Abstract
Talk therapy is, by definition, difficult, if not impossible, to represent materially. Whereas other scholars have sought to do so by referencing Sigmund Freud’s drawings or the setting of his consulting room, this article looks instead to the use of cloth in Joanne Greenberg’s 1964 semiautobiographical novel I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. The two main treatments given to protagonist Deborah Blau were therapy sessions with Dr. Clara Fried, based on Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, and the “cold pack,” in which the patient was restrained and wrapped in sheets drenched with ice water. The two treatments, this article argues, can be considered in parallel, and through analysis of the material descriptions of the cold pack, one can learn more about the talking cure. Namely, this article analyzes the care in both cases as one of constraint, giving material form to the metaphorical “holding environment” of psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott. Deborah uses the cold pack to endure her psychosis and return to reality. Similarly, Winnicott describes the ideal therapeutic space as one that, by its reliability, allows regression in service of finding a new self and distinguishing between fantasy and the outside world. The aim of this article is thus twofold: one, to further elucidate the role of cloth in treating mental distress, and two, to understand more fully the therapeutic relationship via the literal and figurative constraint of treatment.
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Endnotes
1 The edition of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden I cite here was published under the name Hannah Green, and I use that name in the citations. When speaking about the author, however, I use Joanne Greenberg.
2 As another example, a group of researchers in England has recently concluded from an analysis of electronic health care records that psychological treatment of depression was associated with a reduced risk of heart disease (El Baou et al. 2023).
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Rudeen, C.M. “Bound Tightly in the Pack”: Cloth and Care in I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. J Med Humanit (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-023-09838-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-023-09838-6