Acad Psychiatry (2016) 40:184–185 DOI 10.1007/s40596-015-0478-7

FEATURE: PERSPECTIVE

Recommended Readings Laura Weiss Roberts 1

Received: 31 October 2015 / Accepted: 8 December 2015 / Published online: 21 December 2015 # Academic Psychiatry 2015

One of the lovely things about having literate, feminist daughters is that they give you things to read. The things daughters give you to read are compelling—they help you to understand them as people you love and as your adult children and, in this case, as emerging scholars. And these “recommended readings” also help you understand the reality of being young women at this time in our society. The first bits deepen and enrich and challenge. The last bit is not so easy, as it is very difficult to be a young woman at this time in our society. Three weeks ago, one of my daughters sent a poem to me by James Wright titled, “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota” [1]. She and I like to trade poetry and always appreciate, together and differently I suspect, the esthetics and perspectives of the poems we share. James Wright, I learned, received the Pulitzer Prize for his work, which is known for its intense imagery and its simple narrative forms. This particular poem paints the picture of blowing leaves, green shadows, blazing gold stones, and a chicken hawk circling above. You hear the sound of ambling cowbells in the distance. You feel the cool of evening as it is just arriving. You smell the smells of the trees and grass and flowers, not mentioned in the poem, and of last year’s horse droppings, which are. In reading this poem, you are yourself lying on a hammock in Minnesota—completely present and completely open to the sensations of this pastoral experience. And then the last line comes. “I have wasted my life.” It is jarring, this last line. Unexpected and hard and sad. Soothed by the sensations while lying on the hammock, I had felt calm. I had felt gratitude for the goodness of the day, * Laura Weiss Roberts [email protected] 1

Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA

appreciation for the gentle sleep of the coming night, and the promise of the next morning. This poet, this seducer, this James Wright—this place of gentleness was not the inner-experience destination he would navigate his readers to. He was as masterful as any therapist leading a guided imagery exercise, creating a sense of psychological safety, lulling one’s defenses and uncovering what is hidden. (I once found a compass in a box on a rock along a stream in a meadow on a sunny day. It was quite nice, really.) In this poem, and for this poet, however, what was hidden was despair, separation, isolation. What was to be discovered was bleak. Wright’s “pastoral surrealism” had many critics, although I wonder if it was his disguised sophistication in conjuring up loneliness that was unsettling to reviewers, inviting attack. Three days ago, another daughter sent me a radical critique of women’s roles in health care titled, “Witches, midwives, and nurses: a history of women healers” [2]. She said she was curious to hear my thoughts. It arrived in my email as I was sitting in a room of medical school leaders. A couple of us were women. The authors of this book, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, state that wise women have been healers throughout history—often the only healers for women, the poor, and the vulnerable—and that medicine is “part of our heritage as women, our history, our birthright” ([2], p. 25). They posit that women in health care are oppressed, as evidenced by the fact that 70 % of health care workers are women but only a small percentage serve in leadership roles and women overall have little ownership or control over resources of health care. It is hard not to face these facts, particularly given my experience as an often-lonesome woman leader over more than two decades in academia. The narrative analysis draws on what is known about witchcraft and medicine in the middle ages, the rise of the European medical profession, and modern American medicine from a sociological perspective. Historically, Ehrenreich

Acad Psychiatry (2016) 40:184–185

and English argue, women healers were vilified, tormented, and executed as witches and exploited and marginalized as midwives. Women healers were accused of sexual crimes, mostly having to do with having the capacity to arouse desire and, well, for being in possession of female anatomy just generally. Women healers were seen as earthy—as reliant on the senses and on empiricism—rather than reason, further evidence of their lack of suitability for prominence in medicine. Tolerance of women in certain roles as healers, they argued, also intersects with social status. In one example, while honoring the contributions of extraordinary women of their time, such as Florence Nightingale and Dorothea Dix, the essayists highlight how these Victorian women of wealth were able to accomplish what they did because devoting “their energies on the care of the sick… was a ‘natural’ and acceptable interest for ladies of their class.” ([2], p. 90). Looking to the future, Ehrenreich and English argue, “men maintain their power in the health system through their monopoly of scientific knowledge” ([2], p. 100) and women continue to be excluded from opportunities and roles in which they may gain expertise, access to resources, and organizational influence. So, this is the thing about recommended readings from literate, feminist daughters. You cannot turn away from the

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fire and the courage of their communication and their meta-communication. You cannot just move about your day, rose-colored glasses firmly in place, checking off items on a beautifully and strategically composed “to do” list. You must take a different perspective, and you must learn from the experience of taking that perspective if you wish to engage, honorably and substantively, with daughters. And you must keep reading what they are kind enough, generous enough, and wise enough to send you. Compliance with Ethical Standard Disclosure The author states that there is no conflict of interest.

References 1.

2.

Wright J. Lying in a hammock at William Duffy’s farm in Pine Island, Minnesota. Above the river: the complete poems and selected prose. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press; 1990. Ehrenreich B, English D. Witches, midwives, and nurses: a history of women healers. New York: The Feminist Press; 2010.