To Save Tomorrow; 1; Wellmet House

At this time, I'm a patient here for three days. I feel deprivation that we as patients feel. Well, I've sat in a chair and stared out the window. Food is not as good as it should be the way the attendance treat us is not always fair or what I consider to be compassionate. I'm here to see what it's like to be a patient and to be able to have an interchange and communicate at this level, the patient level. I think it's rather ironical that our institutional system deprives people of the very factors which they need most, which is the power or strength to make responsible decisions. I think therefore we must give them or create an atmosphere which where we reinforce their autonomy. I would just say that it would be giving the patients more trust, more responsibility, perhaps gradually at first, with those who are not capable of accepting

responsibility, but gradually building up an atmosphere in which they would want to take more and more responsibility. WellMet's entire operation starts in the backwards of the mental hospital where the students go to get the patients they want to bring into their household. As an important point of historical fact, WellMet started seven years ago when Victor Gelano and I helped a group of six Harvard and Radcliffe students to live as patients for four days in separate wards at Metropolitan State Hospital in Waltham, Massachusetts. Now, when they came out, they said what they had seen was intolerable, not so much the madness and the patient says the way that the rest of us deal with this madness. They said, let's form a society, one that does the whole job better. Out of this hope, they designed WellMet. WellMet is a 12-room wood frame house placed just about midway between Harvard and MIT, in a residential neighborhood on an off street running

parallel to one of the main streets leading out of Harvard Square. Our public relations was done over the back fence. The house mother, with her two-year-old kid crawling between her legs while she's hanging up, closing her backyard, I think, did a far more substantial public relations job than any of us could have if we went around as a committee asking the community to give us preferential treatment because we were bringing crazy people into the neighborhood. Gradually, the people in the neighborhood came to us and got to know us as we were, as a family, an unusual family, but a family nonetheless. It's a very hard thing to pinpoint, but there's a real family feeling, but it's not a family like, you know, what you grew up in. It's a nicer thing. I mean, and the basis, it doesn't pin you down as much. It leaves you more leeway of really being a family. You can sort of come and go and come back to it. There was sort of a house where you make up your own mind and not have your mind made up for you. That's when I think, that's when I think I

began to understand all that and to live with all that. I don't have to pretend anything that I can just be myself who I let is. Actually, I don't really know yet. And you know, like feeling low and not being, not trying to cover it up all the time, like I was trying to do. As a matter of fact, I did that in the hospital. I guess because I didn't want them to keep me there any longer than necessary. You know, that I felt was necessary because actually the hospital wasn't helping me at all. I met this girl that I had known at Phillips Brooks' house and asked her what she was doing. And she said what she's living at Wellman. I said, my god, what's that? And she said, oh, I can't describe it when you come to dinner. So I came to dinner the next week. And I was just so impressed with the dinner and the tremendous enthusiasm of the students and the residents and just the optimism that there was in the house that I moved in the next day.

No one who gets connected with Wellman is able to escape its rather overpowering appeal. One expects that the students will allow themselves to be drawn willingly, deeply into Wellman's heartline, but the paid members of the family, Chris and Billy, the current house parents, and Jean Carmel, the house mother they succeeded in the current director of the program. For these people too, Wellman works its way under the skin and gets so very close that the occupational and real life roles at times become inextricably intertwined and difficult as that is, we think it's how it should be. That's the best move we've ever made at Wellman was to allow ourselves to discover Jean, why? Jean is truly in the earth mother and she is that unselfconsciously.

It will take a while, but I'm just asking you and the people of Wellman, I'm begging you, all give me another chance at Wellman. I know I didn't get a lot out of staying there, but I really need the help now. I found out that I still was not ready to live by myself. She knows that she is a whole woman and she truly is. Here we have to my mind a beautiful human being. So here's a person with an enormous reservoir of humanity and a kind of uncultivated wisdom which is so perfect in a household like that. She can be loved by the 60-year-old man and the 21-year-old youth and woman can even love Jean because she is so much humanity, but she's completely unafraid of being what she is, so she's more real than almost anybody. And she's got her own terrace of lots of things that she's that she's afraid of as a human being,

but she's so unself-conscious in revealing these to people so that once you're aware of another person's terrace, you never get caught up, you never get strangulated by them, and that's why people flower with her. I really think I need more education as I told Dr. Lynch and I've done everything from dishwasher to stock, for painting. I finally learned that I should have learned at Wellman that what is the value of having friends and the value of making friends? The thing that made me want to come to Wellman was that I thought it would be, it would be a new life for me. I had a volunteer from Harvard College come to me and proposed I come to dinner as well, and eventually after several dinners, I was voted into the house. We have two meetings, one is the downstairs meeting, which is everybody, it's a kind of a standard meeting, then we discuss

anything that is happening in the house, one of the residents was saying that she has a new job. And guess what, my job lost as long as the satellites do so. They could be six months to two years. You're going to become an astrologer. But I didn't worry about one thing, I hope everybody will help me with it. I'm afraid, you know, of being dependable. Okay, do you want us to drag you out of bed? My friend, I don't know my brain. Is that how you mean hell? Yeah, just push me out in the morning and then I'll get to bed. Anybody have any oven? I felt, I was bus boy at JFK building. What isn't about the students that makes them a superior choice in working with patients of the kind that Wellman has dedicated to work with, specifically the really very long term mentally old person. The students are naive and there was something that's fresh and essential about naive

day. It was not unintelligence that I mean by naive day, but innocence. And why is innocence important? Well, when you're too sophisticated, you look at a patient who's been in a backward for a long time and immediately you say you can't do too much with him. The cost is too high. As a professional person, I have to make a judgment that it would be a waste of time to bet further money on this human being. In other words, the professional must declare himself as to who's salvageable and who's not salvageable. The nice thing about being naive is that you're not overstuffed with too much information about people's failings. As a part of his idealism and as a part of his naive condition too, the student rules in human beings he believes are salvageable. So he says yes, we can do something for that human being when everybody else says no. So the innocence is probably one of the most important things that the students bring to work with these mentally ill people. I think in spite of the fact that students never work in a day in their lives they could help you. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Oh, just a shhh.

You think I could better be better off training or something? You got any idea of what kind of thing do you like to your training? Well, I had sort of a news, a tender training, a nursing training or going into painting business. I like painting very much. Bernie wants to paint. So could you do the teaching to paint? I could wield a brush. I almost died back in a wheeled brush. But the thing is mixing paints like crystals, mixing paints and then to be able to pick out colors for houses. It's a very easy thing to master your training if you stay at it as well. It seems to me a great personal risk for any individual to become too efficient. That is where I found that personally I was too much occupied with things that were not always giving me pleasure and I felt that I just as well that had become too efficient in certain ways that I had become too

efficient in certain ways. And so I found that in the research work and the clinical work that I do things had become altogether too easy. And in addition to that I found that it was a simple matter to feed off the surplus in the society that I had achieved a degree of expertise so that people with some of the surplus money would purchase this expertise for practically nothing in return so far as I was concerned. And one way to counterpoise the sense of lurking in sincerity would be to get into the most sincere business imaginable. And from such meditations that thought occurred to me that selling books as a peddler in the street would be a lovely thing. So here I find myself doing honest work when I can get out into the streets and working a whole day barely managing to break even sometimes losing a little bit of money most of the time and on the

best day so far earning about ten dollars for the day. At the end of the day I'm an exhausted man, not much richer monetarily for my laborers but to go home tired is itself a great reward and not just to go home tired but to have to have been out there with the people being applauded yes by the people but also in turn I think applauding the people dealing with them handling their praises of handling and monies is to me now a great thing. I don't think I'd exchange my peddlers license for any of my degrees. I'm very serious when I say I would use tavern keepers and policemen and neighbors in natural ways as my therapeutic agents if I could design a truly and thoroughly therapeutic community. For one thing not a typical student hang on guitar player is a first great teacher in the Boston school and she's great and really enters in with us and comes to the

house for dinner and stuff. This is very very hospitable. I imagine we were sort of an odd bunch all of this tramping in there about 11 o'clock at night but I think too that we added something a dash and uniqueness to the place and that pleased the people in the bar. They were far far more accepting of some of our unusual characteristics than almost any other institution would be. Unquestionably they were offering our family members something that was very therapeutic an environment in which there was true acceptance on strictly human terms. Come in take a part in the gate of the place and make your own contribution to it. Now one of the best things you can offer an individual who has been classified as an outsider to society is to give him a place where he can be himself and be active a part of what's going on and at the same time to be inconspicuous.

This tavern did that for the members of our household. How far away can you get from seclusion rooms and from day halls and from medication? What you're just seeing two cultures integrating and you know health is supposed to be getting out into the real world and integrating in culture again and this is what you're seeing. I don't think any of that all of the social architects and all of the human engineers couldn't design anything as beautiful as what we've got here. These people are being real and they're out in the world. I think they're healthy right at this moment and I think what we're doing is moving people into the core of the earth where they can be real again and where they can mix just as they are. But I think the important thing as far as well me this concern is that I feel at home in relaxed in a place which I think well make and do for me because I've never in my whole life ever felt

relaxed wherever I was living you know I can foster homes in the orphanage you know. The upstairs meeting can cover anything. Student problems, problems of residence, interaction between residence student problems. How about you John? How do you feel? I don't get a complete feeling of a complete good. Well I'm working from a group framework. This just isn't well I've ever done. I've always worked you know on on my own. You're missing it. This is what I guess you know let's get on with it my God. This is okay and the reason is I'm not the do-organizer. Okay. The only things that I ever organized, you think we're going to surround me. Well organize it around you. You know how great what an opportunity. Here's somebody who has a whole group not not jelling at all and you can organize it around yourself. I think when when morale is dissolving and everybody is fractured

because they can't bear anymore in the house then they come to us and however they however they put the question they're really saying to us what do you think what should we do and you have only a certain number of alternatives to say I'm scared with you get them out get them back to the hospital. You say well I'm really not so very sure. Both of which attitudes inevitably lead you know where they lead to getting the person back to the hospital. We might even say well what I think we ought to do is to go and talk about it which is the safest course to take and the most usual one practiced by professionals. Then there's another one which I think we practiced with and most people do but we said was I mean there's the reality people are almost done for. Then there is the myth the myth which the students carry which they perpetuate and we believe it and so what we say is let's believe in the ideal student and what we feed back to you is not even our own view

but our belief in the students view and so we say no we say no go back and do it some more because your capacity is a greater go back and do it some more. So when the student then is confronted with a feedback of his own best self what do you think he does he goes back and he becomes better than he was the longer before he came out he becomes heroic exactly he goes back and his capacity is really greater in reality now this is this is what we mean I think when we say we know about the myth and we know that the myth is real the myth has very real effects. I think Maddie was a good example when I first moved in I lived upstairs with this this friend of mine and the students all lived on the third floor and then over the summer Maddie and I both lived together on the second floor and we shared a room we shared blouses we shared packed the everything and I think it was a good experience for both of us. I mean when I first came Maddie was extremely demanding and just

needing a tremendous amount of love and affection and very very young and in her approach to everybody and you could really see a change coming about which was very gradual which lasted throughout the whole year and continued after I left and you know everybody was very influential but you just grew up with tremendous amount by this summer she was going out and getting a getting a job and looking much older and just acting like a young woman. Well they're usually young enthusiastic boys and girls and actually we try to look out for them because they're so young and innocent so it's everybody trying to help everybody else. There was Judy you know she got involved in a trying to kill herself and she was like dangerous on the basis that she you know her physicalness was really scary I mean she could really look at you and just boy you right

to the ground and you know unless you took it from you know a very relaxed angle it was like and there were a lot of people who were scared of her during the crisis of when she wanted to kill herself so they had to have someone on like 24 hours with her you know everybody sort of got together and put in a few hours of each of their time around the clock. It may sound Machiavellian but you're sure there is a Machiavellian element that and that is that that crisis has a present but also crisis has a future and if while you're experiencing the crisis you also appreciate the future course where the crisis may lead you then then you're at that moment not only afraid but you're really not afraid. I sat with John all night several nights all dated with Lauren the first few days I moved into the house John he was high he was singing a lot and pretty much playing being the center of attention and I suppose fantasizing vision of grandeur or something like that anyway this minister's wife came to visit and she moved

in too close to him and John took off in the wintertime with just a sweatshirt on running to the square just as fast as he could go no one could catch him and he wound up in the arms of policemen crying I guess and they brought him back and we we had to sit with John for five days and nights they're right there to lend you a helping hand if you you know if you want. There's an opportunity of leaving a hospital and also getting out into the community once again and also to get back myself expect most of all. On Friday nights Wilma is one of the many places for students to go not as bountiful or Samaritan but as someone looking for a gruby thing to do Friday night parties are an established institution in Cambridge.

Basically I feel safe here and secure and I want to know that feeling for a while. There's no reason for James to be in the hospital because he never speaks to anyone there he does his job he's on a step this up the hospital starting a step system so he's been on step nine for the last 20 years and there are only 10 steps and he'll never be in the 10 step he'll never where the 10th step is working outside the 9th step is working 40 hours a week in the hospital so and he won't talk to anyone there he just doesn't relate to people but he or the course of the two years you know he he's become gradually well he's made a relationship with us and it's been very

exciting to watch this because it's like well a dead man coming alive or something and is the volunteer I work with and she thought in the beginning that James is the only man she'd ever met that didn't have a sense of humor his face never never changed and you know the first day he smiled it was a really big event and we would take him on picnics and to the beach and James will say must I go swimming now and and we'll say well James we'd like to have you go swimming we're going swimming John and Bettina going swimming but but you know you don't have to go swimming what are we going in now and and so James goes he's the only one in the cold water goes in splash ducks himself and comes out you know he he's gone through the motion of swimming

takes a few strokes it comes out everyone else you know full round a little in the water but he's got this you know he does what he's told he's he's what Dr. Levine once called a successful patient you know he's molded I mean it'd be very uncomfortable one time I was ready to come in and I was loaded in and I believe in giving someone else a chance to help him someone else along the road awesome and I have to learn how to accept the love and the care that people fail for me also a tied for me to accept the fact that I could really love and care for other people we think a person who's been in the hospital a long time gets better when he accepts the family as his when he says the family is suffering and I've got to go out and work the house is dirty and I've got to clean it not because I'm being programmed to clean but because the job has to be done and I have

to do it it's my household this is my family I have some commitment to it when that happens then Walnut is working we ask should you change its form and you backed away from the question I challenge I think Walnut has to today be challenged to answer that question has not faced the crisis it's now started to do what every other successful institution does it's beginning to behave like a successful institution which is to do everything possible to harmonize and not face its original purposes anymore because it's found a way to succeed in a big world and I honestly I honestly feel that Walnut is succeeding too much I do think that there is a very real connection between the cart and Walnut you see a professional person who's made it in his

profession who appears to be doing something come we counterpose the seriousness of the rest of life through the cart which is joyous which is magnificent and it's designed and it's conception and for the same man to come from an office and then wear a peddler's badge in the streets I think adds perspective to life and just by having allowable these oppositional elements in one person's make up and in one person's life and one person's activity that life is enriched and so when we say at Walnut that we we stand for a certain amount of deviance a certain amount of variance we don't want people completely to be cured of their incompatible inner components and so when we find this variance precious and I think do everything in our power to prevent people from becoming so sane that in fact they're almost dead we're in the business at Walnut of telling

the people who passed through that they don't have to be like anybody else that incompatible elements in personality is not something always to be expunged stamped out but as a conflict it can be used it can be functional for the individual and I think here's one person connected with Walnut who is trying to do it in his elegant way as he can you

This is building up. We won't be able to stop everyone. Put down and pull it down holding the bed girl. Swing it up to me. No,lie just for some. Oh, you're broken, sweetheart. Let's go and live. It's not yours. is us up to catch him. is us up to catch him. is us up to catch him. This is NET, the public television network.