Summary Of Opening Skinner's Box By Robert Spitzer

Robert Spitzer argues for the "validity of psychiatry, and its diagnostic practices, as sound scientific, medical procedures" (Slater 73). I disagree with him; throughout the whole chapter David Rosenhan shows how flawed these mental institutions are. He shows that it does not take much to fool these psychiatrists into thinking one is not sane. These psychiatrists were diagnosing people with schizophrenia without really running much tests on them. They need to have better diagnostic practices. In chapter three of Opening Skinner’s Box, Lauren Slater writes about how David Rosenhan tested the validity on psychiatric diagnosis. The point of this experiment was to see if the psychiatrists were going to be able to see who was sane and who was not. Rosenhan and his friends were able to fool the psychiatrists in admitting them into these mental institutions just by saying they heard voices. All it took was for them to say, "I am hearing a voice. It is saying thud"(Slater60). It should not have been so easy for Rosenhan and his friends to get in.

Rosenhan would also not take the medication by later spitting it out in the bathroom, just like the other patients in there. Rosenhan says, “… how all the other patients were doing this too, being fed their medication and heading en masse to the toilets, and how no one much cared so long as they were well behaved” (Slater 61). They should not be able to get away with this. Rosenhan also talks about how the mental patients are “invisible” to the nurses there, “unworthy of account.” “He describes a nurse coming into the dayroom, unbuttoning her shirt, and fixing her bra.” (Slater