Who is david rosenhan

By the s, most psychology textbooks were quoting it. It also influenced society more widely, and not always positively: in the law courts, for instance, it undermined the value of expert testimonies from psychiatrists. Now, in The Great Pretender , journalist Susannah Cahalan turns a fresh, critical eye on the experiment and the shockwaves it sent through the field and beyond. And through her deeply researched study, Cahalan seems inclined to agree with them.

She discovered that the man whom she had initially admired, and who had done so much to change how mental illness was perceived, was not all that he had seemed. And neither, she argues, was his famous experiment. The sorrows of psychiatry. Ten years ago, she developed paranoia, hallucinations and, eventually, seizures. She was dosed with antipsychotics before being correctly diagnosed with a very rare type of autoimmune encephalitis, an ordeal she describes in her first book, Brain On Fire.

She immediately wanted to know more — about the experiences of those who volunteered, and the challenges that such a risk-laden experiment would have posed decades ago. Rosenhan was not the first to infiltrate a psychiatric hospital and report on conditions. Seven were diagnosed with schizophrenia; one with manic depression.

Once admitted to hospital, the volunteers stopped simulating symptoms of abnormality. Rosenhan noted in the Science paper that genuine patients often realized that the pseudopatients did not have a mental-health disorder, and accused them of being undercover journalists or academics checking up on the hospital. Psychiatrists seemed less perceptive: it was several weeks before some of the pseudopatients got discharged. Rosenhan is survived by his son Jack Rosenhan of Palo Alto and his beloved granddaughters Cecily and Yael, as well as his brother Hershel of Jerusalem.

Play Icon Play icon in a circular border. The pseudopatients spent between seven and 52 days in psychiatric institutions ; not one hospital staff member identified the participants as fake patients, even though many other real patients did express the belief that they were undercover agents.

The paper was nothing short of explosive. Published at a time of extreme skepticism aimed at psychiatry and its institutions, it provided support for the growing anti-psychiatry movement and was used to justify a trend toward deinstitutionalisation, in which large psychiatric hospitals were shuttered in favour of community-based care centres. He is best known for the Rosenhan experiment.

Rosenhan received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Yeshiva University. At Columbia University in he earned his master's degree, and five years later his Ph. D in psychology. David Rosenhan is a leading expert on psychology and the law.