Greenberg, Joanne (Goldenberg) - The Times Literary Supplement
THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
Case-records of psychoanalysis (without the repetitions) can be fascinating. Miss Green … gives us more than that [in I Never Promised You a Rose Garden]; she tries to create the whole world of the mental hospital as the schizophrenic sees it, as the doctor sees it, as the nurses see it, and as the parents, terrified and ignorant, see it from outside.
The book is seldom naive, seldom humorous, sometimes ironical….
There is a contrast between the responsible morality expected of the staff, and the freedom of the insane, who often take advantage of it…. Miss Green is excellent when conveying relief and delight at the freedom from the propriety, freedom from lies, and most of all the freedom to call mad mad, crazy crazy. She is excellent too on the inventiveness of the insane.
But she has her failures. The parents are unconvincing; the sympathetic German woman doctor is sometimes trite and...
[The entire page is 321 words long]
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