How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
She liked working with patients. Their very illness made them examine sanity as few 'sane' people could. Kept from living, sharing, and simple communication, they often hungered for it with a purity of passion that she saw as beautiful. (2.12)
When we first meet Dr. Fried, she makes these remarks. She thinks that the mentally ill understand what healthy people take for granted. They value interaction and human relationships more deeply because their illness prevents them from being able to manage those basic things. They're on the outside looking in.
Quote #2
The world is so much sicker than the inmates of its institutions. (2.13)
Dr. Fried shows us her compassion for the mentally ill here. She also indicates that our definitions of madness or mental illness are subjective: a lot of what happens in the world is actually pretty sick and cruel. We're just used to it.
Quote #3
She remembered…the hospital in Germany, at a time when Hitler was on the other side of its walls and not even she could say which side was sane (2.13).
This is Dr. Fried's commentary on her experience of Nazi Germany. Inside the mental hospital, the patients were supposedly mad, while a madman ran the country, terrorized Europe, and executed a brutal and insane plan to exterminate millions of Jews that millions of other apparently sane people participated in. It made Dr. Fried question the sanity of her entire country.
Quote #4
"The prisoner pleads guilty to the charge of not having acute something-it is and accepts the verdict of guilty of being nuts in the first degree." (3.45)
Deborah is relieved to be diagnosed as mentally ill, because for so long, she'd been told by her parents and others that nothing was wrong with her and that she was faking it. She knows that she's broken with reality—and that the game of hiding out in the kingdom of Yr has taken a dark turn that has trapped her in her own mind most of the time.
Quote #5
The fact of this mental illness was in the open now, but the disease itself had roots still as deeply hidden as the white core of a volcano whose slopes are camouflaged in wooded green. Somewhere, even under the volcano itself, was the buried seed of will and strength. (3.54)
Even in the depths of mental illness the person is still there, but she might be buried deeply beneath layers of false fronts she puts up to the world. Dr. Fried sees the possibility of a hidden strength underneath all those layers, and she hopes therapy can bring Deborah back to health.
Quote #6
The sick are so afraid of their own uncontrollable power! Somehow they cannot believe that they are only people, holding only human-sized anger! (6.23)
This is what Dr. Fried thinks after seeing Deborah slip away into Yr instead of confronting emotionally difficult truths. She sees the mentally ill as temporarily unable to see their own strength, and she wants to help them find it.
Quote #7
"You know…the thing that is so wrong about being mentally ill is the terrible price you have to pay for survival." (8.24)
Dr. Fried goes on to convince Deborah that even if she's in a mental hospital, she still belongs to a group, and belonging to a group is a kind of survival. Belonging to Yr is another kind of belonging, but it's one that includes the heavy price of judgment from others and isolation from human community. Dr. Fried is trying help Deborah see how she could eventually belong to the real world if she chooses.
Quote #8
"I never promised you a rose garden. I never promised you perfect justice…' (She remembered Tilda suddenly, breaking out of the hospital in Nuremburg, disappearing into the swastika-city, and coming back laughing that hard, rasping parody of laughter. 'Sholom Aleichem, Doctor, they are crazier than I am!')." (13.41)
Here Dr. Fried admits to Deborah that she can't promise that they world will treat her fairly. Then she privately remembers Tilda, a patient she treated in Germany, who saw how crazy and cruel Germany had become during the war. It's tough to live in this world, because there's a lot that's bad about it.
Quote #9
"Do they […] have […] morals?" It was a new man asking. They all knew what the answer was supposed to be, but few of them really believed it and only some of the time. (21.116)
At a meeting of the hospital staff, which includes doctors, someone asks this question. This shows how deeply the prejudice against the mentally ill can run: we see healthcare professionals here asking whether mentally ill people can still have morals.
Quote #10
"I remember when I left my hospital in Germany, a patient gave me a knife to protect myself. This knife he had made in secret by grinding down a piece of metal for months and months. He had made it to save against the day that his illness would become too painful for him to bear...his ability to give was an indication of health and strength. But because I was coming to this country…I gave the knife to one who had to stay behind." (21.117-119)
Dr. Fried relays the story of how patients often act with great moral compasses and often give at great cost to themselves. This guy was keeping a knife to kill himself if his pain ever overwhelmed him. He selflessly wanted his doctor to have it instead, for protection, in case she needed it. Dr. Fried treats the mentally ill with compassion because she's seen them suffer and also act courageously.
Quote #11
"The part that's hardest is the feeling you get when everyone is polite and says 'good morning' and 'good night' while the distance between you and them is getting wider and wider. The doctors say it's the fault of the sick one—my fault. If I were less anxious, they say, it would be easier for friendships to come, but that's easy to say. I don't think any of the doctors ever tried to break into a new group with a heavy stigma on their heads and having their first acceptance in that group hinge on pity or morbid fascination." (23.35)
Carla tells Deborah about the judgment the mentally ill face in the outside world once they're discharged from the hospital. It's hard to get close when you're nervous about how you're perceived, and when everyone's politeness seems forced.
Quote #12
"I could do away with bars on the windows," Carla said. Deborah wasn't sure. "The patients would have to be strong enough to stand it, first [...] Sometimes you have to fight what won't yield and put yourself where it's safe to be crazy." (26.15).
Deborah understands instinctively what she needs to get well. She shows this when she and Carla talk about what kind of hospital they would build if they could. Carla says hers wouldn't have bars on the windows, but Deborah opts to have bars, because in her mind, when people first fight mental illness, they aren't strong enough to have no safeguards. She herself needed to feel the safety of firm boundaries.