In a Continuum between Ordeal and Therapy: Two Narratives from Bellevue

This paper analyzes two contrasting perspectives – that of a psychiatrist and that of her patient – concerning medical experiments that unfolded at Bellevue Hospital in New York during the 1940s in order to demonstrate how two entirely divergent narratives could emerge from the same event based on the power dynamic between the participants. Its theoretical framework follows Joel Braslow’s “therapeutic discipline” which explains how a psychiatrist might consider a particular practice as a therapy while a patient might consider that same practice as an ordeal.

Existing scholarship has depicted Bellevue’s Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) experiments as two distinct experiences belong to Dr. Lauretta Bender and her six-year-old subject Ted Chabasinski. This scholarship has focused on an analysis of the experiments themselves rather than the background or experiences of the participants. They have described Bender’s actions and motivations in conducting such questionable experiments without analyzing them deeply other than to mention personal hardship she experienced after losing her husband. Scholars have previously shown how Chabasinski was traumatized by the experiments and how he became an attorney specializing in disability rights. However, no scholarship has analyzed his experiences in the context of therapeutic discipline.

This paper argues that gender, class, and disability each played a role in creating radically different viewpoints. Bender decided to go on such questionable experiments to protect her dual-identity as a doctor and mother. Chabasinski was diagnosed with childhood schizophrenia largely because he was an adopted orphan whose biological mother was an out-of-wedlock, poor immigrant with a psychiatric diagnosis. Thus, Bender’s gendered determination as well as Chabasinski’s status as a ward of the state plus his psychiatric diagnosis created such a difference in their perspectives regarding the ECT experiments. Sources include interviews with Chabasinski, manuscripts of Lauretta Bender, novels detailing ECT experiences, and newspaper and magazine articles.