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Managing editor's note: Istvan Benedek, formerly a psychiatrist, is now a successful Hungarian writer.
This essay consists of excerpts from his bookThe Gilded Cage (Aranyketrec), originally published in 1955. I have tried to arrange this material into a brief and inevitably fragmentary exposition of some of the author's views. István (Stephen) Benedek, M.D., began his career as a psychiatrist, trying to create an institutional setting in which patients were treated in freedom and with humanity. The experiment was a huge success and an even greater failure. It is this experience that Benedek chronicled in his book. It was this experience that also led to his giving up psychiatry and becoming a writer. I am grateful to Dr. Benedek for his permission to include these excerpts from his book in this volume, and to Dr. Bela Buda for his help in making this possible.
The passages that make up this essay (the title is mine) are taken from the English language edition ofThe Gilded Cage, translated by Karoly Ravasz, published by Corvina Press in Budapest in 1965. However, since in my opinion this translation leaves much to be desired, I have made extensive revisions in it in an effort to render the text into more accurate, expressive, and fluent English. The material here reprinted appears on p. 13, pp. 186–188, 190–191, and p. 230 of the edition cited.
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Benedek, I. Freedom and Schizophrenia. Metamedicine 3, 337–341 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00900935
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00900935