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Budapest W3: Performing Arts - On being sane in insane places

David L. Rosenhan, “On Being Sane in Insane Places,” Science 179 (4079), 1973

 "What is viewed as normal in one culture may be seen as quite aberrant in another." p.250

 "the question of whether the sane can be distinguished from the insane (and whether degrees of insanity can be distinguished from each other) is a simple matter: do the salient characteristics that lead to diagnoses reside in the patients themselves or in the environments and contexts in which observers find them?" p.251

 "physicians operate with a strong bias toward what statisticians call the type 2 error. This is to say that physicians are more inclined to call a healthy person sick (a false positive) than a sick person healthy (a false negative)." p.252

 "when the origins of and stimuli give rise to a behaviour are remote of unknown, or when the behaviour strikes us as immutable, trait labels regarding the behaver arise. When, on the other hand, the origins and stimuli are known and available, discourse is limited to the behaviour itself." p.254

 "There is by now a host of evidence that attitudes toward the mentally ill are characterised by fear, hostility, aloofness, suspicion, and dread. The mentally ill are society's lepers." p.254

 "The consequences to patients hospitalised in such an environment - the powerlessness, depersonalisation, segregation, mortification, and self-labelling - seem undoubtedly counter-therapeutic." p.257

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