The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and Toxic Psychiatry by Peter R. Breggin - Essay Example

?[Your full December 5, Books Comparison The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath is the story a young girlgoing through a series of depressive episodes, and being treated with electroshock. Plath focuses on how electroshock therapy adds to the worseness of the condition of the young girl, so much so that she is ready to commit suicide. On the other hand, Toxic Psychiatry by Peter R. Breggin focuses on how therapies like electroshock and drugs are worsening the conditions of psychiatric patients, and how love, empathy and understanding are important measures towards improved treatment and recovery. Both the books present two different types of treatment in psychiatry. This paper gives a summary of The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, and later on compares this book to Peter R. Breggin’s Toxic Psychiatry. The thesis statement of the paper is that: Therapies like electroshock and drugs can never do to a psychiatric patient what therapies like love and empathy can do. The Bell Jar starts with a nineteen year old girl named Esther Greenwood in a summer in 1953. She is in the editorial staff for a newspaper, and is not very hopeful about her future. Although she is good at academics, she is suffering from depression, especially when she thinks that she has to come up to social expectations of getting married and bearing a family. She also goes on some dates, but is put off by her last date involving assault, at which she escapes and goes to her mother’s house outside Boston. While she is there, flashbacks about her troublesome relationship with her boyfriend, Buddy, come to her mind. He has been a medical student, and has dated Esther. However, Esther became disappointed with him when she came to know that he had been dating some other girl too. Buddy gets hospitalized for tuberculosis; and later on, when Esther follows Buddy on ski slopes, she breaks her leg in a terrible accident. Esther’s real depressive episodes start when she finds out that she is not selected for a summer creative writing program. She develops suicidal depression. She meets Dr. Gordon, who uses electroshock therapy to treat her. This worsens her condition, and her behavior becomes inconsistent. At home, she decides to attempt suicide. She hides somewhere in the house, and swallows sleeping pills. She is rescued, and taken to the hospital. She is also made to consult Dr. Nola, who is a female doctor at a private psychiatric institution. Dr. Nolan gives Esther another series of electroshock therapy coupled with insulin therapy. During her treatment, Esther meets a high school friend, Joan, who has also been dating Buddy. Esther undergoes a sexual encounter with a professor in Cambridge. She suffers from a hemorrhage after that. Joan takes Esther to the emergency room, where she is admitted for treatment. Joan herself commits suicide. Esther gets better, and is shown preparing for her exit interview at the institution at the end of the novel. “[The Rosenbergs' execution] had nothing to do with me, but I couldn't help wondering what it would be like, being burned alive along your nerves. I thought it must be the worst thing in the world” (Plath 1.1), is what Esther says about her experience of electroshock therapy. For her, this therapy was a nightmarish experience for her, just like someone being executed for death. This statement also helps us understand the nature of this kind of therapy and its effects on the psychiatric patients. At another place, Esther says, “Then something bent down and took hold of me and shook me like the end of the world [...] with each flash a great jolt drubbed me till I thought my bones would break and the sap fly out of me like a split plant. I wondered what terrible thing it was that I had done” (Plath 12.32-33). This passage indicates the suffering and misery that Esther goes through during her electroshock therapy sessions. She thinks of it more as a punishment than a treatment. Now, let’s compare the theme of The Bell Jar to Toxic Psychiatry by Breggin. Toxic Psychiatry emphasizes upon the fact that love and empathy must replace the use of drugs and electroshock therapy to guarantee optimum and improved care for psychiatric patients. Breggin says, “Going to a psychiatrist has become one of the most dangerous things a person can do" (4). This is because psychiatrists make use of heavy drugs like Prozac, Xanax, Halcion, Haldol, Lithium, and therapies like electroshock therapy that are like nightmares to patients like Esther. Such therapies worsen the patient’s condition rather than improving it, as we see in The Bell Jar, that Esther commits suicidal attempt after getting an electroshock therapy by Dr. Gordon. Hence, these therapies prove to be fatal at times. On the other hand, as Breggin suggests in his book, love and empathy work wonders in improving the patient’s condition. We can also call it holistic service, because the physician serves as a facilitator rather than an instructing boss, and this helps the patients in better communicating with him and with other members of the group, and in getting an improved understanding of complicated problems related to their mental health condition and treatment. Breggin has placed great emphasis upon healthy relationship between the doctor and the psychiatric patient. The doctor discusses the problem with the patient with love and empathy. The two ask each other questions; and, try to come up with the best possible answers to the diagnosed illness. This way, they learn to better communicate along with achieving a clearer concept about the mental illness. They work together to address the root cause of the mental disturbance rather than working directly upon the solutions. Breggin’s idea also calls for humanistic approach, which should have benefitted Ether Greenwood case much better than the electroshock therapies she went through. In this approach, the counselor helps the patient play with creativity while discovering the opportunities for personal growth and advancement. The humanistic approach tends to enable the client to discover his real self and understand his feelings. The client becomes competent enough to create choices and make decisions. The basic point is to help the client in the journey of self-discovery or self-realization. Hence, the basic aspect of the humanistic approach of counseling is that it provides such a unique method of counseling that highlights the patient’s unique competencies and potential so that he is able to explore his self through creativity and self-awareness. Gestalt counseling, depth therapy, and transpersonal psychology are some kinds of humanistic counseling, that ensure a loving and empathetic between the therapist and the client. Putting it all together, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and Toxic Psychiatry by Peter R. Breggin present two opposite types of psychiatric treatments. Esther Greenwood’s nightmarish experience of electroshock therapy, and her suicidal attempt after one of such therapies, proves the fact that such therapies leave hazardous impacts upon the mental conditions of the psychiatric patients. Their condition worsens, and leads to more depressive episodes which prove to be fatal at times. On the other hand, holistic environment and humanistic approach to psychiatry are much better techniques, because they foster healthy relationship between doctor and patient based on love and empathy. This kind of psychiatric approach helps the patient cooperate with the doctor in diagnosis and treatment, and thus, better treatment is made possible. Had Esther Greenwood received psychiatric help based on love and empathy, she would have improved much sooner than in the novel, nor would she have attempted suicide. Works Cited Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. New York: Cengage Learning, 2013. Breggin, Peter R. Toxic Psychiatry. New York,: St. Martin's Press, 1994. Read More