A year in the madhouse

摘要

BEFORE Rainald Goetz became a writer, he trained as a doctor and worked in a mental hospital. His first novel, "Insane", published in Germany in 1983 but only now translated into English, draws on this experience. Raspe, the novel's hero, is Mr Goetz's alter ego-an idealistic, ambitious young doctor starting his career on a psychiatric ward in Munich. Soon disgusted by his failure to help his patients and by his inability, in his hunger for success, to withstand the dehumanising logic of the place, Raspe himself descends into madness. He escapes, idealism shattered, by taking an unspecified job in "culture" and throwing himself into Munich's punk-era nightlife. The novel is split into three parts: a collage of the rambling voices of the book's characters; an account of Raspe's year in the "madhouse"; and a section on his life after psychiatry. The second, with its unsparing depiction of the grim conditions and inhumane treatment of patients on the ward, is the strongest. Raspe walks into work to find "WallsFloorsWindowsTables ... smeared black with shit" by a patient. He agrees to "lend" a colleague one of his patients for a lecture. Raspe ends up watching in horror as the man, reduced to "nothing more than a pair of house shoes" by his depression, is subjected to the "merciless booming penetrating word thunder" of the professor and the "silently flashing gazes" of his students.