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One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Psychiatry Quotes

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One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest In ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ “Kesey Some claim that Kesey used the mental illness ward to act as a symbol “of the tricks of control afoot in post war American society”. Treatment of mental illness ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ is a classic novel that is deemed to have had an important impact in the field of psychiatry. Ken Kesey’s novel leaves the reader with a stark and tarnished image of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), which results to the treatment being taken out of mainstream healthcare (1). As Dr Pittman said in an article by the Telegraph this modern classic "It gave voice, gave life, to a basic distrust of the way in which psychiatry was being used for society’s purposes, rather than the purposes of the people who had mental illness,". Thus Kesey’s novel had an important impact on the perception of …show more content…

The quote “Now they’re telling me I’m crazy over here ‘cause I don’t sit there like a goddamn vegetable. It doesn’t make a bit of sense to me. If that’s what crazy is then I’m senseless: out of it, gone down the road, wacko”(3) which is said by McMurphy to his Doctor represents his character and view of the world shown throughout the colloquial and humorous language. The colloquial language “wacko” that is used demonstrates Murphy’s idiolect containing humor and sarcasm. Making it difficult for both the reader and Doctor to decide if he is intelligent and sane playing the system or actually has a level of mental illness. This simile “I’m crazy over here ‘casue I don’t sit there like a goddman vegetable” creates a level of dark humor within the novel and presses at a more serious matter of how people are labeled mad for being socially abnormal and not conforming to societies views or

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