Perception
Within my psychology class this semester, a discussion was held about an experiment in which several individuals had submitted themselves into a mental hospital after displaying and describing fake symptoms that included hearing voices communicating dark and demonic things. Each patient was diagnosed with schizophrenia and they were all committed to different hospitals. As soon as they entered the ward they began to act as they normally would.
They all began taking notes and making journal entries of every day happenings. The staff did not recognize their new behavior as that of a normal person. They associated it with the disorder, saying that the patient was obsessively recording things. Interestingly enough it wasn’t the medically trained “professionals” who saw anything unusually normal within these individuals, it was the other patients in the ward who truly belonged there. Eventually they left they were discharged from the hospital labeled with ‘schizophrenia in remission’. This was changed later because it was truly only an experiment, but one that was very informative.
Perception is something that is extremely influential on the current psyche of an individual. McMurphy performed the same act as those conducting the discussed experiment, but for more selfish reasons. Though, he did receive a similar insight. Perhaps it was the position of authority that gave the physicians the motive to believe they could diagnose and understand the source of every bit of behavior, because surely the mentally diseased would not. Is this a driving force in Nurse Ratched? I believe that statement is entirely possible. Even the temporary and chronic patients in the novel recognized McMurphy’s difference.
Perception is influential, but can be influenced as well. If one wishes to see something one way, they can eventually convince themselves of its “truth”. As a reader who is without the same authority as Nurse Ratched, I was bothered by the electric shock given to anyone she saw fit. Compared to her, I’d like to think it’s what my morals and non-judgmental attitude would cause me to do for those men, or perhaps it’s just our difference in developed personality due to position and perception.
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