The Invented Woman
In 1921, a young and intelligent woman was admitted to a sanatorium after four suicide attempts. Having failed to live up to her self-imposed standard of ideal womanhood, Ellen's obsessions with death and weight loss caused her to be placed in the care of noted psychiatrist and disciple of Existential psychology Ludwig Binswanger. Every step of the journey towards her eventual death was facilitated by men.
Binswanger, ostensibly one of the villains of this situation, was - it should be stressed - a learned and compassionate man. The particular discipline in which he excelled might only be vaguely scientific (though it has long strained for respectability) but, like the vast majority of practitioners, his intentions towards his patients were undoubtedly good; unfortunately, something went awry in the famous Case of Ellen West.
That 'something' seems, with hindsight, inevitable. However, whatever considered advantage we might enjoy because of the progress of time could be deemed irrelevant; many would say that the entire case is irrelevant given that the participants are now deceased - Ellen is beyond any help or empathy we can bestow - why should we trouble ourselves to evaluate her mistreatment, in our amateurish fashion, when this cannot be of any true consequence? It's not even as if she was beaten or starved, restrained or abused in the way that many 'insane' patients or prisoners were in the past...so why should we care? Perhaps because the case draws attention to the plight of a lone victim, as with the recent death of George Floyd, whose passing could be considered emblematic of social control and its malpractice. Perhaps, despite the peril of casting one person as representative of an entire gender or race, sometimes such representation is apt. Sometimes the chance to strive for our identification in the lives of others - as we frequently do when we read novels or watch dramatic productions - should be seized if only to broaden the horizons of our thinking, our attitudes. One such limited horizon, historically at best, is the manner in which women's lives are so often shaped by men; even our habit of idealising those women we presume to love is balanced on the slender line of our potential 'disappointment' with them and the elevated standards we demand of them. Incidentally, it is not my intention to libel an entire profession whose admirable practitioners' guidance and actions are genuinely helpful to so many but rather to question whether the age-old tradition of men being in authority over women is a tradition justified or whether this dehumanises both.
Now, if much of the writing above appears to be a personal attempt at being a 'white knight' for women or seen as being far too critical of the gender I belong to, it should be borne in mind that neither of these is my intention. Not simply protesting on behalf of especially mistreated women, my general approach is instead twofold: one, to cause us to consider the plight of a fellow human being from a numberless group of people historically fated to be treated as second-class citizens; two, to plead for a wider consideration of how women are viewed (especially when under our scrutiny). I'm far from perfect myself in this regard, so writing this piece is an education to me and, as such, my intent is not to lecture or scold but simply to offer and to contemplate.
Perhaps many of us on this forum have seen tweets or other social media posts displaying lists of reasons as to why women were placed in asylums in past times. These lists often appear bizarre to the modern eye, seeing as they include reasons such as novel-reading, writing poetry, 'over-excitement', 'failing to fulfil wifely duty' and so on. The bias should be obvious; the paranoia blatant, even if poorly obscured. That such endeavours and behaviours should be frowned upon is regrettable to say the very least but that they were cause for effective imprisonment is scandalous. And not merely scandalous but also somewhat self-defeating, a kind of fear and denial - what were mostly life-enhancing activities (reading, writing, even simple excitement) were cast as a threat to decorum and, implicitly, a threat to the patriarchal status quo. Having trained women to restrict themselves in terms of education and to be merely pleasant, entertaining in minor ways, and decorative if not overwhelmingly 'useful' and also to be merely an 'angel in the house', the men who had authority over them worried that a woman truly liberated might supersede and dethrone them. They might, heavens forbid, even break out of the house. They might escape possession...
Ellen West - this was the name Binswanger gave to her, for reasons of confidentiality and, I would argue, because this 'invention' made it easier for the psychiatrist and his colleagues to consider her anew - thus stripped of her true identity 'Ellen' could be more conveniently and clinically considered as an object of sorts, one to be studied dispassionately. Professionally, in other words. "The existential form to which we have given the name Ellen West" is how he christened her. Binswanger's action is par for the course (of course) and it probably seems like I'm making far too much of it. I understand that objection - which is apparently an entirely sound one in many ways - but I stand by it. My reason is this: in great and unrecognised, or ignored, irony the psychiatrist and his colleagues became guilty of the very things 'insane' women were accused of: in his hands the invention titled Ellen West was transformed from a troubled person into an exciting, poetic subject, a canvas upon which Binswanger and accomplices rushed to turn into art graced with their signatures. As is the case with numerous dabblers and dilettantes, even those clutching professional credentials, their overheated and scattershot interpretations passed from the valid to the vain. In accord with their Romantic theories - containing everything from the shaky interpretation of Ellen's dreams to the supposed death-wish at the heart of every human's secret life (the theory itself cribbed from fiction: myth and drama - this is telling, of course) - consciously or not the men-as-artists created and forced a narrative for Ellen. They even used her own poetry, her private letters and such like, against her, as if it was a given that such things are indisputably credible indicators of states of mind. A means to her end was composed, a convenient solving of the problem she caused the emblems of society in the guise of ending her problems by the ending of her life. The untrustworthy narrative and unreliable narrators demanded that as Ellen became a kind of story lacking a satisfactory conclusion, one if not pleasing then at least finished to her 'readers' present and future, her drama cease before it became all too tedious for their care and attention. After all, life must go on and time is money, there are new wives to be found etc etc. For modern readers: 'move on' is, I believe, the contemporary expression of such shameless self-interest.
Virtually every one of Binswanger's diagnoses related to the case is challenged or discredited today (almost inevitably, his stellar reputation remains intact) but at the time this hot-breathed scrabbling around, hugger-mugger with consulted peers and students in the quest to categorise his patient and so her condition, was assumed to confirm his pioneering thought and professional standing. But I insist, in turning Ellen into a canvas artfully assuming reality if not flesh by virtue of their before-the-fact Abstract Expressionist daubings rooted in questionable Surrealist theorising, replete with dreamy Freudian conclusions, these men weighted with the historical baggage of sexist thinking also became guilty of a clinical cardinal sin: 'a priori' is the appropriate term - the practice of deduction via theory rather than established scientific principles. Even the very terminology - all those endless qualifiers, the 'special' meaning given to ordinary words, couching, the enclosing parentheses, the Latin phrasing etc etc - is a language which excludes. A priesthood of science demands that the dumbed-down, ignorant flock doesn't understand the alien language of analysis, as this might lead the sheep to cry out about all manner of questionable actions against them. As with a standard priesthood, the flock has to make do with interpreters officially sanctioned by 'God' or whatever male authority the controllers make in their own image.
Because of their fascinated passion for the sheer interest of the 'project', the opportunity to make one's name with a celebrated and wrapped-up literary definition no less because of an exasperation stemming from their inability to positively help Ellen, she was lost, rendered helpless in the hands of strangers. Even her husband, in full agreement with a confounded Binswanger, bought into the BS - he purchased the poison with which Ellen ended her torment three days after release from 'care'. 'Ellen' longed for death, it is true, because she felt unable to meet the expectations of father and husband, of peers and glamour magazine editors, of the pressures women and girls face virtually every day of their scrutinised lives. But the 'successful' ending of that tormented existence and the trials of the time before she left the stage society built for her should give us pause, I think.
In closing - and I apologise for what is likely a highly boring post for many, because of my unfortunate writing style - please consider another closing: Binswanger's case note, and also the words of a famous philosopher who admired Binswanger, one trained in truly scientific disciplines, who deigned to sum up Ellen's life and death in an appallingly stylised, soft, elegiac and poetic manner. And then, I hope, you feel the kind of discomfort I do on reading the following utterly self-indulgent nonsense - in writing of Ellen West he is really writing an autobiography that celebrates his own (supposed) cleverness and very personal obsessions. In the bloodless hands of men such as these, is it any wonder that people like 'Ellen West' are sometimes crafted into whatever they choose to make of them? ~
'January 21. The patient has been reading Goethe's Faust again. In her diary, writes that art is the “mutual permeation” of the “world of the body” and the “world of the spirit”. Says that her own poems are “hospital poems ... weak - without skill or perseverance; only managing to beat their wings softly."'
'In the depths of his dream,' philosopher Michel Foucault wrote, 'what mankind encounters is his death, a death which in its most inauthentic form is but the brutal and bloody interruption of life; yet, in its most authentic form, it is the fulfilment of their very existence. Suicide is the ultimate myth, the Last Judgement of the imagination, as the dream is its genesis and absolute origin. In the dream, the soul freed of its body plunges into the Kosmos, becomes immersed in it, and mingles with its motions in a sort of aquatic union. Caught between the wish to fly, to float in an ethereal jubilation and the obsessive fear of being trapped in a muddy earth that paralysed her, she flew towards that distant and lofty space of light where love is totalised in the eternity of an instant.'
Ellen's final words, in a letter to a friend, written on the brink of her suicide:
Will you greet with anger, or happiness, the news which might well reach you before this letter?
Thank you for reading something which is important to me. It may not strictly suit 'Current Events' but no other forum seemed suitable.
In 1921, a young and intelligent woman was admitted to a sanatorium after four suicide attempts. Having failed to live up to her self-imposed standard of ideal womanhood, Ellen's obsessions with death and weight loss caused her to be placed in the care of noted psychiatrist and disciple of Existential psychology Ludwig Binswanger. Every step of the journey towards her eventual death was facilitated by men.
Binswanger, ostensibly one of the villains of this situation, was - it should be stressed - a learned and compassionate man. The particular discipline in which he excelled might only be vaguely scientific (though it has long strained for respectability) but, like the vast majority of practitioners, his intentions towards his patients were undoubtedly good; unfortunately, something went awry in the famous Case of Ellen West.
That 'something' seems, with hindsight, inevitable. However, whatever considered advantage we might enjoy because of the progress of time could be deemed irrelevant; many would say that the entire case is irrelevant given that the participants are now deceased - Ellen is beyond any help or empathy we can bestow - why should we trouble ourselves to evaluate her mistreatment, in our amateurish fashion, when this cannot be of any true consequence? It's not even as if she was beaten or starved, restrained or abused in the way that many 'insane' patients or prisoners were in the past...so why should we care? Perhaps because the case draws attention to the plight of a lone victim, as with the recent death of George Floyd, whose passing could be considered emblematic of social control and its malpractice. Perhaps, despite the peril of casting one person as representative of an entire gender or race, sometimes such representation is apt. Sometimes the chance to strive for our identification in the lives of others - as we frequently do when we read novels or watch dramatic productions - should be seized if only to broaden the horizons of our thinking, our attitudes. One such limited horizon, historically at best, is the manner in which women's lives are so often shaped by men; even our habit of idealising those women we presume to love is balanced on the slender line of our potential 'disappointment' with them and the elevated standards we demand of them. Incidentally, it is not my intention to libel an entire profession whose admirable practitioners' guidance and actions are genuinely helpful to so many but rather to question whether the age-old tradition of men being in authority over women is a tradition justified or whether this dehumanises both.
Now, if much of the writing above appears to be a personal attempt at being a 'white knight' for women or seen as being far too critical of the gender I belong to, it should be borne in mind that neither of these is my intention. Not simply protesting on behalf of especially mistreated women, my general approach is instead twofold: one, to cause us to consider the plight of a fellow human being from a numberless group of people historically fated to be treated as second-class citizens; two, to plead for a wider consideration of how women are viewed (especially when under our scrutiny). I'm far from perfect myself in this regard, so writing this piece is an education to me and, as such, my intent is not to lecture or scold but simply to offer and to contemplate.
Perhaps many of us on this forum have seen tweets or other social media posts displaying lists of reasons as to why women were placed in asylums in past times. These lists often appear bizarre to the modern eye, seeing as they include reasons such as novel-reading, writing poetry, 'over-excitement', 'failing to fulfil wifely duty' and so on. The bias should be obvious; the paranoia blatant, even if poorly obscured. That such endeavours and behaviours should be frowned upon is regrettable to say the very least but that they were cause for effective imprisonment is scandalous. And not merely scandalous but also somewhat self-defeating, a kind of fear and denial - what were mostly life-enhancing activities (reading, writing, even simple excitement) were cast as a threat to decorum and, implicitly, a threat to the patriarchal status quo. Having trained women to restrict themselves in terms of education and to be merely pleasant, entertaining in minor ways, and decorative if not overwhelmingly 'useful' and also to be merely an 'angel in the house', the men who had authority over them worried that a woman truly liberated might supersede and dethrone them. They might, heavens forbid, even break out of the house. They might escape possession...
Ellen West - this was the name Binswanger gave to her, for reasons of confidentiality and, I would argue, because this 'invention' made it easier for the psychiatrist and his colleagues to consider her anew - thus stripped of her true identity 'Ellen' could be more conveniently and clinically considered as an object of sorts, one to be studied dispassionately. Professionally, in other words. "The existential form to which we have given the name Ellen West" is how he christened her. Binswanger's action is par for the course (of course) and it probably seems like I'm making far too much of it. I understand that objection - which is apparently an entirely sound one in many ways - but I stand by it. My reason is this: in great and unrecognised, or ignored, irony the psychiatrist and his colleagues became guilty of the very things 'insane' women were accused of: in his hands the invention titled Ellen West was transformed from a troubled person into an exciting, poetic subject, a canvas upon which Binswanger and accomplices rushed to turn into art graced with their signatures. As is the case with numerous dabblers and dilettantes, even those clutching professional credentials, their overheated and scattershot interpretations passed from the valid to the vain. In accord with their Romantic theories - containing everything from the shaky interpretation of Ellen's dreams to the supposed death-wish at the heart of every human's secret life (the theory itself cribbed from fiction: myth and drama - this is telling, of course) - consciously or not the men-as-artists created and forced a narrative for Ellen. They even used her own poetry, her private letters and such like, against her, as if it was a given that such things are indisputably credible indicators of states of mind. A means to her end was composed, a convenient solving of the problem she caused the emblems of society in the guise of ending her problems by the ending of her life. The untrustworthy narrative and unreliable narrators demanded that as Ellen became a kind of story lacking a satisfactory conclusion, one if not pleasing then at least finished to her 'readers' present and future, her drama cease before it became all too tedious for their care and attention. After all, life must go on and time is money, there are new wives to be found etc etc. For modern readers: 'move on' is, I believe, the contemporary expression of such shameless self-interest.
Virtually every one of Binswanger's diagnoses related to the case is challenged or discredited today (almost inevitably, his stellar reputation remains intact) but at the time this hot-breathed scrabbling around, hugger-mugger with consulted peers and students in the quest to categorise his patient and so her condition, was assumed to confirm his pioneering thought and professional standing. But I insist, in turning Ellen into a canvas artfully assuming reality if not flesh by virtue of their before-the-fact Abstract Expressionist daubings rooted in questionable Surrealist theorising, replete with dreamy Freudian conclusions, these men weighted with the historical baggage of sexist thinking also became guilty of a clinical cardinal sin: 'a priori' is the appropriate term - the practice of deduction via theory rather than established scientific principles. Even the very terminology - all those endless qualifiers, the 'special' meaning given to ordinary words, couching, the enclosing parentheses, the Latin phrasing etc etc - is a language which excludes. A priesthood of science demands that the dumbed-down, ignorant flock doesn't understand the alien language of analysis, as this might lead the sheep to cry out about all manner of questionable actions against them. As with a standard priesthood, the flock has to make do with interpreters officially sanctioned by 'God' or whatever male authority the controllers make in their own image.
Because of their fascinated passion for the sheer interest of the 'project', the opportunity to make one's name with a celebrated and wrapped-up literary definition no less because of an exasperation stemming from their inability to positively help Ellen, she was lost, rendered helpless in the hands of strangers. Even her husband, in full agreement with a confounded Binswanger, bought into the BS - he purchased the poison with which Ellen ended her torment three days after release from 'care'. 'Ellen' longed for death, it is true, because she felt unable to meet the expectations of father and husband, of peers and glamour magazine editors, of the pressures women and girls face virtually every day of their scrutinised lives. But the 'successful' ending of that tormented existence and the trials of the time before she left the stage society built for her should give us pause, I think.
In closing - and I apologise for what is likely a highly boring post for many, because of my unfortunate writing style - please consider another closing: Binswanger's case note, and also the words of a famous philosopher who admired Binswanger, one trained in truly scientific disciplines, who deigned to sum up Ellen's life and death in an appallingly stylised, soft, elegiac and poetic manner. And then, I hope, you feel the kind of discomfort I do on reading the following utterly self-indulgent nonsense - in writing of Ellen West he is really writing an autobiography that celebrates his own (supposed) cleverness and very personal obsessions. In the bloodless hands of men such as these, is it any wonder that people like 'Ellen West' are sometimes crafted into whatever they choose to make of them? ~
'January 21. The patient has been reading Goethe's Faust again. In her diary, writes that art is the “mutual permeation” of the “world of the body” and the “world of the spirit”. Says that her own poems are “hospital poems ... weak - without skill or perseverance; only managing to beat their wings softly."'
'In the depths of his dream,' philosopher Michel Foucault wrote, 'what mankind encounters is his death, a death which in its most inauthentic form is but the brutal and bloody interruption of life; yet, in its most authentic form, it is the fulfilment of their very existence. Suicide is the ultimate myth, the Last Judgement of the imagination, as the dream is its genesis and absolute origin. In the dream, the soul freed of its body plunges into the Kosmos, becomes immersed in it, and mingles with its motions in a sort of aquatic union. Caught between the wish to fly, to float in an ethereal jubilation and the obsessive fear of being trapped in a muddy earth that paralysed her, she flew towards that distant and lofty space of light where love is totalised in the eternity of an instant.'
Ellen's final words, in a letter to a friend, written on the brink of her suicide:
Will you greet with anger, or happiness, the news which might well reach you before this letter?
Thank you for reading something which is important to me. It may not strictly suit 'Current Events' but no other forum seemed suitable.
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