HOW TO BREAK WRITERS
Feinberg, Victor
We publish below two transcripts of conversations held by the Russian writer VICTOR FEINBERG, who has been confined to a mental hospital, and various officials concerned with his case. The...
...We publish below two transcripts of conversations held by the Russian writer VICTOR FEINBERG, who has been confined to a mental hospital, and various officials concerned with his case...
...ButBELAEV: That is an insulting, contemptible remark...
...But an intellectually abnormal man can come to the same false judgment as a result of his illness...
...You made us out to be monsters...
...Borissov, for example, who's a man of completely sound mind, has been considered sick simply because he signed a group letter addressed to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in con nection with the arrest of Grigorenko and Gabai...
...By good behavior we mean your political opinions...
...They are carrying out specific orders that have come down to them from above...
...Illness is always an internal process that does not depend on external conditions...
...I want to check your memory...
...A NOTEBOOK normal man can make an erroneous judgment, in which case it's a simple matter of error...
...FEINBERG: You mean intellectually retarded...
...FEINBERG: Nicolas Nicolaievitch, again you're mistaken...
...Luigi Longo, for one...
...Look, you have been examined by the commission...
...You see, you make rapid judgments about things you know nothing of...
...As for knowing whether they are sick or not, that's the business of us psychiatrists...
...When you went out, he said, "What a charming man...
...In it, we say that we will aeree to discuss this question only if both of us are present...
...FEINBERG: I'd be glad to...
...NOTEBOOK NADJAROV: What you have just stated is im possible...
...The other signers haven't been bothered, 478 as it happens, but Borissov has been denied permission to talk with his lawyer...
...have forgotten said about you...
...Here a hunger strike is allowed for only four days...
...How many special hospitals would have to be built then...
...In our country, that's dangerous...
...Two Days Later II DOCTOR: Let's talk frankly...
...The result of all this is that a man who has committed the same acts for which his comrades are sent to concentration camps for a longer or shorter period of time—a man who has committed the same acts for the same motives—is judged mentally ill and is sent to a special hospital to undergo rigorous treatment...
...We cannot judge you...
...Commissions, all of them, are reduced to ignobly spouting stupidities and banalities...
...You yourself do not need neuroleptics...
...DOCTOR: All of your writing materials and so forth will be taken away...
...The doctors don't mince words: "Your freedom depends on your good behavior...
...But whereas the term of imprisonment for the former is fixed once and for all by the courts, the "sick" man remains confined for as long as he has not recanted his opinions...
...How would you take it upon yourself to determine whether a man is mentally sick or sound...
...BELAEV: You say that some people spend 13 to 15 years here...
...The transcripts are reprinted with permission from Esprit, the Left Catholic magazine published in Paris...
...Is this not the most refined, the most abject torture...
...I'm always in favor of frankness...
...And now Grigorenko is suffering from a bladder inflammation...
...FEINBERG: One needs no great knowledge of psychiatry to find that dozens of perfectly healthy-minded men are kept confined for years, without the slightest hope of release, simply because they share the opinions of the larger part of humanity...
...I'm going to speak frankly too...
...The administration of neuroleptics has brought relief to a great many sick people, yet you consider this type of treatment harmful...
...SEREBRIAKOVA: How do you spend your time...
...They will not cure you...
...English, German, history...
...As far as Tchernychev is concerned, we are demanding a stop to the injections he has been subjected to as punishment for the hunger strike he had undertaken—one which was entirely justified...
...And they'd have to commit quite a number of Communist leaders...
...BELAEV: You do not understand anything about psychiatry, your thinking is extremely superficial...
...Lyssak spent 13 years here: he refused to give up his convictions...
...Can you cite some names...
...FEINBERG: It's never occurred to you that a man who is deprived of the physical and men tal activity he's accustomed to can go crazy...
...FEINBERGS: If all men gave up their convictions, Doctor, we would still be in the Stone Age...
...And what a pity he is so seriously ill...
...They are given clinical treatment because they were already ill, and they are re quired to submit to treatment until they stop being a danger to society...
...It is a very, very highly placed commission (he bobs his head respectfully), so highly placed that there is none above it...
...In other areas, you are perfectly healthy...
...The ranking member, and you've forgotten his name...
...And you will note that they do not act like this on their own initiative...
...Each of us has his own opinions in that area...
...Your sickness is that you think differently from the way one must think...
...But he really is sick...
...My friend, General Grigorenko...
...We are held to be bereft of our mental faculties...
...TIMOFEEV: You have taken up with an antiSemite...
...FEINBERG: You know one of the conditions we made was that all discussion of the hunger strike must be held in the presence of both of us...
...You must admit you have no knowledge whatever of psychiatry...
...FEINBERG: I venture to hope that a man as intellectually developed as you will be able to explain to me wherein my intellectual inadequacy lies...
...FEINBERG: What's the point of enumerating them...
...It is Borissov and I who are conducting the hunger strike...
...FEINBERG: My friend Borissov and I submitted a statement about that to the administration...
...We are going to verify your statements and investigate the facts you have mentioned...
...DOCTOR: You talk of things you know absolutely nothing about...
...You are an intellectually abnormal man...
...You are too evolved...
...FEINBERG: But not to the detriment of one's conscience, Doctor...
...FEINBERG: Exercises and a cold shower three times a day...
...The first conversation was with an official investigating committee appointed to "straighten things out," and the second, two days later, with the doctor in charge of the hospital.—ED...
...DOCTOR: You laid down unrealizable conditions...
...SEREBRIAKOVA: You would not be able to give up your convictions even provisionally...
...When a man arrives at a well-considered, sound decision, he ceases being socially dangerous and he is set free...
...On the other hand, for us to set a sick man free to let him die in freedom is equally impossible...
...All the rest of the time I spend reading...
...Do you know what the man whose name you...
...FEINBERG: They force-feed me through the nose...
...The lawyer was told that the state of Borissov's health made such a talk impossible...
...It has been decided to leave you alone with yourself...
...FEINBERG: I prefer to speak frankly with my friends and no less so with my enemies...
...Translated from French by ADRIENNE FouLKE q NOTEBOOK...
...That's how it happens that a doctor who is guided by the recognized principle of "doubt in favor of the patient" often certifies a man as sick who is in perfect mental health...
...NADJAROV: Let us not talk about politics...
...DOCTOR: Are you going to eat...
...FEINBERG: I should like to believe you...
...Besides, it is better not to touch on politics...
...Suppose our government were to succeed in getting control of, say, the whole continent of Europe...
...You will be given a chance to remain for some period of time entirely alone, to reflect and come to the point where you will make a healthy decision...
...The anti-Semite is Tchernychev...
...FEINBERG: For all practical purposes, he's a perfectly well man...
...You, you decide men's destinies, but the destiny of Pyotr Grigorenko depends on an ignorant attendant who can, if he likes, forbid him to go to the toilet—excuse me for speaking of such things...
...FEINBERG: Serebriakova, Belaev, and Nad jarov—or Podjarov, I'm sorry I've forgotten which...
...Kogan's been here for 17 years...
...You are intellectually abnormal...
...The man is then forced to submit to treatment...
...FEINBERG: Let's begin with the question of expert opinion...
...FEINBERG: (turning to General Timofeev, who had come in some minutes earlier) : Look, Nicolas Nicolaievitch, you call Grigorenko your friend...
...NADJAROV: Of course...
...FEINBERG: If I know a man well, even without being professionally competent in the field of psychiatry I will be able to determine whether he is really sick or not...
...DOCTOR: No, the opposite...
...FEINBERG: I'm not questioning you about your opinions...
...I FEINBERG: I believe it would simplify the problem to state that the KGB orders experts to designate such and such a political prisoner a mental case...
...SEREBRIAKOVA: Lyssak...
...They ask you to call black white, and vice versa...
...But you are generals in different branches of the services, Nicolas Nicolaievitch...
...And as for determining whether it is a matter of error or of illness, that's the business of us psychiatrists...
...You talk about commissions...
...Well, this commission has come to a decision in your case...
...You will not meet with it again...
...Think for a moment...
...FEINBERG: And what should I do alone with myself...
...DOCTOR: That is something that never hap pens...
...BELAEV: Who are the doctors who have told you such things...
...NADJAROV: They do not authorize you to see a lawyer...
...It's common knowledge that in psychiatry diagnostic criteria are vague and diffuse...
...Do you remember the members' names...
...SEREBRIAKOVA: Why do you refuse to eat...
...SEREBRIAKOVA: You refuse to eat...
...Some of them are "treated" by being kept in isolation, others are given medication that powerfully affects the brain...
...DOCTOR: Your judgment is superficial...
...To one and all, they go on saying that the invasion of Czechoslovakia was not an act of aggression, and more of the same kind of nonsense...
...By the color of his hair, his eyes...
...DOCTOR: You see...
...Such is the fate of a man who shed so much blood for his country...
...FEINBERG: That's just it...
...NADJAROV: Victor Isakovitch, men are not diagnosed as sick because they hold this or that opinion or because they have committed a crime...
...NADJAROV: Victor Isakovitch, we have listened to you...
...You are familiar with its contents, of course...
...Each of us has his own opinions in that area...
...All the doctors I've had anything to do with have told me this, in all the psychiatric wards I've been in...
...Probably we will end up sending you to different hospitals...
...SEREBRIAKGVA: But we are living in the 20th century, and that's precisely why one must be more flexible...
...As soon as you have renounced your opinions, you will be on the right road again and we will set you free...
Vol. 20 • September 1973 • No. 4
