On Being Sane in Insane Places

David L. Rosenhan’s “On Being Sane in Insane Places” is compact but far-reaching in scope, intertwining empirical investigation with a sociohistorical argument. The target audience for Rosenhan’s essay is twofold: the psychiatric community and the informed public. Published in the prestigious journal Science, the essay implicitly speaks to Rosenhan’s peers in the scientific community, evidencing its academic pedigree. However, the reach and implications of his study extend far beyond the confines of academia, encouraging the layperson to rethink their attitudes toward people with mental illnesses.

Core to this is Rosenhan’s exploration of The Subjectivity of Mental Health Terminology. A behavior that seems pathological to one person or in one context may resonate completely differently elsewhere. For example, where a psychiatrist sees some patients’ habit of waiting outside the dining hall as evidence of an “oral-acquisitive nature,” Rosenhan suggests that the patients may simply be looking forward to one of the few highlights of their day: “It seemed not to occur to [the psychiatrist] that there were very few things to anticipate in a psychiatric hospital besides eating” (253). Conversely, Rosenhan implies that some behavior treated as “normal” is actually quite strange, such as the following response to a pseudopatient’s question about grounds privileges: “(physician) ‘Good morning, Dave.