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.