In Search of My Asylum

 

 

…the story: Preservation, rehabilitation, restoration, and reconstruction of the emotional life.

…the initiators: Dorothea Dix and Dr. Thomas Kirkbride.

…the landscape: Sprawling knolls, flower-lined fountains and orchards of plums.

…the construction: Mid-1800’s – architectural havens of moral treatment for the mentally ill.

…the structure: Exquisite and ornate estates; Romanesque and Gothic design of sweeping proportion.

…the inhabitants: Sufferers of melancholy, hysteria, feeblemindedness, absent menses, civil war trauma.

…the reality: Overcapacity leading to pre-Kirkbride conditions – filth, neglect, abuse, exploitation.

…the abandonment: A new medical model of psychotropic treatment in the 1960’s empties the wards.

…the aftermath: Collapsing foundations – people and structures exposed to the outer world.

…the reason: Agnes Bernadette Thorn, my great grandmother; former patient.

…the architect of the blog and manuscript: Michelle Fimon, survivor & poet with PTSD

…the legacy: Whispered stories of a writer who, like an architect, learns to work with empty space.