Great pretender. The mission under the cover, which changed our idea of ​​madness. Khalan Suzanne

“Mentally healthy in the place of crazy” - so David Rosenhan, a professor of psychology and law from the University of Standborn, called his revealing article. Before him, journalists and psychiatrists have repeatedly penetrated psychiatric institutions undercover, but for the first time such an operation was carried out on such a wide scale and was accompanied by the collection of detailed empirical data, and its result was the publication in the main scientific publication of Science.

The study of Rosenhan became “a sword that pierced the very heart of psychiatry”: its authority undermined, caused fierce discussions in psychiatrists and influenced the formation of a new system of diagnosis of mental illness. It is difficult to exaggerate its meaning, but decades later, when there were almost no living witnesses of the famous experiment, Susanna Khalan took up the investigation of Rosenhan’s history. I simulated schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, but were caused by physical causes - obvious body dysfunctions. Appeal to the Rosenhan experiment for Suzanne is an attempt to answer the main question for her, which the researcher himself asked: if sanity and insanity exist, how can we distinguish them from each other?