intelligence is not a mental illness.
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Lauren Bonanno
7/29/2016 08:39:15 am
Michel Foucault once said that "modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgments". This means that some forms of mental illnesses are diagnosed by society's perception of what is not considered to be "normal". In the novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey, a patient named Randle McMurphy was admitted into the mental hospital. McMurphy was seen as a leader who stood up for the other patients and broke the rules to have a little "fun". Nurse Ratched, the woman who runs the hospital, treats the patients in a harsh way. If someone steps out of line, her punishments can change someones life. For example, when McMurphy attacks Ratched at the end of the novel, he is sent to a different ward. The boys at the hospital then discover a chart with McMurphy's name written on it "and below this written in ink was lobotomy" (Kesey 321). The lobotomy turned McMurphy into a "vegetable" meaning he doesn't have control over his body anymore. He is no longer able to move or do things for himself. Nurse Ratched treated McMurphy so horribly because she saw him as a threat. He was the leader who everyone admired and she didn't like how he defied her rules. Since McMurphy did not conform to the nurse's "morality and normality", he was judged and punished for what he thought was right. Mental illness is defined by society's standards to what is not "normal".
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Julia Schneider
7/29/2016 09:21:40 am
The historian Michel Foucault claims that “efforts to treat mental illness can be society's way of controlling what it views as immoral, or otherwise undesirable, behavior.” He was saying that not all people in a mental hospital are mentally ill, these people just aren’t “normal” in the standards of our society. In the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, people are put into an insane asylum because they are seen to be mentally ill. One character that I believe is actually mentally ill is Chief Bromden; he is always paranoid, he is always surrounded by a hallucinated fog, and he thinks that he is extremely weak, when he is very big and strong. But a lot of the other patients are not actually mentally ill, and the one person that shows this the most is Randle McMurphy. McMurphy is a loud and rambunctious guy who likes to stir up trouble. In one scene he steps out of the latrine right in front of Nurse Ratched while holding a towel around his waist. She is shocked at this sight and says, “you can’t run around here - in a towel!”. McMurphy follows that by saying “Towels against ward policy too? Well, I guess there's nothin' to do exec—"(Kesey 55). This shows that McMurphy is rebellious and doesn’t like to follow the rules, but this in no way shows that he has a mental illness. Also the fact that McMurphy was trying to get inside of Nurse Ratchet’s head, and that he was trying to come up with a plan to make the patients in charge and not Nurse Ratchet‘s shows that he has a normal brain, and he is smart and clever. Somebody with a mental illness would not be able to think like this, so McMurphy shouldn’t be in the insane asylum at all. The historian, Michel Foucault, was somewhat right with his claims because a lot of people like McMurphy are put into insane asylum’s because they aren’t “normal”, but there are still people in these insane asylums that actually have mental illnesses.
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Belinda Bohrman
7/29/2016 09:38:39 am
It is said by Roger Jones that “For most people, morals are a set of rules that we ought to obey. They tell us what is right and what is wrong.” Society’s morality is often questioned throughout One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Taking place in the 1940’s, people looked at things a lot differently back then, and if you didn’t agree with the views of the masses, then you were labeled “sick” and sent to an insane asylum. However, more often than not, the “sick” individuals were so brainwashed that they began to think that there was something wrong with them, rather than standing by what they believed in. For instance, Harding is a prime example. Although it never says so explicitly in the book, it is heavily implied that he is homosexual. Despite the fact that he is married to a women he was still convinced that, being the way he was, he was shameful. He says, “I discovered at an early age that I was- shall we be kind and say different? It’s a better more general word than the other one. I indulged in certain practices that our society regards as shameful. And I got sick. It wasn’t the practices, I don’t think, it was the feeling that the great, deadly, pointing forefinger of society was pointing at me- and the great voice of millions chanting ‘Shame. Shame. Shame.’ It’s society’s way of dealing with someone different.” (Kesey 294) It’s implied then that all the stress of being homosexual in that time-period caused Harding to have a bit of a mental breakdown and sign himself into a Mental Institution. Nonetheless, he can still form coherent thoughts and it is seen through further dialogue that he is exceedingly intelligent. It’s obvious that he is very mentally sound and doesn’t need to be in an asylum at all and only entered because of society’s views of what is moral and immoral. The same things can be said about many of the other Acutes. Such as Billy, McMurphy, Fredrickson, and even Chief at times. It’s hard to say, even in present day, whether or not society will ever know the true differences between right and wrong.
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Katherine Smith
7/29/2016 11:44:13 am
One Flew Over the Cuchoo's Nest by Ken Kesey tells a story about the influence a new patient, McMurphy, has on the other patients. This novel was published around the same time as Michel Foucault wrote, "Modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgement". Kesey paints a picture of McMurphy as a man who did not follow the rules set by society, and was placed in the mental institution for evaluation. One of the patients, the Chief, is the narrator of the story. The Chief pretends to be deaf and does not speak to anyone. Is he really mentally ill or hiding from the real world? He learns to trust McMurphy and his secret of hearing is eventually revealed to him. Focault questions whether patients are victims of someone else's "normative force." He states, "where there is power, there is resistance". Kesey writes about the daily practice of lining up for medication. When a patient questions what the pill is, he is seen as resisting. Mr. Taber, the 'resisting patient', says "Miss, I don't like to create trouble. But I don't like to swallow something without knowing what it is, neither". Mr. Taber is then punished for his resistance. The Chief seems to comply with Nurse Ratched and the rules, until toward the end of the story, when he is getting ready to escape. He tells the reader, "When I finished dressing I reached into McMurphy's nightstand and got his cap and tried it on. It was too small, and I was suddenly ashamed of trying to wear it". Was the Chief truly mentally ill or someone who was beaten down by others all his life? He recognized the goodness of McMurphy, the hugeness of his personality and found courage within himself at last.
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Jordan Campanella
7/29/2016 11:57:38 am
The historian Michel Foucault said "modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgments". This means that society makes assumptions on mental illnesses and what is considered to be "normal". In the novel One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, people are put into insane asylums for being mentally ill. One of the patients admitted into the asylum is Randle Patrick McMurphy. McMurphy was admitted into the asylum because he wasn't up for working. He was seen as a leader in the asylum because he stood up for the other patients. He stood up for the other patients because unlike everyone else he wasn't brainwashed. All the patients were so convinced that something was severely wrong with them. However, they couldn't do much about it because it was "society's way of treating someone different" (Kesey 294). Mental illnesses are hard to diagnose and can't be made on the assumption of society.
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Amy Gardner
7/29/2016 01:21:50 pm
Gary Gutting wrote that historian Foucault claims that, “modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgments.” This ideology is present in Ken Kesey’s novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, through the character Dale Harding. The underlying reason Harding is in the ward is because he does not want to become intimate with his wife which leads the reader to believe he is gay. At this time, being gay was not what most people were, and therefore it is seen as an illness. This is shown when Chief notes, “It’s the same thing McMurphy said about Harding’s laugh on that first day, but it’s different somehow; where McMurphy saying it calmed Harding down, her saying it makes him more nervous than ever” (Kesey 158). Harding knows and acknowledges it also. He knows he is sane, but one day society’s morals finally make Harding believe he is crazy. He tells McMurphy that, “It wasn’t the practices, I don’t think, it was the feeling that the great, deadly, pointing forefinger of society was pointing at me…” (Kesey 257). He realizes the power imbalance, so he goes along with McMurphy and his shenanigans. He takes part in the fishing trip and the party after hours at the ward. After everything, Harding allows the power to not affect him as he signs out of the ward, knowing he is not insane.
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Tamia Waddy
7/29/2016 01:55:11 pm
Mental Illness isn't easy to identify, because it isn't as easy to diagnose as a physical illness. We can't see it on our skin, and it doesn't come up in physical tests like a broken bone may. The patients at the mental institution are committed under reason of mental illness, however, this doesn't mean that they are mentally ill. While some patients at the institution are ill, it is hinted that some, more importantly the main character Bromden and another character McMurphy, are not. McMurphy is committed because he behaved differently than normal, making him be judged 'ill.' This does not mean that he was necessarily ill, but that people assumed him ill because he didn't act the way others did. Calling somebody mentally ill was a way to say that they weren't normal, and needed to be conformed to normality. "We have weeks, or months, or even years if need be. Keep in mind that Mr. Murphy is committed. The length of time he spends in this hospital is entirely up to us."(Kesey 137). Patients didn't get a choice as to when they were released, that decision was entirely up to the doctors. The patients could be completely 'cured' from whatever illness they had, but the doctors could still keep them, because they didn't think as 'normally' as society does. Amongst the other patients of the institution, McMurphy was an anomly who refused to conform to the hospital ways. Nobody could control him, and because of that he was called insane. I do not believe McMurphy was insane, I believe that people were afraid of his ideas, of his ways of thinking. He influenced the other patients, inspiring them to be themselves, and to the doctors and the Head Nurse, that was not sane. He didn't want to comform to normalcy, he wanted to be himself."She tried to get her ward back into shape, but it was difficult with McMurphy's presence still tromping up and down the halls and laughing out loud in the meetings and singing in the lantrines."(Kesey 227) The Head Nurse lost her absolute power over the hospital, and even when McMurphy paid the price for his ideas, the revolution he started didn't stop. She could no longer tell the patients what was normal. Although McMurphy received a lobotomy, they couldn't stop what he already did.
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Jackie Prestininzi
7/29/2016 02:02:40 pm
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Aidan Dougherty
7/29/2016 02:31:48 pm
Philosopher Michel Foucault claims in his works on madness that "Modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgments." Foucault is indicating that the idea of psychiatry, while believed to be composed entirely of scientific and psychological facts, is basically built upon what society believes to be right and wrong. A good example of this theory is expressed by the character R. P. McMurphy in Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". McMurphy is sent to the mental hospital because of a crime that he committed that the government and society alike would consider immoral or wrong. McMurphy is labeled by society as abnormal and mentally sick for his record of repeated violent and sexual behavior. As seen throughout the book, McMurphy seems to be a perfectly sane person and shows no obvious signs of mental disability or illness. This quote describes how the nurse manipulates her patients' minds to make them believe themselves to be insane or criminal. She uses the power of common morality to change the minds of the weak minded patients. "'I robbed a cash register in a service station.' She moved to the next man. 'I tried to take my little sister to bed.' Her eyes clicked to the next man; each one jumped like a shooting-gallery target. 'I -one time- wanted to take my brother to bed.'... It was better than she'd dreamed." (Kesey 49) This quote shows how most of the men in the ward were deemed different by the public, and therefore deemed abnormal. They needed to be "fixed" according to someone of society who decided that their actions wrong.
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Jack Borkoski
7/29/2016 02:45:20 pm
In the novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey, one of the patients in the hospital is named Dale Harding. In the hospital there are two groups. The Acutes and the Chronic's. The Acutes are patients who can be cured and the Chronic's are patients who cannot be cured. Nurse Ratched is the antagonist of the novel and the head of the psychiatric ward. She is an evil woman, who instead of wanting to see patients get better, she just wants to control them. Now when the protagonist of the story enters the picture, all goes to hell. His name is Randle McMurphy. Almost immediately, every patient on the ward loves him. Except some of the Chronic's who don't know what's going on. Throughout the novel McMurphy questions Nurse Ratched's authority, which upsets her very much. He really starts to question things during group session. Group session is where most of the patients on the ward sit together and talk about things on their mind, or questions the Nurse asks them. In one session Dale Harding goes on to say, "I'm voluntary. I'm not committed" (Kesey 167). Dale Harding has no mental illness what so ever. This book was written during the 1960's when homosexuality was considered a mental illness. At the time Dale was homosexual urges and could not contain himself. He didn't want to face reality and his distant wife back at home. So he signed himself into the hospital. He'd rather be there then outside in the real world. During this group session Nurse Ratched seems pleased to inform the group that his wife is unfaithful and that his wife's ample bosom gives him a feeling of inferiority. McMurphy catches this and realizes what the Nurse is doing. At one time Harding admits to McMurphy and says "We are victims of matriarchy here" (Kesey 59). They are under Nurse Ratched's rule. In one way Harding resists the power of the psychiatric ward by joining McMurphy and rising up against the Nurse. But in the end we all know that not everything works out, especially not for McMurphy. Sometimes, but not always evil triumphs over good.
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Sinead Hemdsrson
7/29/2016 02:48:38 pm
In the book One Flew Over the Cuckoos nest by Ken Kesey, McMurhphy was anything but mentally ill. McMurphy went in the hospital and demonstrated "where there is power, there's is [always] resistance." He drove Nurse Ratched insane, he definitely tested her power and tried to show her she's not in charge anymore. By the end of the book she didn't have the same power she used to in fact she had little to no power anymore. McMurphy might be anything but mentally ill but he is also anything but normal. McMurphy believed in having fun and breaking the rules so he needed to break the system. "But it's the truth even if it didn't happen"(Kesey 13) we never know if we have a reliable narrator or not, but we can't do anything but believe Bromden and what he's seen and heard around the hospital. By the end of the book McMurphy was getting many treatments that he shouldn't have been getting because he wasn't actually mentally ill. When he leaves he wanted to feel as if he has "won" but in the end he really did end up losing.
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Julia Rousseau
7/29/2016 03:09:38 pm
The historian Michel Foucault said "modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgments". This idea is depicted in the novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey. McMurphy is sent to a mental hospital because he was not "normal". His acts of aggression and refusal towards Nurse Ratched landed him a lobotomy. The lobotomy in no way cured Mcmurphy, it only showed what would happen if you challenged Rached's dictatorship. The asylum tried to force change upon the patients like Mcmurphy; he did not receive any real help. Nurse Rached and Mcmurphy's struggle portrays unfavorable behaviors and ideas crushed.
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Desiree Marshall
7/29/2016 03:18:39 pm
While reading 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest', I could definitely point out a few people who didn't belong in the hospital. One individual who stood out the most was McMurphy. From the beginning and throughout the novel, the reader wonders why McMurphy is even there in the first place. There is no indication of a mental issue with him. He is aware of his surroundings so much so, that he immediately sees through the Big Nurse's methods as no one else before him has done. Sure, he's a con artist and not the best of people, but these grounds alone don't make him mentally ill. He's just misguided, and his place is clearly not in a mental hospital as the readers can gather by the way he behaves. He's not a typical patient, he's different. While everyone else follows whatever the Big Nurse says, McMurphy rebels against her. McMurphy's constant upheavals finally get the best of the Big Nurse, as she is not used to anyone going against her commands. Because of his nature, he is forced to undergo these treatments that are meant for the mentally ill, but McMurphy isn't ill. One could say that his treatments are " efforts to treat mental illness and be society's way of controlling what it views as immoral, or otherwise undesirable, behavior." (Foucault). To the Big Nurse, McMurphy's actions are undesirable so the shocking and eventually the lobotomy are used as weapons to cease any rebellion started. Also because of his popularity amongst the patients, the Big Nurse took the opportunity to use McMurphy as an "example of what happens when you buck the system."(270) In this case treatments used for mental patients were misused for the pure meaning of correcting someone who rebelled against the system in place. Let alone used on someone who didn't display any indicators of a mental illness in the first place.
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Mara Campolattaro
7/29/2016 03:28:58 pm
In Ken Kesey’s novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, Michel Foucault’s ideas about modern psychiatry are presented by the virtue of Harding’s character. It’s implicated that Harding was admitted to the institution because he’s gay, backing up Foucault’s belief that “Psychiatric practice does seem to be based on implicit moral assumptions in addition to explicit empirical considerations.” (Foucault). During the era that the novel was written in, homosexuality was viewed as illicit and anomalous. Harding wasn’t ill at all, he simply just didn’t conform to what society saw as a “normal” man in that time. He even says himself that he is in the institution because he’s different: "I discovered at an early age that I was –shall we be kind and say different? It’s a better, more general word than the other one.” (Kesey 237). Harding is completely mentally sound as shown through his dialogue, and is only labelled as mentally insane because of his atypical personal preferences.
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ray forbes
7/29/2016 03:58:10 pm
In the novel "One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey, many people in mental hospitals are accused of being mentally ill or insane when they really do not deserve to be kept there. During the 1960's, if people weren't the normal they could have been sent to an insane asylum to have themselves be "treated for mental illness and be society's way of controlling what it views as immoral, or otherwise undesirable, behavior." For example, Harding is gay. Because this was not accepted in the 1960's he was convinced that he was not normal and should be in a mental hospital. This is not fair. This was "society's way of treating someone different" (Kesey 294). Harding battles this unfair rule by checking himself out of the ward and paving the path for other patients to leave as well.
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Heather O'Donnell
7/29/2016 04:31:51 pm
The historian Michael Focault criticizes modern psychiatry for trying to "cure" perfectly typical people who are unfairly labeled as "mentally insane" by society. He then goes on to say that "not long ago, women and homosexuals who rejected their stereotypical roles were judged mentally ill." Some of the patients in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey are actually mentally ill; however, the majority of them are wrongly assumed to be mentally ill due to their differences from the "norm". One example is Randle Patrick McMurphy, a rebellious, optimistic man who defies the rules of the asylum he and the other patients live in. On his first day there, he asks, "Doctor, do I look like a sane man?" (Kesey 46). McMurphy's courage to question whether he really belongs there just because he isn't content to follow the rules like everyone else inspires the other patients to resist against Nurse Ratched, the manager of the hospital. Mr. Taber resists the power of the psychiatric hospital by refusing to swallow his pills without knowing what's them. In addition, the main character, Chief Bromden, is planning to escape from the hospital at the end of the book. At the beginning of the book, they were satisfied with obeying the rules and never questioning their lives. This shows the significant impact McMurphy has on the patients. He teaches them that while they may have no power in how society unfairly labels them, they can choose how that affects them. They can find the power not to let being labeled mentally ill define who they are.
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Hannah Nishiura
7/29/2016 04:54:55 pm
Mental illness shows in many forms, and is often hard to diagnose without making assumptions and false guesses. In the novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, it is shown that the impressions of society can make a person believe that they have an illness that needs to be cured. Throughout the novel there is a lingering question, are chief Bromden and many other characters in the novel mentally ill, or are they misjudged and scared? For example, in the novel Nurse Ratched states, "A good many of you are in here because you could not adjust to the rules of society in the Outside World, because you refused to face up to them, because you tried to circumvent them and avoid them." (Kesey 171) If one does not feel that he fits into the strict roles of society, he is marked as mentally ill and has no way to prove that statement wrong. Chief Bromden proves throughout the novel that he is not ill, he has just been treated a certain way since he was a kid, and it left him feeling isolated from others. Chief Bromden nor the nurse never mention the reason he is in the hospital, proving that the reason was most likely not justified or true. Philosopher Michael Foucalt stated, "efforts to treat mental illness and be society's way of controlling what it views as immoral, or otherwise undesirable, behavior." Chief Bromden is not in the hospital because there is something wrong with him, but because he does not fit into society's standards of "normal".
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Nicholas Principe
7/29/2016 05:29:31 pm
In the novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by Ken Kesey the people put in the mental ward may not be crazy or insane but rather. They can be viewed as abnormal by society. Kesey shows this through his character McMurphy, and how he tries to take down the ward’s system of judging if someone is mentally ill or just unaccepted by society. “ How a guy has to learn to get along in a group… to function in a normal society; how the group can help the guy by showing him where he’s out of place; how society is what decides who’s sane and who isn’t…” (Kesey, 48). Kesey uses this idea throughout the novel. McMurphy, who isn’t insane, but just questions the world around him, shows that society deems what is different, insane or crazy. McMurphy shows how he is sane, and functional, by leading trips outside of the ward and showing the other patients that they aren't sick physically, but sick only to society. “modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgments” (Foucault), This quote shows that mental wards of this time were filled with people who weren’t necessarily sick, but have different views than many in society. In the end McMurphy is given a lobotomy and then truly becomes insane.
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Anna Moore
7/29/2016 05:33:20 pm
One character from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest that is different from the rest is Billy Bibbit. While Billy may suffer from certain mental illnesses like depression and anxiety which causes his stutter, he does not qualify to be in a mental asylum. The main reason he wants to stay at the hospital is his fear of the outside world. Billy says, “You think I wuh-wuh-wuh-want to say in here? You think I wouldn’t like a con-con-vertible and a guh-guh-girlfriend? But did you ever have people l-l-laughing at you?” (Kesey 168). The quote shows how outside influence of the world makes Billy feel different and insecure. Since he is slightly different, he is ostracized by society and labeled as mentally ill because he can not conform to normality. Even when he is in the hospital Billy is not being helped because he is being mind controlled by Nurse Ratched. As Gary Gutting wrote in his article, “Indeed, what psychiatry presents as the ‘liberation’ of the mad from mental illness is in fact ‘a gigantic moral imprisonment” (Gutting). This explains how the hospital is just preventing Billy from being himself in the real world. Similarly Nurse Ratched uses the threat of telling his mother as a way of control. After Billy becomes more confident and sleeps with Candy, the Nurse says that she will inform his mother of his actions. Rather than let Nurse Ratched control his life he committed suicide as his last act of defiance to her control. Billy Bibbit knew he would never fit in regular social standards so he just gave up.
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Bella Ybarra
7/29/2016 05:44:06 pm
Roger Jones says "For most people, morals are a set of rules that we ought to obey. They tell us what is right and what is wrong." Billy, a nervous patient with a stutter, was judged his whole life by his mother's skeptical so-called "correct morals", therefore leading him to believe that he was mentally ill for doing wrong by his mother's beliefs. McMurphy helped Billy find his way for a bit, like when Billy opened the beer cans for other and for himself, and when he slept with a prostitute. Those were big steps for Billy. Both Billy's mother and Nurse Ratched led him to believe he was crazy, when in all reality, he's just as sane as the next person. When Nurse Ratched caught Billy with the prostitute, he didn't flinch or stutter until she mentioned telling his mother of the incident. Billy pleaded, "Duh-duh-don't t-tell, M-M-M-Miss Ratched! (Kesey 264).
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Morgan Sluka
7/29/2016 05:54:09 pm
"Efforts to treat mental illness and be society's way of controlling what it views as immoral, or otherwise undesirable, behavior." This quote goes along with the themes of "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey. Some of the characters may have not had a mental illness, they may have just not been normal for society standards. The lingering question is: Do some of these characters really have a mental illness? A mental has no clear indications, however they do have effects on the mind. Some of the characters very well may have had a mental illness, however, there are quite a few who may not have a mental illness at all. For example, Harding is implied to be homosexual, which may be a reason he is in the institution. During this, homosexuals may have been seen as unusual and people may see it as a mental illness."You men are in this hospital," she would say like she was repeating it for the hundredth time, "because of your proven inability to adjust to society." This quote shows that they are in this institution because they couldn't adjust to society. Adjusting is differnet from breaking rules, or causing problems. Adjusting means following society, becoming normal. This shows the audience that many of them easily could have been in the institution because they aren't the normal thing society expects. In conclusion, there may be some characters that have mental illnesses, but there are clear factors in the story that has shown quite a few characters didn't deserve to be in the mental institution.
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kayleigh Murray
7/29/2016 06:24:31 pm
“Modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgments.” Is a quote from a famous Historian Michael Foucault in which he explains that people are diagnosed with a mental illness not because of scientific testing but because of how society defines them. In the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, there are many patients in the asylum that do not belong there. One main character that did not belong in the asylum was Randle Patrick McMurphy. McMurphy had admitted himself because he did not want to work. Nurse Ratched in the novel, known as Big Nurse, was very controlling and all of the patients were scared of her. McMurphy did not like how the patients were being treated and how much control she had over them, so he wanted to take over power. “The black boy shifts his eyes to look down the hall to where the nurse is sitting in her glass case, and says it isn’t allowed for the help to eat with patients” Kesey 93). At this part of the novel it shows one way that McMurphy disobeys the rules by giving the black boy a banana when he isn’t allowed to feed other patients. McMurphy did not care what he did, but he wanted to prove his point and he was not going to let the nurse control him. Randle was not just fighting for himself but all of the other patients in the asylum.
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Richard Bakalian
7/29/2016 06:45:17 pm
Michel Foucault had written a piece that shows how society can judge an individual.This work shows how even in a "free" society, you cannot do certain things because they are abnormal. Someone may suspect a mental illness. This piece shows how every person has their own set of morals. As we see in One Flew over the Cukoo's nest, there were patients in the institution for being gay. This person wasn't harming anyone, but this went against the morals of many others. Foucault did a wonderful job of explaining how the institution in the book worked.
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Joseph Campos
7/29/2016 06:56:22 pm
Foucault once said, “modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgments.” This quote by Foucault creates many questions whether the patients from the hospital were truly sick or people from society just thinked of them because they didn’t act as normal people. People saw them as different or unusual human beings, there were known as dangerous people in society. One of the patients that comes to mind to write about is Randle Patrick McMurphy, who has sent to the ward since he was considered mentally ill. In the beginning of the story, McMurphy used his sexuality and humor to get the “Big Nurse” furious, which led to a rebellion against her later on. McMurphy was also known for his aggressive behavior against people, he once raped a girl which is one of the reasons he was sent to this hospital. To the people, it seemed that McMurphy was breaking the rules of society . By doing so, people saw him in an unusual way, people started to think he wasn’t normal and he was mentally ill. This is the reason why he was sent to the hospital in the first place. Throughout the book, McMurphy doesn’t actually seem mentally ill, people just started to have crazy ideas which made him look like an insane person. He stood up for his fellow companions/patients in the hospital, starting a rebellion to gain freedom from the cruelty and mistreatment that was provided from Nurse Ratched and her aides. He became an good influence to the patients, helping them to bring back the courage they once had. As a result, McMurphy was put into shock therapy which was a treatment given to patients who disobeyed the rules(I guess) at the hospital,which were actually punishments.”What do you think you are, for Chrissake, crazy or somethin'? Well you're not! You're not!”(Kessey 96)This quote explains that McMurphy already knows he is not mentally ill, he is trying to help the other patients realize it too. McMurphy tries to convince the other patients that they were never mentally ill, but that society saw them different from others. Society’s assumption was that they were ill which is why they were sent to a miserable place like the ward.
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Sima Vaidya
7/29/2016 07:02:14 pm
Historians have recorded that asylums were created to treat people that did not follow their stereotypical roles. A historian named Michael Foucault once said “Efforts to treat mental illness and be society’s way of controlling what it views as immoral, or otherwise undesirable, behavior.” He states that people judged others, calling them “mentally ill”, due to their behavior that was considered immoral. In “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by Ken Kesey, people were placed in the asylum because they were viewed “different” in the society, even though they were normal people with no mental illness. They were transformed from being immoral to mentally ill. One example is Billy Bibbit. He has a stuttering problem and his mother is very good friends with Nurse Ratched. In the novel, Billy loves his mother very much and has the confidence to interact with Candy. On page 202, it says “Billy punched a beer can for the girl, and she flustered him so with her bright smile and her ‘Thank you, Billy,’ that he took to opening cans for all of us.” During this time, he starts to stutter less and talks normal. Billy started to hang out with Candy more and ended up sleeping with her. When Nurse Ratched discovers this, she manipulates him and tells Billy that his mother will be very sad to hear that he slept with a girl. She tells Billy how his mother is going to react to the news and is willing to tell her. He becomes nervous and tells the nurse (while stuttering) that it is not his fault and was pressured to do this. Billy is a normal person who should not have been placed in an asylum. There he was changed, which made him, what society calls, mentally ill.
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Seamus Fields
7/29/2016 07:11:28 pm
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Patrick Sullivan
7/29/2016 07:13:22 pm
The historian Michel Foucault pointed out that “modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgments.”. Just like Michel Foucault is trying to point out the problem of the practice of psychiatry, so is Ken Kesey. What Michel is saying through the quote is that psychiatrists use more of society’s beliefs rather than using scientific knowledge in their practice. In the book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey is showing the same thing that Michel stated in his quote. For example, one of the characters in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Harding is facing the way of the psychiatrists using society’s beliefs rather than scientific knowledge, because of him being homosexual. Even though that there was nothing wrong with Harding, society still singled him out for being homosexual. This made him feel that there was something was wrong with him. That is what society and the asylum, which he was at, thought. For example, Harding stated “It was the feeling that the great,deadly, pointing forefinger of society was pointing at me.”(Kesey 257).This shows how the “normative force” of society made him think that he was mentally ill when he really just had different beliefs of other people. Throughout the asylum, even though the nurse has a lot of power, McMurphy leads resistance to the power by standing up to the nurse and doing things like fishing, which they were not allowed to do, according to the nurse. In conclusion, most of the people in the asylum are being manipulated by society, just like Michel Foucault explains in his quote.
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John O'Leary
7/29/2016 07:22:36 pm
Foucault states "What psychiatry presents as the 'liberation' of the mad from mental illness is in fact 'a gigantic moral imprisonment'." I believe that Foucault means that psychiatry is a way of suppressing the imperfect people in an ideal society. Mental illness is viewed as something that makes one different from everyone else, Foucault believes that psychiatry is meant to dispose of those who don't belong in the ideal community. One such example of this is the character from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", Randle McMurphy. McMurphy was admitted to the ward because, simplified, he was unnecessarily aggressive which was not wanted by general population, so to solve the problem they branded him as mentally ill. His social standing is further perpetuated by "The Big Nurse" who is the head nurse of the psych ward, notorious for being manipulative and controlling the patients, using any means necessary. One way she makes McMurphy seem more mentally unstable, believed by Bromden, is by gossiping to other nurses that "That new man sitting over there, the one with the garish red sideburns and facial lacerations - I've reason to believe he is a sex maniac." (Kesey 75). The Big Nurse, Ms. Ratched, likes to have control over the patients in the psych ward, and she doesn't want anyone that could jeopardize her rule, McMurphy for example, which furthers the idea of abnormality suppression. To clarify, mentally ill is sometimes used as a blanket term for people that don't fit into the society and are ostracized for it in attempts to perfect the population.
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Isaiah Campos
7/29/2016 07:24:13 pm
There’s so many patients in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, but one intriguing character throughout the novel is Randle McMurphy. This problem with the patients being mentally ill is a whole big lie.There’s two different types groups,the ones that can be cured and the ones that can’t be cured.Those who can’t be cured are managed by Nurse Ratched, which treat them harshly and brutally. Everyone lost their courage to stand up for their well being until… Randle McMurphy arrived to the war zone. McMurphy has influenced every character in the book, especially the antagonist, Nurse Ratched. McMurphy gave all of his fellow companions/patients hope to stand up for what’s right. To “Big Nurse”, McMurphy got her really angry, which came about to a rebellion. That’s how McMurphy got shocked therapy at the end of the book.”What do you think you are, for Chrissake, crazy or somethin'? Well you're not! You're not!”(Kessey 96) The quote shown indicates that McMurphy was giving all of his companions courage and dignity to realize their true selves. Being himself, McMurphy kinda transferred power to his companions to start a resistance. In the quote that Foucault believes, “where there is power, there is [always] resistance”, McMurphy was their power, which gave them strength for a resistance. Without McMurphy , the fellow patients lives would’ve never changed for the better.
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Dean Hottmann
7/29/2016 07:30:42 pm
Although modern psychiatry claims to be rooted in scientific facts, it is mainly based on what society deems as right and wrong. This is shown in Ken Kesey's novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." This novel takes place in a mental hospital. As the story progresses, the reader realizes that a great deal of the patients are not what one would consider "crazy" but simply different. Most of the patients the main character encounters are in the hospital voluntarily. For example, the character Dale Harding has checked himself into the hospital because he does not like the way society treats him. Through his stories and recollections, the reader can come to the conclusion that Harding is gay. In a society where this is not the norm, Dale is judged. Harding decided to check himself into the hospital because he did not like the idea of being ridiculed by the mass of society. He states that "it was the feeling that the great, deadly, pointing forefinger of society was pointing at him- and the great voice of millions chanting 'Shame. Shame. Shame,'" (Kesey 257). Dale has nothing wrong with him mentally or physically and yet he is judged for his beliefs. He is judged so much to the point that he feels the must be "fixed" and goes to the ward. However, the ward's way of "fixing" him is to make him conform to society's beliefs. Historian Michel Foucault points out that this is how society deals with those in receiving psychiatric help. Foucault states that "what psychiatry presents as the 'liberation' of the mad from mental illness is in fact 'a gigantic moral imprisonment,'" (Foucault). Instead of actually trying to treat the problem, whether present or not, modern psychiatry tells them that they are not fit for society. Harding was not sick at all and had nothing wrong with him. He simply had beliefs that were different from those accepted in society. He was judged and decided he needed to be fixed. Like many of the ward's other patients, Dale Harding was not mentally ill but were victims of the normative force that brought them to the psychiatric ward.
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Aidan Gilmartin
7/29/2016 07:38:43 pm
A historian Michel Foucault once claimed that, "modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgments." He meant that people considered mentally ill were just considered so because they did not fit the norm of society. In "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey this idea is presented in the character Dale Harding. Harding is in the hospital not because he is mentally ill but because he is gay and because people around him tell him he is ill because being gay was not considered normal. He says, " And I got sick. It wasn't the practices, I don't think, it was the feeling that the great, deadly, pointing forefinger of society was pointing at me." (Kesey 257) This was towards the end of the novel when Harding realized that society's norm force is what got him sick and is what put him in the hospital under the control of Rached. This relates back to Foucault's idea of physciatry being moral judgments because Harding was convinced he was sick because of society thinking he is not normal and saying he is sick from there judgments. Foucault also says, "efforts to treat mental illness and be society's way of controlling what it views as immoral, or otherwise undesirable, behavior." This is presented through Ratched trying to control her patients and make them think they are sick so they will keep their role in society because of their undesirable behavior. Dale Harding's homosexuality is the reason he is in the mental hospital and it is all because of society judging what is immoral as sick.
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Nicholette Glenn
7/29/2016 07:41:30 pm
Mental illnesses are like trying to identify a stranger's personality, It’s not an exterior part of the human, it’s an interior. Not focusing of the biological essence in a person but the spiritual factor that is a sole function of an individual. It’s proven that you cannot look at person and determine whether he or she is a good person, or their favorite color, not even their feelings in most cases. Mental illnesses requires speculation, a will to dig deep and find the answers, instead of floating atop the surface. A common assumption is depression. Assuming a person is dealing with depression because they tap into their emotions more than others or aren’t as upbeat compared to the next person.
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Alanah Ramos
7/29/2016 07:42:08 pm
Michael Foucault's primary claim in his analytical novel "Madness and Civilization" is his comment that "modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgments." In Ken Kesey's realistic fiction novel, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," the narrator, Chief Bromden, observes his fellow patients without commentary, until Randle McMurphy arrives. Chief Bromden begins to study McMurphy's group, consisting of Harding, Billy, Cheswick, and so forth. Of this group, all of which seem to have questionable reasons of admission to the asylum. The only character the audience experiences first-hand, repetitively, is Billy Bibbit through the means of Big Nurse and his mother, a receptionist. In group therapy, Miss Ratched consistently shames Billy for his natural learning to society's expected masculinity, such as his interest in women and his mother and Miss Ratched's constant negative reinforcement and lacks the confidence as he "lacks the guts" (168, Kesey). Miss Ratched constantly projects her and his mother's ideals onto him with shaming him for having normal tendencies, such as him falling for a girl and Miss Ratched still reinforcing that this was unnatural as she (the girl) was "far below him" (121, Kesey). The proof of the toxic reinforcement of societal norms being implemented and reinforced constantly being dangerous is the climax of Billy Bibbit's suicide after Miss Ratched threatens his "betrayal," having sexual intercourse with Candy, an apparent harlot, and leading him to believe this behavior unacceptable and, finally, escaping via slitting his throat with a cutting utensil, implying there are no means of absolutely ending toxic ideals unless that person chooses the ultimate route: Death.
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Renee Mercereau
7/29/2016 07:42:38 pm
In his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey makes it evident that people who don't fit society's normal standards are sometimes labeled for their differences and forced to live a caged life under someone else's rules. The historian Michel Foucault also highlights this idea that modern psychiatry is based off of moral judgment in his book, Madness and Civilization. In the book, Foucault states his belief that "what society presents as the 'liberation' of the mad from mental illness is in fact 'a gigantic moral imprisonment'". The mental institution in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a perfect example of how trying to "free" people by imprisoning them can have negative results. In the novel, McMurphy is one character who was labeled as mentally ill even though he isn't. Although McMurphy has committed crimes, there is no proof he has a mental illness because Dr. Spivey has to ask him whether or not he is faking insanity to escape the work farm. As McMurphy continues to rebel against Nurse Ratched's power by breaking many hospital rules and encouraging the other patients to join him, the nurse tightens her reigns by using electroshock treatments and lobotomy as punishment. The fact that Nurse Ratched tries to "free" McMurphy and others of their problems by increasing her power over them is ironic, and it points to the fact that people labeled "mentally ill" are denied freedom. In part 1, Bromden explains how he views the ward as "a factory for the Combine... for fixing up mistakes made in the neighborhoods and in the schools and in the churches" (Kesey 40). When Bromden says this, the word "mistakes" is very powerful because it describes how society views people in mental institutions; instead of being free to live differently, they are labeled as errors that have to be fixed. McMurphy and the rest of the characters in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest prove Foucault and Kesey's similar ideas that psychiatric patients are often victims of judgment and mistreatment from a higher power.
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Marc Brewer
7/29/2016 07:45:38 pm
Mental illness, what comes to mind is conditions such as schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder. But what truly makes one "mentally ill". Michel Foucault believes that the majority chooses what is deemed immoral and undesirable in society. In the novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" this belief is brought to life by Ken Kesey. Many of his characters display common, yet unusual, traits in society; one that has a very important tie to modern politics and lifestyles. Harding, one of the acutes at the asylum, is a gay man who was persecuted for his sexuality. Today people would never even think of joking that homosexuality was a mental illness because it is so common in our community. The asylum itself suggests this as a fact, "society is what decides who is sane and who isn't,"(Kesey,48). All because Harding and the others in this asylum didn't "fit in" to the puzzle in the right way so they were locked away in order to be "fixed". Foucault also believed that people's power over their fellow man is what leads to the false accusation of mental illness because people are different and they can change your idea of "ideal". The nurse uses this power as a corrupted force that hold all these men imprisoned here. They are made to feel as if they don't deserve freedom. She shames them just like the rest of society did. And with McMurphy's help the patients realize this especially Harding, “It wasn’t the practices, I don’t think, it was the feeling that the great, deadly, pointing forefinger of society was pointing at me,"(Kesey, 257) shame. The only thing that can push these seemingly normal people into insanity. They could never harm anybody, asylums are meant to protect the patient from doing any harm to himself or anyone else. These people were normal no threat but the shame and guilt forced upon them drives them insane, causing these people to become a threat to themselves as seen with the death of William Bibbit. Society is the monster that makes men believe they they are crazy because of their differences.
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Matt Izzo
7/29/2016 08:04:24 pm
"Psychiatric practice does seem to be be based on implicit moral assumptions." The truth behind this quote from Michel Foucault is present at many times throughout One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, especially when talking about my main man, Billy Bibbit. Billy is in no way mentally ill, well this coming from a book told from the perspective of a person in an insane asylum. As far as I can tell, Billy just stutters. He went to the asylum to avoid the judging view and unfair rules of society. He even tells McMurphy that he put himself in there. McMurphy replies with, "Tell me why. You gripe, you bitch for weeks on end about how you can’t stand this place, can’t stand the nurse or anything about her, and all the time you ain’t committed. I can understand it with some of those old guys on the ward. They’re nuts. But you, you’re not exactly the everyday man on the street, but you’re not nuts." (Kesey 168). Sadly Billy doesn't do very much to resist the heinous deeds of Ms.Ratched other than "gripe" and "bitch" about it to McMurphy. Billy mainly doesn’t act out because he doesn’t want to upset his dearest mother, who is very close to Ms.Ratched and will hear about any misbehavior. Despite my love for Billy as a character, the system finally got to him and he was met with an untimely death, a self inflicted one that was most likely a way to punish him for betraying McMurphy and the others.
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Hailey Chace
7/29/2016 08:13:41 pm
Michel Foucault says "modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgments and controlling what [society] views as immoral, or otherwise undesirable, behavior."(Foucault). This relates to Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo's nest because McMurphy is put in the ward because society thinks he is mentally insane. However, McMurphy is not mentally insane he is just in his own "normal", which is separate from societies "normal". McMurphy is called mentally insane because of his violent actions and his behavior toward Nurse Ratched. Overall, Nurse Ratched sees to it that McMurphy gets a lobotomy to help him become "normal". McMurphy didn't need a lobotomy because he was wrongly accused of being mentally ill. McMurphy says " What happened, you see, was I got in a couple of hassles at the work farm, to tell the pure truth, and the court ruled that I'm a psychopath ."(Kesey 17-18). This shows that the court only ruled him a psychopath because he had a few problems at work. What happened to McMurphy was that he was under the court and Nurse Ratched's normative force. Overall, this shows how moral judgements can be wrong. Also, not everyone, such as McMurphy, who have problems at work are mentally insane.
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Jack niesz
7/29/2016 08:26:37 pm
The modern historian Michael Foucault stated that "modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgments." This is an obvious theme in the book "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kessey. He shows this theme especially through his character Mcmurphy. He is looked down upon because he is more aggressive than most and this is considered not "normal". He shows a lot of aggression towards Nurse Ratched. This ultimately leads to Mcmurphy's lobotomy. This does not cure Mcmurphy in the least, it only shows that Nurse Ratched was scared of someone who tested her authority.
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Murray Elinson
7/29/2016 08:27:49 pm
Michel Foucault, a historian, argues that psychiatry “is primarily a system of moral judgments”(Gutting). Foucault believes that people who are imprisoned in a mental hospital are brought there based on actions that are not seen as normal. If someone was different from the rest, then they would be determined mentally ill even though they are not actually crazy. In the book, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by Ken Kesey, a stuttering mess named Billy Bibbit resides in a mental institution. Billy’s mother had complete authority over Billy and she brought Billy to a breaking point. Billy stutters and has a serious problem but he is just a victim of someone else’s moral judgments. He goes on a fishing trip with other “mentally ill” guys as a resistance against the power of the psychiatric system. Billy changes a lot at this point and he begins to lose his stuttering and he asserts himself. Billy told a service-station man to clean a windshield better, “You didn’t get this sp-spot here where the bug h-h-hit”(Kesey 202). This is the first time Billy becomes a little bossy in the novel and he also becomes a gentleman for the first time and he “punched a beer can” for a prostitute(202). This shows that Billy has a normal person in him but his mother takes that away from him as well as the psychiatric system. Billy is not actually mentally ill, his mother breaks him down and because that is seen as unusual it is identified as a mental illness. This can be seen when Nurse Ratched catches Billy sleeping with prostitutes and threatens to tell Billy’s mother. Billy begins to break down to a stuttering mess again, “duh-duh-don’t t-tell, M-M-M-Miss Ratched”(264). This shows that Billy is a normal person but it is the undesirable behavior that is created when he is under authority that makes him “mentally ill” when he actually is not. Billy is not mentally ill, instead he is a person who is broken down to a wreck because moral judgments say that Billy is different therefore he is judged as mentally ill.
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Jack Povey
7/29/2016 08:49:24 pm
Society has a very opinionated view on mental illness and what determines if someone is mentally ill. The beliefs portrayed in One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest are very similar to the beliefs shared by Michel Foucault. Michel Foucault says “Efforts to treat mental illness and be society's way of controlling what it views as immoral, or otherwise undesirable, behavior” Both Michel Foucault and the book believe that the system of correcting mental illness is wrong. They believe it is wrong because the system forces it's patients to be something they are not. They force actions upon patients and either worsen them mentally or even physically. An example of this in the book is patient Randle MCcMurphy. He is considered to be mentally ill by the system. In the book he understands what the Big Nurse is trying to do to the patients. Even though he understands the system it still ends up severely worsening him in the end after the lobotomy. This relates back to how the system of treating the mentally ill is shown in the book One Flew Over The Cuckoo's nest and by Michel Foucault. In the book McMurphy says "But I am crazy, Doc. I swear I am. (Kesey 46). This is when McMurphy is not ill but pretends to be so he can escape the farm. At this point he is not ill and is smart and knows the system. Later in the book he gets too caught up in the system and it destroys him. The quote shows how his intelligence is lost and destroyed by the system. These books share opinions about the flaws of mental illness treatment in society. The system forces people to become people they are not and drives them to become worse.
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7/29/2016 08:58:55 pm
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Adeline Monfil
7/29/2016 08:59:59 pm
Simply being different from society can make you suitable for the label of ‘Insane’. Michel Foucault claims, “While purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgment.” In ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ Ken Kesey, the author creates several characters that are in an asylum because they’re all labeled as ‘crazy’ and ‘unfit for society’. One Character that I believe isn’t mentally ill would be Billy Bibbit, the one who tends to stutter and fail when it comes to speaking. In the story Billy Bibbit confronts his stutter claiming he’d been stuttering since birth. Throughout his life his mother seemed to be the one in control, not him. Nurse Ratched brings up a girl Billy was in love with but his mother claimed, “She was quite beneath you.” (Kesey 121). Bromden, a supposedly deaf Indian janitor, also brings up the fact that Billy used to cut and attempted suicide before. It seems to me that Billy never got the chance to take over his own life and was being convinced that he wasn’t suitable to do so because of his mother. This lead him to believing he was mentally ill, being placed in the asylum, and eventually his suicide.
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Luis Flores
7/29/2016 09:10:16 pm
Foucalt's claim that," Modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgments," is one that stands out throughout the novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". The novel tells the stories of many "ill-minded" men who were placed into an asylum as they differed from the norms society has set at the time. One of those men is named Billy B-B-Bibbit. Billy is a 31-year-old man who's been scared into a constant stutter and shyness as he's been scolded by his mother and Nurse Ratched as to what he should be acting and behaving like. For most of his life Billy has been molded into what type of person he should be by his mother. She's dominated his own being to the point he's volunteered himself into the asylum. There is nothing real wrong with Billy but, like the rest of the characters Nurse Ratched made him believe there was. He's so terrified of women he does not know how to act around them. His mother, Nurse Ratched and even his ex-girlfriend have put his confidence down for so long until he meets McMurphy. McMurphy being the protagonist and all helps Billy regain his manly-hood, and does so by having arranged Billy lose his virginity. He hooks Billy up with a prostitute named Candy and is clearly a "fixed" man next morning. He no longer stutters and is calm when speaking to Nurse Ratched after being found sleeping with Candy. This has helped Billy regain his confidence and shows no problems with any mental illness. This is however broken by The Big Nurse as she brings up his mother. His past experiences with his mother [and girlfriend] brings back the memories of how he should act with and around women. As Billy speaks up to reply to Nurse Ratched he stutters again saying,"Nuh! Nuh! You d-don't n-n-need!...Duh-duh-don't t-tell M-M-M-Miss Ratched. Duh-duh-duh--". Ultimately not being able to handle the thought of being different then what society would want, Billy commits suicide. He'd rather have his last moment one where he could be himself than to live onward conforming to society norms.
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Wyatt Knowlton
7/29/2016 09:12:01 pm
In the novel, many of those in the asylum would hardly be considered mentally ill. Even with that in mind, however, what we consider normal is completely subjective and often has no factual basis. A person can appear completely normal on the outside but the inside may tell a different story. Regardless of opinion, mental illness may be normal to those who may have it, and they have no reason to believe that they're different or 'crazy' if they aren't ostracized or separated. It is our definition of normality that makes people feel out of place. The beauty of humanity is that we are what we make ourselves. There is no 'right' way to live and there is no 'right' way to act. All that the people in the asylum wanted to do was live like they wanted to; lead by McMurphy, they wanted to watch some baseball, play basketball, go fishing and just have fun. Because of their illnesses, however, they were punished for doing so. An example would be Nurse Ratched's reaction to Billy's doings the night before, which partially caused him to commit suicide. Had Bibbit been able to live his life normally outside of the asylum he may never have ended his own life. Kesey's message is an important one that needs to be heard, and society needs to stop labelling people who behave differently than 'normal'.
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Alex Wark
7/29/2016 09:47:53 pm
Michael Foulcaults idea of psychiatry is revolved around the system of moral judgement. The way the patients are treated ia as if they are undisierable beings This effects how they are treated in the psychiatric wards. The efforts that society mares to control this unwanted behavior is unfair to the patients. In the novel the One flew over the cuckoos nest by Ken Kessey introduces the normative force who is nurse ratched. Nurse watched runs the wards with this normative force which is the power to establish the social standard of behavior. However as Foucault said "Where there is power theres always resistance" In this case the character that shows the most resistance is Mcmurphy. In the novel on example of his resistance is when he breaks the glass panel over and over again to Nurse Ratchets office. Every time it gets replaced he finds a reason to break the window. McMurphy wants to get a reaction out the Nurse watched to show that he can get in her head. Also it shows that he has freedom and hasn't conformed to the normative force that is Nurse watched. One quote that shows this is " The way the big nurse acted in the staff meeting worried me so much but it made no difference to McMurphy" (Kessey 90).
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Lauren Marcolus
7/29/2016 11:51:45 pm
In the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, many of the patients admitted to Nurse Ratched's ward for the mentally ill are more sane than they get credit for. These patients are in the ward not because they suffer a mental illness, but because they do not conform to the norms of society. Mr. Harding is one of these patients. Harding has no mental illness, but he is an outcast in society because he is homosexual. The French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault has criticized modern psychiatric practices, explaining that "what psychiatry presents as the liberation of the mad from mental illness is in fact a gigantic moral imprisonment." This quote directly relates to Nurse Ratched's ward as well as Mr. Harding's situation because the ward is trying to "fix" Harding by compressing his feelings and sexuality. Mr. Harding hides in the ward to escape his wife and a world that does not accept him. Harding explaines the reason he entered the ward, saying "I indulged in certain practices that our society regards as shameful. And I got sick. It wasn't the practices, I don't think, it was the feeling of that great, deadly, pointing forefinger of society was pointing at me..." (Kesey 257). Harding was convinced there was something wrong with him because he was rejected by society and convinced to feel ashamed of his sexuality. Harding resists the power of the psychiatric establishment in the hospital by accepting his identity and refusing to let the ward mold him into something he is not. By the end of the novel, he has transformed from a shy, emasculated coward to a man with strength and confidence. Mr. Harding has become a new man, not because the ward changed him, but because of McMurphy's influence and Harding's newfound acceptance and sense of self-worth.
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Maddie Stout
7/30/2016 12:51:59 am
The majority of the patients in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's" were probably just victims of Nurse Ratched's upper hand. For example, McMurphy seemed to be wrongly accused of mental illness when he was actually a criminal. In fact, many of the chronics in the asylum came in as acute patients. The reader can easily tell that most of the patients became more ill as a result of the nurse's efforts to fit the them in her standards. She tried to do this using discipline and extreme curing methods (electroshock therapy, lobotomy, etc). In the novel, Harding says, "we're all in here because we can't adjust to our rabbithood. We need a good strong wolf like the nurse to teach us our place"(Kesey 57). This shows that Nurse Ratched has control over the patients and the progress of their rehabilitation. This idea is similar to the one displayed in the book Madness & Civilization by Michel Foucault. Foucalt discusses this by stating, "Modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgements". In other words, psychiatry is said to be a science but is really a matter of society's definition of "normal".
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Shealyn Russell
7/30/2016 06:39:14 am
In the novel " One Flew Over the Cockoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey a patient named Pete Bancini has suffered from brain damage since birth. In my opinion Pete doesn't have a mental illness but a mental disability. Pete has a mental disability because the doctors pinched his skull when he was being born. A character named Randle McMurphy states “I mean—hell, I been surprised how sane you guys all are. As near as I can tell you’re not any crazier than the average asshole on the street—” . (Kesey 61) This quote explains that McMurphy and some other characters are just like everyone else around and outside of the mental asylum this novel takes place in. In an article by Gary Gutting it explores the historian Michel Foucault and his analysis of psychiatry. In this article it states "At the center of his critique is Foucault's claim that modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgment." Michel Foucault believes that people judge others based on there personal opinions. Because of his disability, Pete was considered crazy and therefore put into a mental asylum by society.
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Colleen Dougan
7/30/2016 07:21:39 am
The Historian, Michel Foucault argues that modern psychiatry is based on society’s beliefs on what is right and wrong. Ken Kesey writes The One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to portray to the readers how basic society may view people to be abnormal and in need of psychiatric help by using their own subjective judgement. Billy Bigget in The One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a shy guy who grew up to have a stutter. Within the story, it is revealed that his stutter is triggered by the constant reminder of his mother. This is shown when Billy sneaks off with a prostitute, Candy, up to the Seclusion room. At first, Billy is confident and he does not have stutter. He seems normal until Miss Ratched says, “ ‘What worries me, Billy,’ she said-I could hear the change in her voice-’is how how your poor mother is going to take this.’ “ (Kesey 264). In this scene in the book, it is shown to the readers how the mention of his mother is a trigger for his stutters. Foucault mentions, “ while the term "normal" sometimes signifies merely what is usual or average, in discussions of mental illness, it most often has normative force.” When Foucault uses the term ‘normative force’, he means that it has power over one’s beliefs. In Billy’s case, his mother has power over his own actions even if he is not aware of it. Nurse Ratched knows this trigger and uses it to her own benefit. Nurse Ratched then demonstrates her superiority by enhancing Billy’s stutter and convincing Billy that he is abnormal. By using these characters to show the cracks in psychiatry, Foucault shines light on how society “judges” mental illness and how society makes the individual conform to the psychiatric state they believe them to be.
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Gavin Mahoney
7/30/2016 08:25:28 am
In the Novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey, Randle Patrick McMurphy is a rebellious patient at a corrupt mental institution. McMurphy is in the institution, because he does not meet the standards of normalcy created by the people who run the institution. For example, Nurse Ratched, or Big Nurse. She is an intimidating figure who seems to have power over her patients. However, "where there is power, there is resistance," and Nurse Ratched's power was followed up by McMurphy's resistance. He resists, because his indomitable spirit helped him rally the other patients into standing up to the Big Nurse.
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Grace Winberry
7/30/2016 08:48:51 am
There is a gray area in mental illness, this is because everyone has a different view of what is "normal". However, if you don't fit the characteristics of what society thinks is "usual behavior/ actions/ ways of life" you can be deemed mentally ill. Randle Patrick McMurphy was an outspoken person who tested the limits. While he was submitted in the mental institution he rebelled against the "caregivers" and tested the rules. He does this to show that the other patients have a choice, they don't need to just deal with the way they are treated. McMurphy looks for ways to break the rules, " 'Against Ward Policy?' 'That's right' 'Tough luck'." (Kesey 103). In the ward patients are not allowed to eat with the staff, so McMurphy sits down with one of the workers to eat his lunch. As he is eating his large lunch, that he somehow managed to get from the kitchen staff, he tells the worker if he ever wants any bananas to ask him and he will get him
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Brylin Barnes
7/30/2016 08:50:49 am
In the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, if one is slightly different then people accuse them as being mentally ill. A patient in Nurse Ratched's psychiatric ward, tried to get out of his working statement by claiming he is mentally ill. His name was Randle McMurphy. Before McMurphy, Ratched controlled the hospital and everyone was scared and intimidated by her. But then as McMurphy arrived he put Ratched's control power to test. Because of him, more patients rebelled against her. Ratched was scared of losing her power so she tried to stop McMurphy by shock treatments and other harsh treaments repeatedly. Ratched is described by Foucault's quote "And efforts to treat mental illness and be society's way of controlling what it views as immoral, or otherwise undesirable, behavior." McMurphy threw a party to try to help his friend Billy out with a favor. Ratched caught them and threatened to call Billy's mother, which later made him commit suicide. Enraged by this, McMurphy choked Ratched. Therefore, McMurphy soon became a vegetable and Ratched lost her power over everyone completely. McMurphy came into the asylum as an almost ordinary manm with a few flaws, just trying to bring life and enjoyment into people's lives but left as literally nothing, Just because someone is different from you, it does not make them insane, ill, or crazy. It makes them unique. McMurphy and some of the other patients at the hospital were nothing than just a little different.
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Helayna Ibrahim
7/30/2016 10:38:42 am
In the novel, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey, the idea of sanity and normality is questioned by a new patient in the Oregon Psychiatric Hospital named Randle McMurphy. McMurphy is in the ward because he is thought to be mentally ill and, what Nurse Ratched along with society would say, insane. However, I believe that as the novel goes on, McMurphy's mental state does not follow a truly insane path. His thoughts and actions make the reader question whether McMurphy is really insane or if he was just trying to escape the work farm. He is the victim of society's normal force. According to society, those who don't act a certain way as expected, or those who don't follow the rules and go against normality are therefore "crazy," "not normal," or "insane." From the beginning of the novel, McMurphy has stood out among the other patients. His personality differs from those of the insane- he's loud, strong-minded, and confident while the insane are shy and quiet. McMurphy is full of life and courage, he even sings in the ward and makes others laugh, unlike anyone in the ward has ever done before. It is McMurphy's sanity that makes it easy for him to understand that the hospital for the mentally ill causes the people who enter the hospital to become insane. McMurphy tries to open the other patients eyes by questioning the hospital's rules and not letting the Big Nurse take advantage or get the best of him. Foucault believed, " Where there is power, there is [always] resistance." McMurphy resists the power of the psychiatric establishment in the hospital by going against the authority of the ward, Nurse Ratched. McMurphy always questions her, asks for things he knows he can't have, and even fools her to try and prove that he will not be taken aback by her power. He even plays her by pretending to just be wearing a towel after showering just so that she can get fired up and mad and demand the black boys go get him a uniform, when after all he had shorts underneath his towel. "I think of a fact that she'd rather he'd been stark naked under that towel than had on those shorts." (Kesey 99) McMurphy's wittiness enrages Nurse Ratched, but she can't do anything about it until he causes real trouble. McMurphy challenges the ward system, asking that policies be changed, such as when he requested that there be a separate room for the Chronics and Acutes so both parties are happy. McMurphy was sane because he was the only one who had the courage to say that Nurse Ratched was controlling them. In conclusion, McMurphy is just a victim of society and doesn't deserve to be contained in a mental asylum, for there is no reason for him to be there.
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Amira Ibrahim
7/30/2016 10:46:46 am
The book "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" shows the beliefs of Michel Forcault's who claims "Modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgments." An example of this is shown with McMurphy. On page 44 it can be read " A dishonorable discharge, afterward, for insubordination. Followed by a history of street brawls and barroom fights and a serious of arrests for drunkenness, assault and battery disturbing the peace, repeated gambling one arrest- for rape." This quote shows McMurphy is more reckless then crazy. Many people believe someone who is crazy is someone who is deranged or mentally ill. In society someone who is crazy is someone who does something society does not agree with. For example if someone made up their own language you might think their crazy, why? You would probably think this because very few people do it, therefore society does not accept it. McMurphy was said to rape a girl and did many other things society does not accept, therefore under society's rules he is crazy. Michel's claims that even though modern psychiatry claims that psychiatry uses science, it actually is based on moral judgments is proven right with McMurphy's case.
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Jack Farello
7/30/2016 03:27:59 pm
In the novel, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, there is a character named Billy Bibbit. In the novel, Billy is in a psychiatric facility, in my opinion, he is there because he is a victim of someone else’s normative force. Billy is controlled by his mother, and she tricks him into thinking he is actually mentally ill. His mom essentially forces him to be like her. “P-p-p-please d-d-don’t tell m-m-mother.” pg 78. This shows how Billy’s self confidence lowers with his mom, and he is afraid what his mother is going to think. “And efforts to treat mental illness and be society’s way of controlling what it views as immoral, or otherwise undesirable, behavior.” (from above quote.) This quotation describes Billy perfectly. It means when mental illness is attempting to be treated, society interrupts it by saying what is right or wrong, and what they think good or bad behavior is. This is why I think Billy is controlled by a normative force, and might not actually have a mental illness.
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Page Lootsma
7/30/2016 04:17:00 pm
In Ken Kesey’s novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Kesey illustrates that the line between being “normal” and mentally ill is not as clear as it may seem. In the mental hospital, where the majority of the novel takes place, there are numerous patients considered to have varying severities of mental illness. The patients who are considered to have more severe mental illnesses with no hope of being cured are called “chronics”, whereas the patients with less severe mental illnesses that can be cured are called “acutes”. Because there are two different kinds of patients, looking at just one would provide a biased viewpoint. Therefore, it is essential to look at patients from both groups. The first of the groups are the chronics. Chief, the main character and narrator of the novel, describes the chronics as “not in the hospital… to get fixed, but just to keep them from walking around the street giving the product a bad name” (Kesey 19). An example of a chronic is Pete, who has had brain damage since birth. Despite being able to hold a very simple job for a time, Pete was no longer able to support himself without the help of the hospital. For people like this, it is essential to stay in a mental hospital for their own health and benefit. Without the mental hospital, they would be wandering the streets, where they would most likely be unable to find a job. Without a job, the chronics would either be living an unpleasant life on the streets or die due to lack of food and or shelter. This means that the hospital is not “a gigantic moral imprisonment” for the chronics, as their quality of life without living in the mental hospital would be much worse. Therefore, for patients with severe mental conditions, staying in the mental hospital is necessary for their own wellbeing. However, there is also the other type of patients—the acutes. These patients are in a much different boat than the chronics. For many of the acutes, their mental state seems to be based on “a system of moral judgments” as Foucalt put it. The best example of this is Harding. When Chief introduces Harding, nothing appears to be wrong with him. He appears to be a highly intelligent and independent person that would be amply capable of surviving without the help of the hospital. As the novel progresses, the reader begins to pick up on the fact that Harding is a homosexual. This becomes clear to the audience when Harding’s wife asserts dominance over him, and mentions the fact that “hoity-toity boys with nice long hair combed back perfectly and the limp little wrists that flip so nice” come by their house looking for Harding (Kesey 159). While this does make him different, it is by no means a reason for him to be stuck in the hospital. However, because Harding is different, he feels the need to separate himself from society and be stuck in the “moral imprisonment” of the hospital. And even though the hospital is supposed to help patients return to society, the staff is too caught up trying to enforce the Nurse Ratched’s rules to offer any of the encouragement and support Harding needs to return to society. While at first Harding is repressed by the hospital, with encouragement from McMurphy, he is able to escape the hospital and return to society. Essentially, with two different types of patients, there are two different types of scenarios. While there is no solution that suits both, there are solutions that are individual to each of their problems.
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Sarah Lown
7/30/2016 04:34:56 pm
Our lives are constructed around social perceptions of what is "normal". Parenting, gender identity, money, are all interpretations of social concepts that have been made through "moral judgements" and general agreement rather than through scientific proof. In "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", Kesey addresses mental illness as a social construct, one that is particularly vicious because it condemns and punishes unusual behavior. Chief Bromeden copes with the brutal, humiliating and unforgiving environment created by Nurse Ratched by pretending to be deaf and dumb. This deception affords him some protection against the inhumanity of the mental ward. Bromden says, "Everyone thinks I'm deaf and dumb. Everyone thinks so. Im cagey enough to fool them that much" (Kesey 10). Therefore, Bromden defeats to some degree the construct of mental illness depicted by Kesey by creating his own social construct- one that declares that the deaf and dumb do not matter and can be ignored without conscience.
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Sophia Morales
7/30/2016 05:00:21 pm
In the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey shows how society is not able to accept those who are different from what they feel is "normal". They instill the idea that if a person does not fit the ideal requirements in that community they must not be treated as an equal. Instead people like Harding a patient at the mental hospital is treated as if he will never be able to go out in the real world again because being homosexual means he doesn't deserve to live a happy life. It means that he is not allowed to express his true feelings and is instead put in a hospital to make him change something he can't control. Harding expresses his thoughts about society in a speech he gave to McMurphy who was another patient put in the hospital for wrongful reasons. "it was the feeling that the great, deadly, pointing finger of society was pointing at me- and the great voice of millions chanting, 'Shame. Shame. Shame.' It's society's way of dealing with someone different" (Kesey 257). Harding was taught in and out of the institution that he was wrong in being himself because it was different. He was living his life in resentment because he could not be the person that could live up to society's standards. Harding was looked down upon and belittled for being an individual trying to figure himself out and finding his purpose.
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Christina W
7/30/2016 05:57:15 pm
In the novel, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", written by Ken Kesey, Billy and Chief are two characters that are labeled mentally ill because they are "immoral" to society, yet they both at different points in the novel, resist authority in the asylum. For instance, Billy has stuttered all his life, and eventually checked himself in to the mental hospital because of his stuttering. Billy is not a mentally ill person, but some how in his life, society made him think that he was immoral to others and is ill because he couldn't make out a sentence without stuttering. If society didn't make Billy feel like he was undesirable because of his stuttering, then maybe he wouldn't have ended up dropping out of college and entering the mental hospital. Throughout his stay asylum, Billy resists the authority there: "Billy Bibbit and his girl mentioned that it was after four o'clock and, if it was all right, if people didn't mind, they'd like to have Mr.Turkle unlock the Seclusion Room" (Kesey 255). Therefore, Billy sleeps with McMurphy's friend even though he isn't supposed to, just to resist authority. In addition, Chief is another character who, one can argue, is not as mentally ill as society makes him appear. He lived his life almost as an invisible man because society ignored him; he was Native American and he was different. Chief never spoke to anyone because no one ever talked to him or made him feel like a worthy person. Therefore, it wasn't hard for the mental patients to believe that he was deaf and mute. Chief, however, resists authority by raising his hand, despite being labeled as "deaf and mute" to vote for McMurphy turning on the World Series. It was in that moment that Chief resisted authority. He showed how he may not be familiar with speaking to people, but he certainly listened and heard everything spoken. Therefore, mental illness is "primarily a system of moral judgements" (Foucault). Society judged Chief and Billy as mentally ill men, however there is a possibility that they are not. Just because Billy stutters doesn't mean he is less intelligent than others or deserves to spend his life in a mental hospital. Like wise, just because Chief is not from the same culture Americans are used to, does not mean he is mentally ill. In conclusion, this novel told the story of many men who society used there own judgement and opinions to separate them as the "undesirable" and very ill people.
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Salvatore Valente
7/30/2016 06:35:09 pm
Mental instability can be very difficult to define. Author Michel Foucault defines mental instability as being based off of morals, stating "Indeed, what psychiatry presents as the 'liberation' of the mad from mental illness is in fact 'a gigantic moral imprisonment." What Foucault exclaims through this quote is that most people committed as insane are done so because of there differing morals to the rest of society's. With this idea looking over some of the characters from the novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" it is difficult to say that they belong in the psychiatric ward. Dale Harding is a clear example of this miss placement in the ward. The first and clearest sign that this is true is the fact that Harding is self committed. What this means is that Haring took no action that proved him to be insane or showed any signs of schizophrenia or other thought altering complications. With no sign that he has committed an action to cause himself to seek help from the ward we we learn that Harding committed himself because he felt out of place in society. Through our first encounter with Harding we can peace together how he has been kept on this ward. McMurphy begins to accuse the head nurse of purposefully making the patients feel distraught by belittling them to the other patients that watch. To this Harding snaps and reply's " you are right, about all of it, no one's ever dared come out and say it before, but there is no man among us who doesn't think it". With this understanding of the nurse and Harding we see that Harding doesn't seem to stay on the mental ward do to illness but instead has committed himself do to painful thoughts of self inadequacies that were induced by a constant feeling of difference between himself and others while constant torment from others dealing with his inadequacies. This caused Harding to believe he cannot function in society and was trapped in the ward by the head nurse who would underhandedly pry at the inadequacies. Even with Harding being free to leave whenever he wanted he was not truly able to leave until McMurphy showed him how to laugh, showing him that all his inadequacies were not as important as he thought.
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Jacob Swartz
7/30/2016 06:44:19 pm
Michael Foucault, author of "Madness," and an analyst in the field of psychiatry explains "psychiatry presented as the 'liberation' of the mad from mental illness is in fact a gigantic moral imprisonment." When in Modern psychiatry, the liberation of the mad is just an illusion that may be unable to be overcome by overthought boundaries. In the novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey, the setting takes place in an insane asylum. In this asylum, one may argue that the patients are not necessarily ill, instead they are placed in there because they are victims of someone else's "normative force." For example, Billy Bibbit, plays a role in the novel as the 'mamas boy' per say. This is because his Mother put him in the asylum for his own safety, but also to take him off of her hands. Billy's Mom also had a good relationship with the Big Nurse, which made Billy very vulnerable to Nurse Ratched. Once McMurphy came into play in this story, Billy looked up to him, and once Billy noticed the mental strength and capacity of McMurphy, it gave him a chance to escape from this unconventional reality; thus resulting in his long awaited suicide. Billy's death is one of the many example of the resistance of power in the novel. All of the men in this asylum struggled with the same thing throughout the novel, the shame of society. "The feeling of the great deadly forefinger of society pointing at me/ Millions chanting 'Shame. 'Shame 'Shame/ It's society's way of dealing with someone different (Kesey 257)." This quote is similar to Foucault's own ideas because of the similarity in views of mental illness and how society reacts to them.
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Catherine Tierney
7/30/2016 06:45:50 pm
In Michel Foucault’s, Madness and Civilization, he claims that, “Modern psychiatric while purporting to be grounded in scientific truth, is primarily a system of moral judgments.” and “efforts to treat mental issues can be society's way of controlling what it views as a moral, or otherwise undesirable behavior.” This begs the question as to what is normal behavior and what lengths we will take to make people conform to our ideas of normalcy. McMurphy would certainly not be considered normal to society standards. A gambler, petty thief, and rebel, he bucks society's normative forces. In fact he took every opportunity to rebel against what society considers moral and desirable behavior. This is evident in the scene where McMurphy is being difficult when taking his admission shower. When the nurse suggest everyone must follow the rules, McMurphy slyly tips his head back and winks and says, “you know ma’am... that is the exact thing somebody always tells me about the rules... Just when they figure I'm about to do the dead opposite.”(Kesey 28). His lifetime defiance is what got him to the mental institution in the first place, choosing a psychiatric facility over a prison work camp, he gets to see firsthand how the mentally ill are treated. While he was not mentally ill upon entering the facility, his behaviors do not conform to the ideas of normality and morality. These defiant acts were seen as mentally ill and treated as such. The sad fact is that while resisting the power of a psychiatric establishment it leads to McMurphy's downfall, in the end leaving him a vegetable and eventually dead. Historically as the field of psychiatric medicine have evolved we have established scientific criteria to diagnose and treat. We are moving away from a time when simply be atypical was a means of diagnosis. One can only wonder what McMurphy's diagnosis would be in modern-day.
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Aislinn Butler
7/30/2016 06:49:48 pm
In the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, McMurphy is deemed crazy and put into a mental hospital. McMurphy is indeed not crazy, he just doesn’t want to conform to society. He is a rebel, and enjoys his lifestyle. People like Ms. Ratched don’t approve of his lifestyle, and want to “fix” him. Michel Foucault says, “modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgments…” This idea is heavily shown in this novel, because McMurphy has nothing really wrong with him, it's just that he does not live by the status quo. McMurphy says, “...any of you sharpies here willing to take my five bucks that says that I can get the best of that woman-before the week’s up-without her getting the best of me?” (Kesey, 68) This shows that he is not crazy because he is aware of what he is doing, and he is purposely acting this way to bother people he doesn’t like. At the end of the book, McMurphy gets a lobotomy, because he was standing up for Billy. Granted, McMurphy went about it in the wrong way, but he still understood friendship. This whole situation shows that the doctors don’t approve of his behavior because it does not follow the “normal” guidelines.
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Grace Noglows
7/30/2016 07:15:50 pm
After reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, I believe that R. P. McMurphy is not “really” mentally ill. He is a victim of someone else’s “normative force”. Nobody really knows what mentally ill means. Michel Foucault's says that “efforts to treat mental illness and be society's way of controlling what it views as immoral, or otherwise undesirable, behavior”. People are trying to control the patients. McMurphy is not being helped. Also, he does not like any of the little help he does receive. When “ one of the black boys [circled] him with the thermometer, he [was] too quick for them” (Kesey 17). McMurphy does not believe he is mentally ill. He does not argue in court because he did not really like his life. He may act a little different, but he is not sick.
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Sophie Pouso
7/30/2016 07:34:23 pm
Through his intensive research on the history of madness, Michel Faucault claims that “modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgements.” The novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by Ken Kessey, ties back to Faucault’s ideas through the character Randle McMurphy. McMurphy is in the hospital after has to leave a prison work farm. He intentionally wants to go to the psychiatric hospital because he assumes it is an easier and much better alternative than the work farm. In application to Faucault’s claims, Randel McMurphy is not really mentally ill. He is merely the product of Nurse Ratched’s force, and her views on the idea of morality and normality. At the time he enters the establishment, McMurphy does not have mental issues which helps the others such as Chief Bromden to lift the “fog” off the mental institution, seeing true reality. In the novel, people who do not willingly conform to societies predetermined social “norm”, are sent to the psychiatric hospital for treatment as mentally ill. Nurse Ratched takes away the patient's own perceptions of the world and forces them on to her oppressive mentality. As McMurphy is exposed to Ratched’s normative force he eventually cracks. He strongly shows his opposition to the hierarchy and power of the psychiatric establishment in the hospital. The action of McMurphy smashing the glass door displays his resistance and makes Ratched vulnerable. During his attack on Ratched in which he “grabbed for her and ripped her uniform all the way down the front” (Kessey 267) he takes away some of Ratched’s power. Randel McMurphy’s mental illness, is no real illness. It is his deprivation of freedom and self-determination as described in Michel Faulcault’s ideas.
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Shea Grant
7/30/2016 07:51:20 pm
In this novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest written by Ken Kesey, the objectivity of mental illness and what it truly means to be mentally ill is explored through a fictitious plot involving a mental facility using outdated practices. Michel Foucault wrote “what psychiatry presents as the ‘liberation’ of the mad from mental illness is in fact a ‘gigantic moral imprisonment.’” I believe that McMurphy’s character represents the oppression of free thought and the forced morals imposed upon people with a believed mental illness. The novel explores the legitimacy of mental illness, whether some is real or if it is just one powerful figure forcing their beliefs on those weaker than them. I do not believe that McMurphy was mentally ill in the slightest. On page 46, as the doctor is reviewing McMurphy’s file, he notices that “do not overlook the possibility that this man may be feigning psychosis to escape the drudgery of the work farm” is written at the bottom of the paper. This concludes that McMurphy does not enter the hospital with a mental illness. However, he is deemed mentally ill because he does not possess the same attributes as the seemingly normal. He is denied the freedom of self-determination, and forced to conform to Nurse Ratched’s ideas of morality and normality. When he does not conform, he is tortured through electroshock therapy. McMurphy resists through speaking his mind, taking the other patients fishing, and eventually getting one of them laid. He defies the social standard set up for him, and does not back down even when tortured. He is only defeated when Nurse Ratched forces a lobotomy on him, which damages his brain. Nurse Ratched runs a militant-like facility and acts as a ruling dictator. McMurphy was never mentally ill, that was stated within the first ten pages his character entered the book. However, because he resisted to conform to Nurse Ratched’s ideas of morality and normality, he was forced to get a lobotomy. In this novel mental illness is used as a cover-up for brainwashing the weaker, who can do nothing but oblige. If different ideas and unusual morals induce a diagnosis of mental illness, then I believe there is a spot for us all in some hospital somewhere.
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Tara Clark
7/30/2016 08:08:50 pm
Modern psychiatry is allegedly based on scientific facts, but in reality it is based on what all of humanity considers normal or abnormal. In the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey this is displayed. As the reader gets deeper into the story, they begin to realize that a countless number of patients are not what would be considered insane, they are just openly different. In fact, multiple of the patients that the main character meets voluntarily checked themselves into the hospital. For example, Dale Harding checked himself into the hospital because he doesn’t like the way society treats him. The reader comes to a conclusion that Harding is a homosexual. Harding is judged very often which is why he decides to check himself into the hospital because he absolutely hates the idea of being judged by a majority of the population. “I indulged in certain practices that our society regards as shameful. And I got sick” (Kesey 257). In reality Dale had absolutely nothing wrong with him. But still, society continues to judge him for what he believes in. Society made him believe that he had to be changed/ fixed to live a happy life where he would be normal. But he was not being fixed… He was just being molded into what society considered normal at the time. Michel Foucault brings to attention that this is how society deals with people who believe they need psychiatric help. “what psychiatry presents as the ‘liberation’ of the mad from mental illness is in fact ‘a gigantic moral imprisonment’” (Foucault). No one would actually try to treat the problem, but instead modern psychiatry would just tell them that they are not fit for society. Harding was not sick, he had nothing wrong with him, he just didn’t believe what everybody else excepted in society. Many patients were just like Dale Harding. They were not mentally ill, just very wrongfully and harshly judged.
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Claire Lynch
7/30/2016 08:18:31 pm
"Modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgements." Michel Focault said this explaining his opinion on why most people are in mental hospitals, which is because they just aren't seen as "normal" to society. Ken Kesey supports Michel's statement in his book One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest. One character that is obviously not mentally ill is Randle McMurphy. He shows no signs of being mental throughout the entire novel, but since he was very sexual and spoke his mind, it made him different. Another character that supports Michel's thoughts was Billy. He was very shy and had a terrible stuttering issue. Randle had snuck in a couple of prostitutes into the hospital so they could all hangout with the inmates. This resulted in everyone having a good time, including Billy. Billy had spent the night with one of the prostitutes, but Nurse Ratched caught them together the next day. She was very disappointed and told Billy that he should be ashamed. Billy disagreed with her, he wasn't even stuttering he was so happy and proud with himself. Nurse Ratched then told him she was going to tell his mother. This turned Billy back into the stuttering and sad mess he was before, just for doing something that was frowned upon during this time. Being different and being mentally ill are two very distinct things.
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Jack Dee
7/30/2016 08:56:32 pm
In the novel "One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey, the author tries to explain that people make efforts to treat mental illness and be society's way of controlling what it views as immoral, or otherwise undesirable, behavior when he writes about the hospital. This book makes us wonder if some people are actually mentally ill or if they just don't fit in with the norms of out society. During the book we see some people who try to stand up against the authority and the authority who use their power to prevent that from happening again. For example when McMurphy attacked the nurse she lobotomized him and he was not the same person until his death. “the big Nurse could use it as an example of what can happen if you buck the system” (Kesey 270). Some of these people were given no chance because of the power that was against them and they might not have had disorders but they did not fit in with intolerant society so they were written off as people that had something wrong with them. During the book Nurse Ratched would break down the characters and make them feel like there was something wrong and they would be afraid to stand up for themselves, she even caused some people to stutter because of the low self esteem she made them have. Although some things may not seem normal to you that doesn't mean they aren't right so if someone doesn't have the personality that you're used to you just need to have an open mind before judging them or labeling them. Society needs to be more forgiving and willing to take more time to understand someone before they write them off as "strange" or "mentally ill" because not everyone is exactly the same and everybody's minds work differently.
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Kady Aguilar
7/30/2016 08:58:46 pm
In "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" being different or being "mentally" ill are very different things. "Modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgments"Michel Focault was expressing his opinion on why most people are in mental hospital. His opinion is known of saying people are at mental hospital because they aren't seen as to be "normal" people in the society.
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Trinity McQuillan
7/30/2016 10:09:05 pm
Psychology, as a study and as an aspect of life, has changed and evolved over the years. Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Michel Foucault's research illustrate how it is questioned and how much it can develop in less than a century. In the eyes of Nurse Ratched, McMurphy is seen as a psychopath because of his tenacity to challenge her authority. In Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality, Foucault mentions a relation betws power and resistance: "Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power." (Foucault 95). To Chief Bromden and modern society, McMurphy can be seen as a revolutionary who stands up against a higher power and risks his life fighting for the greater good. From the moment McMurphy is signed in everyone knows he stands out, that he is different, that he is not normal. "Still, even though I can't see him, I know he's no ordinary Admission. I don't hear him slide scared along the wall, and when they tell him about the shower he don't just submit with a weak little yes, he tells them right back in a loud, brassy voice that he's already plenty damn clean, thank you." (Kesey 15). Right away McMurphy refuses to conform to his new society and refuses to be told what to do. He believes he can win a fight with Big Nurse and change everyone's lives on the ward. Unfortunately his reckless behavior allows Big Nurse to gain the upper hand, resulting in his downfall.
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Craig Scharmann
7/31/2016 06:42:18 am
In the novel One flew over the cuckoos nest, by Ken Kesey, One character in particular is subject to being denied freedom, and forced to conform to someone else idea of normality. For example, Foucault believed that, "Where there is power, there is always resistance." This becomes evident in the story, because as Nurse Ratched becomes a ruthless dictator, people like McMurphy who understand the difference between power crazy and reasonable begin to create rebellions and ultimately try to overthrow Nurse's authority. McMurphy soon begins to realize that rebelling against the nurse is not a good idea, because she is the one who gets to decide whether or not to let someone out. McMurphy isn't crazy, he just tries to rebel against Nurse Ratchet, which shows her that he is defiant, and some of the ways he tries to defy her authority doesn't give the best representation of him. For example, McMurphy thinks to himself, "The big Nurse is going to snap.(Kesey 92)"Of course, McMurphy tries to push her over that edge. After that, McMurphy gathers up a rebellion, and gets a whole bunch of people to sit in front of a blank TV screen rather than doing their chores. The Nurse sees this, and although McMurphy may have thought that staring at a blank screen was a way to show defiance, when your in a mental health hospital, it shows otherwise. Ultimately, even though McMurphy isn't mentally ill, the Nurse uses her power to force McMurphy to conform or suffer consequences. In conclusion, at the end of the book after McMurphy tries to strangle the Nurse to death, she sends him for a lobotomy which leads to his downfall. This novel demonstrates the ruthlessness of those in power in society, and how the inability to be "normal" could lead to severe consequences.
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Michael Dandrea
7/31/2016 10:51:33 am
Michel Foucault says "modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgments. Indeed, what psychiatry presents as the 'liberation' of the mad from mental illness is in fact 'a gigantic moral imprisonment." When I read this, the first character that comes to mind is Randle Patrick McMurphy. I believe that McMurphy should be in the mental hospital because the doctors at the mental hospital labeled him as insane. After McMurphy takes everybody on the ward out on the boat, one of the doctors says "I think he is dangerous... not crazy. Also Nurse Ratched says that if they let McMurphy go, it would be like passing their problems onto somebody else, so she wants to keep him on the ward. McMurphy tried many times to make Nurse Ratched angry. This also made Nurse Ratched and the other doctors on the ward think that McMurphy is not mentally stable.
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:(
8/1/2016 05:55:54 pm
the movie was so sad :(
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Michael Gilson
8/1/2016 06:35:34 pm
"This world... belongs to the strong my, friend! The ritual of our existence is based on the strong getting stronger by devouring the weak." In the book 'One flew over the Cukoo's nest' by Ken Kesey many people are put into a mental institution who have no problems at all. For example Harden is just a gay man who in today's society would seem normal right? But back in the 60s a gay man was seen as having mental problems. " In this country, when something is out of order, then the quickest way to get it fixed is the best way." They thought because he was homosexual that putting him in a mental hospital would be the best way to fix him but you can't fix that. He was accused of something that in today's society isn't seen as wrong. He checks out to have people see what they have isn't wrong.
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Tyler Schwinn
8/2/2016 11:10:56 pm
In the novel, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey, the reader sees the lives of many different mental patients through the eyes of a fellow patient, Chief Bromden. Throughout the novel, the reader is shown that many of the patients in the mental ward aren't so far from being normal members of society. One of the best examples of a misdiagnosed patient is found in Randle McMurphy. Although loud, sexually-charged, and crude, McMurphy shows throughout the novel that he has the mental capacity of a normal, sane person. Although it seems that McMurphy cannot conform to the rules of the Mental Ward, it is only because he has realized the oppression and wrongful ways of the Big Nurse and does not want to stand for him and his fellow patients being treated incorrectly. For as Foucault said, "Where there is power, there is always resistance". McMurphy comes across as violent and aggressive, when in reality he just does not want to conform to the wrongful standard of society set by the Big Nurse.The fact that McMurphy can recognize on his first day that the group meeting's are a bunch of "Chickens at a peckin' party"(Kesey 55), shows that McMurphy is sane enough to realize the inhumane laws and procedures of the Ward. However, due to his aggressive and sexual tendencies,McMurphy does not fit into society's normal standards and is sent to the mental hospital.
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Liam Landree
8/5/2016 11:47:06 am
Psychiatrist Michel Foucault’s madness and civilization claims, “modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgments. Indeed, what psychiatry presents as the 'liberation' of the mad from mental illness is in fact 'a gigantic moral imprisonment”. In other words, society establishes a biased standard for what is considered mentally sound. In Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, readers gain insight to a ghastly mental institution, corrupted by Nurse Ratched who rules with an iron fist. Rebellious and shrewd, Randle Patrick McMurphy begins to challenge the Big Nurse’s authority upon his arrival to the mental hospital. Alongside his fellow inmates, one questions whether Mcmurphy is a witty intellect or is just as complicated as his ‘mentally-ill’ counterparts. McMurphy is subject to the mental ideology while it is rather obvious he is just a sly con man. During the times in which the novel occurs, outcasts from society such as homosexuals or rebellious individuals fell victim to society's view of mentally unstable. In a meeting between the doctors it is noted that McMurphy, “performed violent acts for the sole purpose of getting away from the work farm into the comparative luxury of this hospital”(Kesey 133). McMurphy isn't lacking mental stability, in fact, he has an edge that most others don’t: he uses the system to his advantage. To conclude, McMurphy is far from mentally ill, he falls under society’s skewed version of unstable and is subject to the cruelty of the Big Nurse.
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Charlotte Jansky
8/6/2016 06:50:45 pm
The views of famous historian, Michel Foucault were similar to those shared in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. Michel Foucault did a study on psychiatric practices, and he criticized their role in society and raised questions about its meaning and effectiveness. Michael Gutting wrote an article about Foucault in the New York Times. He said Foucault's claim was that, “Psychiatric practice does not seem to be based on implicit moral assumptions… And efforts to treat mental illness and society’s way of controlling what it views as immoral, or otherwise undesirable, behavior.” Foucault explains that mental institutions are used to correct things that seemed wrong to society. Anyone that was not “normal” was put through these psychiatric practices just because they were different; and different isn’t always bad. Ken Kesey used these ideas as the inspiration for One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. The character, Harding is a perfect example of these cases in the mental hospitals. Harding is gay which was frowned upon in society. Harding explains how being different made society question him by saying, “I discovered at an early age that I was- shall we be kind and say different. I got sick...it was the feeling that the great deadly, pointing forefinger of society was pointing at me. It’s society’s way of dealing with someone different”(Kesey 257). Harding admits that society deals with the people who are different by shoving them in the mental institution and trying to change the way their brain is wired. Harding and the other patients resist the power by just being different and trying not to conform to the uniformity that the nurses and the administration all want. They rebelled against Nurse Ratched’s rules and tried to just do what they wanted to do. In conclusion, Michel Foucault and Ken Kesey shared similar ideas about how society's judgments of different people lead to being sent to mental institutions- just as much as the mental illnesses themselves.
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Donovan Turner
8/7/2016 11:08:17 am
Michael Foucault, who writes about psychiatry, claims "Modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgments." He was arguing that modern psychiatry is based on what the majority of the public thinks is normal and not really the mental inconsistency or health of a person. There are many points that Foucault made that pertained to Ken Kesey's story, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". Foucault says that the treatments were based on morals, not on improving people's mental health. He also claimed many people in mental hospitals are not insane but are just different. An example of this is Harding. Harding is homosexual and back then, the majority of the population believed homosexuals were insane, because they could not understand why someone would be attracted to the same sex. Harding did not belong in the hospital, but society made him believe that he was supposed to be there. Near the end of the book, Harding says that he knew from an early age he was different. “I discovered at an early age that I was- shall we be kind and say different. I got sick...it was the feeling that the great deadly, pointing forefinger of society was pointing at me. It’s society’s way of dealing with someone different” (Kesey 257). The expectations of society and the fact that he did not fit in, made him sick because he was different. He was put in the hospital because that's how society deals with people like him. The mental institution and it's staff try to change the way people act and how there brain is wired because they don't believe they are "normal". As a result, the patient is more mentally challenged than they were before. Another example of this is McMurphy. After they worked on him, he went from being outgoing, funny and boisterous to becoming a vegetable with no reason to live. If Harding was alive today, he would be able to live his life as a homosexual. His homosexuality would be accepted by the general public.
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Lily Peña
8/7/2016 03:34:39 pm
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Gianna Pallante
8/7/2016 10:36:37 pm
In Ken Kesey’s novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” a mental hospital’s structure and stability is tested when a new patient stirs up trouble in the ward. One of the patients there, Billy Bibbit, is a young man who has a stutter. He seems to function normally in every other aspect of his life besides his speech, yet he is still admitted into the asylum. I do not believe that Billy has a legitimate mental illness that prevents him from living amongst other people in the world. His stutter, something so minuscule, sets him apart from others making him “not normal.” He always felt he was different, for he always had this stutter. Foucault, a man who researched psychiatric illness, said that “modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgments. Indeed, what psychiatry presents as the 'liberation' of the mad from mental illness is in fact 'a gigantic moral imprisonment.” In the novel, Nurse Ratched has say as in how long certain patients need to or should stay. She also authorizes their treatment methods, based on what she deems fit for the patient. Most of the Acutes on the ward are voluntary, meaning they made the choice to be admitted into the asylum. Billy is one of the Acutes, and since the world showed them that they were not “normal,” they found a home where their abnormality would be blamed on a mental illness. Billy has the ability to sign himself out of the mental institution, but he feels as though he belongs there. When McMurphy questions Billy’s motives for not leaving the asylum, he says, “You think I wuh-wuh-wuh-want to stay in here? You think I wouldn’t like a con-con-vertible and a guh-guh-guh-girl friend? But do you ever have people l-l-laughing at you? No, because you’re so b-big and so tough! Well, I’m not big and tough,” (Kesey 168). Here, Billy is recognizing that he is scared of the cruelty of the outside world, showing that he might just be using his stutter to validate a “mental illness” that he does not have. In the asylum, patients are forced to follow a structured schedule that is the same everyday, what Nurse Rached believes to be moral and normal. Foucault also said that “where there is power, there is [always] resistance.” Billy would always follow the orders of the staff, along with all of the other patients, until McMurphy rose against the authority figures. When Nurse Ratched refused to change the schedule so the patients could watch the world series, all of the Acutes sat in defiance and didn’t do their scheduled chores. They resisted the power of Nurse Ratched and the staff as a whole by refusing to follow their rules.
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John Tuohy
8/9/2016 08:15:53 pm
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Penny Hill
8/11/2016 04:30:40 pm
While I believe that there were a handful of patients in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest who did not belong in a mental institution, one that stood out to me was Dale Harding. Harding had a wife, but he was really a homosexual. At the time, “homosexuals and women who rejected their stereotypical roles were judged "mentally ill."” Nowadays most people have realized that they don’t have to conform to any standards or rules or pretend to be someone who they are not. The mental institution was “a gigantic moral imprisonment” for Harding because being there made him feel even more ashamed of his feelings. He even compared himself and all the patients to cowardly rabbits who stay at the hospital because they “can’t adjust to [their] rabbithood (Kesey 62).” Harding knows other people will judge and harass him for being a homosexual so he is afraid to live in the real world. But this says more about society being crazy than him being crazy. Homosexuality is not a disease, ignorance is. Harding is some of the other patients were unjustly being forced to conform to the Combine’s vision of normal. As Foucault pointed out, “where there is power, there is [always] resistance", and the patients at this mental institution expressed lots of resistance, especially against Nurse Ratched. One example is when they vote on watching the World Series on TV instead of the 6:00 news. At first Nurse Ratched tells them they cannot watch it because it will mess up their “delicately balanced (Kesey 114)” scheduled. They take a vote and most of the patients are too scared to raise their hands and defy Nurse Ratched’s rule. But McMurphy knocks some sense into the other patients and changes their minds, so they demand a revote. Twenty out of the forty ward patients voted to watch the game, so Nurse Ratched won’t let them, even though the twenty that didn’t vote are mostly chronics that can’t even comprehend what is going or have the ability to raise their hand. Last minute, Chief raises his hand but the nurse says the vote was closed. McMurphy is outraged so instead of doing his chores at 6:00, he turns on the World Series, sit in an armchair in front of the TV set, and watches the game. The Nurse immediately shuts it off, but then almost all the patients pulls up a chair alongside McMurphy and sit to watch the blank screen instead of doing their chores. Maybe they didn’t get to see the World Series, but infuriating Nurse Ratched was just as satisfying. Throughout the story, the patients start to question Nurse Ratched more and disobey her oppressive rules. Another instance of this is when McMurphey, Billy, Harding, Scanlon, Sefelt and some of the other patients snuck Candy and her friend Sandy into the hospital in the middle of the night. They got drunk, and even took cough syrup from the drug room to mix with their vodka. Even though Nurse Ratched had serious consequences for them, McMurphey still showed all the patients how to laugh and have fun again, which he thought was one of the most important parts of keeping yourself sane. Them laughing and having fun showed Nurse Ratched that she couldn’t control them and who they were. It was liberating.
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Morgan Almasy
8/12/2016 09:25:34 am
While reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, it was immediately evident to me that some patients in the mental ward did not show any purpose of being there. They did not seem to have any mental illness at all, causing me as the reader to question why they were there. This was especially true for McMurphy in my opinion. The reason he was brought there was because he'd gotten into a number of fights. While at the institution, he challenges the authority figures such as "Big Nurse" and cons the other patients into giving him money. I believe that this proves him to simply be daring and possibly even highly intelligent because of the way he tricks the men into giving him their money. Around the time of this novel being written, Michael Foucault was writing a nonfiction book on the study of mental illnesses. He said people are using " efforts to treat mental illness and be society's way of controlling what it views as immoral, or otherwise undesirable, behavior." (Foucault). From this, we can see that being deemed mentally ill is simply society's way of saying "you're not like us, and we don't like that". Society sees that someone is testing limits or breaking limits that they put on everyone, and once this occurs, it gets people mad and they declare the person has some sort of mental illness. This is proven when McMurphy is put in the mental institution simply for fighting often. Anyone with any level of sanity could get into multiple fights and not be mentally unstable, but McMurphy was seen as a threat to society and its rules, so he was deemed mentally unstable. At one point, "he begins to see how funny the whole thing is-the rules, the disapproving looks they give you to enforce the rules"(Kesey 104). He acknowledges the rules and purposely ignores them because he thinks they're funny, and pointless. McMurphy treats his time at the ward like a game, and he enjoys it. While there, the only things he does that lead the reader to believe he's mentally ill is his breaking of the rules, which anyone of any mental stability could do if they were brave enough to do so. In conclusion, I believe that McMurphy is not actually mentally unstable, rather he has broken some of society's rules and is therefore deemed mentally unstable.
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Gianna Pallante
8/12/2016 06:01:58 pm
The play “A Streetcar Named Desire” written by Tennessee Williams follows a coupe named Stella and Stanley who receive an unexpected visit from Stella’s sister Blanche. Stanley and Stella’s toxic relationship thrives off of the gender roles that they are both accustomed to. Stanley believes that he is the dominant figure, and treats Stella as if she is lesser than him. Stella allows Stanley to act as the dominant figure in their relationship because that is what expected of a female. Stanley acts cruel and Stella allows him to do so, never correcting him when he behaves or treats her poorly. Stanley and Stella both conform to their gender roles, or " a set of behaviors, attitudes, and personality characteristics expected and encouraged of a person based on his or her sex,” according to a summary of the sociological study of gender. If it were not for them both conforming to their own gender roles, their relationship would not last. In scene 2 of the novel , Stella tells Stanley to come outside with her. He replies with, “Since when do you give me orders?” (Williams 37). Here, he is implying that he usually gives the orders in the house, as a stereotypical male would. During scene 4, Blanche and Stella are discussing a fight Stella previously had with Stanley. During their fight, Stanley attacked Stella, hitting her. Although many may view this as morally wrong, Stella was okay with the treatment she received from her husband. On the other hand, Blanche is strongly against the way Stanley treats Stella. When Blanche tells Stella this, she replies with, “Then don’t you think your superior attitude is a bit out of place?” (Williams 71). She says this as if Blanche should have an inferior attitude, since acting as if you are superior does not meet the female gender role. In scene 8, Stella asks Stanley to help her clear the table. He begins to throw the plates on the floor, showing that he does not listen to his wife, since he acts as if he is superior. Throughout the rest of the play, Stella allows Stanley to yell at her and doesn’t defend herself. She treats Stanley as if he is superior, and he treats her as if she is inferior.
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Penelope Buchanan
8/12/2016 09:14:23 pm
Michael Foucault criticizes modern psychiatry claiming that it "is primarily a system of moral judgments". This means that if you are not viewed as "normal" in the current society, then there must be something wrong with you. I agree with his critiques. Just because someone doesn't fit the average standards of society does not make them mentally ill. In Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest", there is lots of questioning on if some of the characters should even be in the facility. One character that I do not believe should be considered mentally ill is Harding. Harding is a gay man, and at that time it was unacceptable for two men to be together. He even says that they are considered to other people "lunatics from the hospital up the highway... the cracked pots of mankind" (102). He views himself this way because he was always being told that being homosexual was not normal. Most of society was not gay or familiar with the idea, so they cast it away, unable to accept it. In reality there was nothing at all wrong with Dale Harding.
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Summer Smith
8/15/2016 09:53:14 am
In the novel, One Flew over the Cockoo's Nest by Ken Kesey; the narrator, Chief Bromden, in my opinion is not "really" mentally ill. He embellishes the symptoms of his illness by pretending to be deaf and mute. Since he is able to control his behavior, it shows he is less ill than the other patients. Society and the hospital staff view him as mentally ill because of his "deafness and muteness". The nurses presume Bromden is mute, deaf, and very illl because of their "systems of moral judgments"(Gutting). Bromden is not viewed as "normal" by the nurses because he does not acknowledge them and their systems of rules. He is forced to abide by the rules of the nurses because they think he is not acting "normal". They want him to follow what they presume is societies view of being "normal". Bromden has enough self awareness that he is able to alter his behavior. Bromden says about the nurses and other people in the hospital that "They don't bother not talking out loud...when I'm nearby because they think I'm deaf and dumb"(Kesey 54). The fact that Bromden can alter his ego and pretend to be something shows that he is not all ill as everyone thinks he is
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Emily Rothberg
8/17/2016 11:23:05 pm
When reading Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, one character who stands out as victim of society’s judgement toward those who don’t fit the status quo is Billy Bibbit. When Foucault discussed the validity of modern psychiatric procedures and practices, he noted that “while the term ‘normal’ sometimes signifies merely what is usual or average, in discussions of mental illness, it most often has normative force." Billy is possibly the most victim to this societal practice having turned himself in to the mental hospital for what seemed to be no more than a severe stutter and a bad case of nerves - which even McMurphy thinks was an invalid move on Bibbit’s part. After Bibbit tells him this, McMurphy responds with "Tell me why. You gripe, you bitch for weeks on end about how you can’t stand this place, can’t stand the nurse or anything about her, and all the time you ain’t committed. I can understand it with some of those old guys on the ward. They’re nuts. But you, you’re not exactly the everyday man on the street, but you’re not nuts." (Kesey 168). And he’s right. Bibbit isn’t suffering from a mental illness, he’s not a head case - he fell victim to the expectations of the world around him - He’s basically quit on the outside world because he can’t fit into their perfect square of normativity of what they think someone should be like. Billy reveals he even dropped out of ROTC - ultimately leading to him flunking out of college - because he couldn’t when the officer would call his name without stuttering. The most prominent example of his mother whose relationship with him borderlined on almost disturbingly Oedipal complexity. Like most of the women are portrayed in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Bibbit’s mother is controlling, manipulative character. She keeps him close, too close, and when he tells her of his goals to one day attend college and marry she chastises him and tells him he has loads of time for that and when Billy stutters back that he’s already thirty-one, she smoothly shuts him down saying “Sweetheart, do I look like the mother of a middle-aged man?” Bibbit’s mother is also very close with Nurse Ratched. This connection enables Billy’s mom to still have control over him even when she is not around because he dreads his mother’s disapproval because of her overwhelming part she plays in his life and decisions. When Bibbit loses his virginity to Candy he stops stuttering because he finally took a little part of his own life back, outside - or so it seems - the controlling grasp of his mother. But when Ratched finds out, she pushes his buttons and pulls some gears in him, saying how disappointed his mother would be by this and how she wouldn’t approve and Bibbit’s stutter is back in no time at all. Though he suffers from no real mental illness, only ones “the system” has inflicted upon him, Billy ultimately ends up slitting his throat and killing himself because he can’t take the shame Nurse Ratched inflicts on him, further providing evidence that Billy’s issues were caused by cruel people around and were no fault of his own.
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Cristina Persico
8/18/2016 12:39:22 pm
Michael Foucault criticizes the ideas of mental institutions by saying it is an "effort to treat mental illness and be society's way of controlling what it views as immoral, or otherwise undesirable, behavior" (Foucault). I realized his points after reading the novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey. In the story the so called "mental illnesses" that some of the patients have are very questionable and whether or not they should be in the hospital is based on if they are considered "normal" or not in society. One character, Dale Harding, is a homosexual man who was enrolled in the hospital for being gay. Being homosexual is not a mental illness, but at the time that was not recognized as "normal" so many of them were judged and some, like Harding, were put into psych wards for no reason. Harding says, "This world... belongs to the strong, my friend! The ritual of our existence is based on the strong getting stronger by devouring the weak" (Kesey 186). This shows how "the strong" , Nurse Ratched and society, can say and do whatever they want because "the weak", the patients, can't stand up against them. Overall, I do not believe Harding deserved to be put into the hospital because he does not have a mental illness. I believe that by Harding checking himself out of the mental hospital it set up a domino affect for all the other patients who have been cured. Being homosexual is not a mental illness and I believe Dale Harding changed the novel for the better.
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Allie Cohen
8/24/2016 05:52:20 pm
The definition of “normal” and what surpasses as “abnormal” is very controversial issue. Michael Foucault states that "modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgments." There is no exact science in normality amongst people, but rather judgements that are made to decide on whether a person’s actions, state of mind, and/or spiritual level are up to par. Many individuals, who do not fit society’s version of a “normal” person, are deemed wrongfully with labels such as insane. Ken Kesey exemplifies this statement by creating a realistic version of a modern day mental institution, in the book, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. There are many characters in the book, that are infact, not insane at all, but rather there for the wrong purposes. One of the most significant characters that stood out as being unrighteously placed was Billy Bibbit. Billy’s mother had clearly taken complete control of Billy’s life. Billy had wanted to grow up and get married, to go to college, but his mother hadn’t wanted him to grow up, and as a result, he wound up in a mental institution with neither an education or a girl to call his wife. He was described as also childish, along with standing under his mother’s shadow, as a repercussion to his mother making him completely dependent of her. When Mcmurphy and the Big Nurse agree on having a carnival, Billy responds with a more positive attitude towards a childish thing by saying, “it would b-b-be fun.” (Kesey 105). Also, when Billy lost his virginity, he was caught by Miss Ratched who had mentioned that she had wondered “how (his) poor mother is going to take this.” (Kesey, 301). As the reader can clearly see, Billy’s mother influenced him enough to make him believe he needed “help”, when he obviously didn’t. Billy’s mother ultimately lead him to commit suicide because he was so afraid of his mother reaction, that he would rather die than face her. In the book and in the real-world, people are everyday, unjustifiably labeled as mental, which is clearly proven through both Foucault’s article, and Kesey’s book.
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Lisa-Marie Smith
8/26/2016 02:34:47 pm
"effort to treat mental illness and be society's way of controlling what it views as immoral, or otherwise undesirable, behavior" (Foucault) This people are seen as I'll even though they aren't, they aren't supposedly normal. They are being themselves and others take them down by saying they are ill, that this isn't what people should be like. They have been diagnosed this way because the stereotypical views society has. Dale Harding was a homosexual male. He is attracted to the opposite gender and how society was in that time homosexuality wasn't "normal". Since they have no other way of explaining the unusual characteristics these people had they just categorized them as "mentally ill". "The lunatics from the hospital up the highway...the cracked pots of mankind" this is how Dale viewed himself. He only viewed himself this way because he had been told by numerous people that he wasn't normal because of his homosexuality. People like to take charge of others, we should allow people to be themselves.
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Erin Root
8/31/2016 06:49:38 pm
Mental illnesses, by definition, is a disorder that affects someone's mood, thinking, and behavior. Examples of mental illnesses are depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, and eating disorders. In the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey many of the patients in the mental hospital aren’t even mentally ill, they’re just different than what society considers “normal”. One example of a patient that isn’t actually mentally ill, just different, is Dale Harding. Dale Harding, a sharp, college graduate, is in the mental hospital because of his sexuality. Although he is married, he is a homosexual. In the book, women that go against their predetermined roles and homosexuals are looked down upon in society, just because they aren’t conformed to the norms of society. While Dale was living, unprotected in society, “[he] indulged in certain practices that...society regards as shameful. And [he] got sick” (Kesey 257). Because of this, he voluntarily admitted himself into the ward. He wasn’t actually mentally ill, he was just fed up with society and how close-minded everyone is. Society forced him to believe that because of the way he was, he would never be happy or lead a successful life. He got sick of feeling like that so he just checked himself into the hospital. Michel Foucault, a French philosopher, tried to explain how society deals with those with mental illnesses. He says, “what psychiatry presents as the ‘liberation’ of the mad from mental illness is in fact ‘a gigantic moral imprisonment’” (Foucault). What he means by this is that no one would try and fix the problem, but instead they would just come to a conclusion that the patient is not fit for society. They wouldn’t do anything about it, just convince the patient that they are too sick, actually just different, to function normally in society. So, Dave Harding, was indeed not mentally ill, he was just considered not fit to function in society like all the other “normal” people do. Dave Harding was not the only patient, there were other patients that were just struggling under the oppression of society’s conformities and limitations.
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Erin Rooy
8/31/2016 06:51:22 pm
Rooy*
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Bella Fernandes
9/3/2016 12:13:22 pm
People were commonly mistaken for being mentally ill because in society’s eye they did not “fit in” in the 1900s. A character that fits this problem is Randle Mcmurphy. Randle is outspoken to the nurse and goes against her, and also receives a lobotomy at the end of the novel from being too aggressive. Randle did wrong things prior to coming to the hospital, but throughout the novel he was going against something (the main nurse) who was causing harm to the other patients and degrading them in the process. “He says that the Big Nurse is just a bitter, ice-hearted old lady.” This quote shows that Mcmurphy viewed the nurse has a lady who had problems of her own, and was not frightened of her like the rest of the patients. This shows a sense of bravery and normality.
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Quinn Moore
9/3/2016 11:37:26 pm
In the novel “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” Ken Kelsey writes of what society has calls people who are “different” mentally ill or crazy. Anything out of the norm of society people discriminate against the things they are not used to. For example one of the patients in the story named Dale Harding is admitted to the hospital because he fell under the category of different or strange. Society judged him based on his sexuality, because Dale was gay others made him feel like he had something wrong with him because he didn't fit in. In the novel Dale says “It was the feeling that the great, deadly, pointing forefinger of society was pointing at me." (Kesey 257) illustrating to the reader that Dale felt that because the world around him continued to tell him he was messed up because he didn't follow their norm. Another example of Dale expressing his feelings of seclusion is when he says "I discovered at an early age that I was, shall we be kind and say different?" (237) showing that he has always known and felt that he never fit in with society. It shouldn’t matter what other peoples standards are, but instead what makes you feel comfortable and “normal” is what the norm should be and this is what Dale realizes.
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Mary Brigid Clanton-Calnan
9/4/2016 09:23:59 am
In the book “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, there are patients that are treated like they are mentally ill, when really they just don't live up to societies social standards. Michel Foucault claims that "Modern psychiatry, while purporting to be grounded in scientific truths, is primarily a system of moral judgments.",which in one of the patients, McMurphy, case is true. Kesey supports this claim by describing McMurphy by, “Followed by a history of street brawls and barroom fights and a series of arrests for drunkenness, assault and battery disturbing the peace, repeated gambling one arrest- for rape." (Kesey 44) With this, it tells us that McMurphy is not “crazy” he is just a little reckless. That doesn't mean that he has to be constrained! From the start McMurphy has been different than the other patients. This is because he is not ill, he just knows no boundaries. For example Foucault thought , "Where there is power, there is [always] resistance" which is what McMurphy practiced on page 99 , “"I think of a fact that she'd rather he'd been stark naked under that towel than had on those shorts." McMurphy only acted out in these ways because he didn't belong in this mental hospital because he wasn't ill he just went against society's ways.
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Callie Haytaian
9/4/2016 10:19:59 am
In the novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, it shows how societies views can be so strong that they can cause someone to wrongfully believe they are mentally ill. A mental illness is a disorder that affects your mood, thinking, and behavior. Characters like Billy Bibbit, who only have a small difference like his stutter, are put in the asylum to be treated. Even though his stutter does not affect his normal functions in other aspects of life, they claim he needs treatment. Foucault believes that psychiatric practice is based off moral judgement, therefore people are wrongfully given treatment. Billy fights against the treatment by standing up for himself. When asked by the nurse "Aren't you Ashamed", Billy replies "No, I'm not." This along with many other patients proves Foucaults belief that "where there is power, there is [always] resistance." The 'normal' people have the power over the 'mentally ill', but the patients don't let the treatments change who they know they are deep down.
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Cori Martin
9/5/2016 07:32:50 am
In the novel, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", society seems to have a level of standards that everyone is supposed to live up to. In Focaults article he states, "Indeed, what psychiatry presents as the 'liberation' of the mad from mental illness is in fact 'a gigantic moral imprisonment". McMurphy and many of his inmates were wrongfully imprisoned inside of a mental asylum just because society labeled them as "crazy", but do they even know what crazy really is? Through the book, he is also caught teaching himself and his inmates to resist control. He takes the men out to do many activities which makes them desire freedom even more. This makes them forget that they are "mentally ill". McMurphy seems to make a point when he says, "If somebody'd of come in and took a look, men watching a blank TV, a fifty-year-old woman hollering and squealing at the back of their heads about discipline and order and recriminations, they'd of thought the whole bunch was crazy as loons". (Kesey 128) He realizes that what they were all doing was some sort of crazy, it was not normal. McMurphy wasn't ever mentally ill, he just did a bit of normal, but bad things.He just never lived up to the standards of the society and because of his reason of change and freedom, it costed him his life.
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Jazmine Marshall
9/5/2016 09:25:24 am
In the novel, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey, McMurphy is said to be crazy and admitted into a mental hospital. McMurphy is not actually psychotic, he just doesn’t want to conform to the societal norms, He enjoys his lifestyle. Many are kept in mental hospitals for inconsiderate reasons. If someone needed to be treated for mental illness, they're taken to a hospital. However the society controls why people are admitted because of their behavior that isn't so favorable. One example is, Dale Harding. He is a gay man, and society deems this as a "sickness" it's unfair. This was "society's way of treating someone different" (Kesey 294). Dale battles this unfavorable rule by dismissing himself from the hospital which was a brave act that others followed in.
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Isabella Scheider
9/5/2016 08:10:16 pm
While this book covers several topic such as morality versus immorality and normal ersus crazy, one topic that needs to be discussed is whether people are really mentally insane or if they are just different. In an article in The New York Times, Gary Gutting says, “And efforts to treat mental illness and be society’s way of controlling what it views as immoral, or otherwise undesirable, behavior.” (Gutting 1). In “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”, McMurphy is thrown into Oregon psychiatric hospital for gambling and other different things. But, in all honesty, McMurphy seems perfectly stable until the end of the book, after he was put through the experiences of the hospital, including electroshock therapy. I believe that some people are just considered crazy because people are afraid of anything that’s different or that they don’t understand. They want to rid of the difference and categorize it under a different name. McMurphy says to the other patients during the book, “What do you think you are, for Chrissake, crazy or somethin'? Well you're not! You're not! You're no crazier than the average asshole out walkin' around on the streets and that's it.” McMurphy doesn’t below there. He’s not crazy, just different.
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Theresa Decker
9/6/2016 11:54:47 pm
In the novel One Flew Over Cuckoos Nest , society is thought to have a way of diagnosing people as "mentally ill" because they weren't of the norm. A character that was a victim of this that was placed in the asylum was Billy Bibit. By no mean was Billy mentally ill. He was a stuttering, shy and fearful boy. Billy was rendered as helpless until McMurphy came along because he desired to be his own man but was also a huge people pleaser, especially to Nurse Ratched. Billy becomes ashamed easily, like when the Nurse calls him out for the prostitute, but these are all just qualities of a weak, fearful boy. What about being quiet and being easily shameful and fearful have to do with being mentally ill? It may not be apart of that time in society's "normal" qualities every person had but Billy was an okay kid who should not have been placed in the asylum.
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Abby Marascio
9/8/2016 04:39:07 pm
In the novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Michael Foucault criticizes the ideas of mental institutions and psychiatry by stating that "effort to treat mental illness and be society's way of controlling what it views as immoral, or otherwise undesirable, behavior". In the book they make it seem like people who aren't totally "normal" or people who don't complete the normal standards are mentally ill but they really were not. For example, one man was gay and according to them that was not "normal" so he was put in the asylum. In the story, Miss Ratched explains they are in the hospital "because of [their] proven inability to adjust to society" and she pretty much tells them that they will never be able to live in the real world.
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Paul Bikker
9/13/2016 12:51:31 pm
In the novel, "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest", many of the characters are subject to others "normative power" and are wrongly placed in the asylum because they are not normal. The most immediate person coming to mind is McMurphy. The reason he is put there is because he refuses to conform to rules but not in a bad way. He just doesn't like being constrained, just as many do. However, because his dislike is too extreme, he is placed in the asylum. Even there, McMurphy finds a way to slip by the rules while not appearing too insolent. After sneaking three bananas out of the cafeteria, he proceeds to eat them "under the black boy's nose" even saying that if he wants one smuggled out for himself, he can do it. Not only does Randle eat one right under a staff nose, he proceeds to tell the staff that breaking the rules for them is not a problem. That's the whole reason he is there. That is clearly a "moral judgement", which Focault says is the whole basis for modern psychiatry. Clearly, Randle McMurphy does not really belong and is not a raving lunatic.
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