So it was Monday night around 7 oclock and I knew that I had to start my readings for class. So I get out my agenda book and it stays to read, “Keep it Real 59-67” and In Fact read, “Three Spheres.” Well I must have had a head ache that night or something, and I misread it. I ended up reading In Fact pages 59-67. Then I realize that I read the wrong thing and I was so annoyed with myself. So I go and read the actual assigned readings and finish them, jump in the shower, and I check my email. Class is cancelled. I was so annoyed with myself that I had read the wrong assignments, and then I corrected myself and read then right ones, and then class was cancelled. It just didn’t seem to be my night.
I ended up reading about 10 pages out of a story called, “Shunned,” which was pretty good. Hopefully we will get to read that for class because I will already have a little one up. Now I look to the syllabus that says that we will be reading it for next time. I guess was brain was already in next week. HA
Anyway, Lauren Slater’s, “Three Spheres,” was really interesting. The idea of someone who was once in a mental hospital and is now a psychologist is something to be applauded. Especially as you read on to find out that she had such a terrible life expectancy. Slater gave a really good image of walking back through the mental hospital Mount Vernon. My absolute favorite part was when the counselors were taking a break and Slater went to use the bathroom. She slipped up and went off of memory to the bathroom, which ended up being the patient bathroom. The nurse notices her familiarity with the hospital, and Slater does a good job of covering up why she is so familiar with the hospital. She says that she has been there to visit other patients of hers.
I also found it really interesting that Slater is there to treat Ms. Linda Whitcomb. Throughout the story you find out that Whitcomb is characterized as “borderline.” These few lines stuck with me most from this reading,
“Linda, according to her intake description, is surely a borderline. Such patients are described with such adjectives as ‘manipulative’ and ‘needy,’ and their behaviors are usually terribly destructive, and include anorexia, substance abuse, self-mutilation, suicide attempts. Borderlines are thought to be pretty hopeless, supposedly never maturing from their ‘lifelong’ condition. I myself was diagnosed with, among other things, borderline personality disorder.”
I found it so interesting that this psychologist is there to help to treat this patient with let’s go as far to say an ‘incurable illness’ that she herself has been diagnosed with and has overcome. I think it is such an inspiring thing. I understand that it would be something that she may be ashamed of or embarrassed about, but I think it is completely admirable. She was able to in a sense ‘cure’ herself, and she was able to get past her issues to move on with her life, which she did quite successfully. You don’t see people everyday suffering with borderline personality disorder one day waking up and deciding, “I’m done with this. I’m over it. I’m just going to go be a Doctor.”
Another point of the story that I really enjoyed was when she let Whitcomb unlock the door to the interview rooms. Slater is handed the keys, which to her symbolize freedom and almost sanity. She remembers being a patient and looking to the keys as power. If you had the keys you had the power. And now here she stands with the keys. But Slater does not use them. She hands them to Whitcomb, who kind of looks at her like she’s nuts, and gives her the power to unlock the door. It symbolized Slater reaching out and giving Whitcomb an opportunity. The opportunity to regain her sanity.
