Psychotic visitors to the White House; an actor who specialized in playing Hitler

I’ve neglected to post news of two guest contributions I’ve recently made to the Wonders & Marvels history blog.

One is about the history of the study of psychotic visitors to the White House. First Lady Pat Nixon greets White House visitors in 1969.My post describes three surveys of mentally unstable callers for the President made during the 1940s, 1960s, and 1980s. These studies agreed in some of their conclusions and disagreed in others.

The second recent post tells the story of Bobby Watson, who portrayed Adolf Hitler in many Hollywood films from the 1940s through his death in 1965. Watson rode his uncanny resemblance to the Führer for a good long ride. Here's a clip of Watson in action, from the film The Story of Mankind:

As always, please let me know what you think.

My forthcoming book "The Nazi and the Psychiatrist" is optioned to Mythology Entertainment

I'm happy to announce that Mythology Entertainment — the production and writing talent behind such films as Shutter Island, Zodiac, The Amazing Spiderman and the upcoming White House Down — has optioned stage and screen rights to my forthcoming book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist. Psychiatrist Douglas M. Kelley, who spends months examining Nazi leader Hermann Göring in my forthcoming book The Nazi and the PsychiatristThe book, which tells the story of American psychiatrist Douglas M. Kelley's encounters with Hermann Göring and other top Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg and his own personal downfall, will be published next year by PublicAffairs.

I've previously collaborated with Mythology, which is currently working on a series pilot of my book The Lobotomist for HBO.  The principals in the production company are Bradley Fischer, James Vanderbilt, and Laeta Kalogridis.  

You'll find more details of the deal here.

XYY Guys

Over at the DNA Blog of the Public Library of Science (PLOS), I've written a guest post about XYY Syndrome, a genetic condition in which boys are born with an extra sex chromosome. This has absolutely no effect on the lives of most of the men so endowed, but there's an interesting history of wrong assumptions and misinformation surrounding the condition.  

Take a look and let me know what you think.

Titicut Follies: A Notorious Documentary

Several years ago I finally got the chance to watch a documentary that had been in my thoughts for a long time. It was Titicut Follies, which the renowned filmmaker Frederick Wiseman shot in Bridgewater State Hospital in Massachusetts in 1967. 

I had heard that Titicut Follies included gruesome and horrifying scenes of the abuse of mentally ill patients — and it certainly does — but the film sticks in the viewer's mind more for showing how patients and staff in this hospital were trapped together in a system of psychiatric care that benefited few and brought misery to all.

I recently wrote a post about the history of Titicut Follies as a contributor to the Wonders & Marvels history blog. Please check it out, and feel free to leave a comment (here or there) about your favorite films that tackle the topic of the treatment of the mentally ill.

Below: Film critic Cole Smithey gives a good introduction to Titicut Follies.

A Pioneering Pop Psychologist

Years ago I read somewhere about an eminent experimental psychologist who suffered a mental breakdown, endured years of depression, and abandoned the laboratory to instead help lay people apply the ideas of modern psychology to their lives. Joseph Jastrow (Wikimedia Commons) 

That man, I found out, was Joseph Jastrow (1863-1944), and I’ve written a post about his activities as America’s first pop psychologist for the Wonders & Marvels blog that I contribute to every month. If you read the post, please let me know what you think.

Jastrow often wrote and lectured on our strong desire to believe what figures of authority tell us, even when scientific evidence does not support what we long to accept. For years he applied this theme to the work of spiritualists, psychics, and mediums. I mention that in my Wonders & Marvels post, but I didn’t have room to include a short poem of Jastrow’s on the topic:

“There’s a sucker born every minute.” 

Barnum said it; there’s sad truth in it

What burns me up, and turns me sour

Is that a crook is born every hour.

The poem, dated 1943, appears in the article “Joseph Jastrow, the Psychology of Deception, and the Racial Economy of Observation” by Michael Pettit, published in the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, Vol. 43(2), Spring 2007, pp. 159-175.