Barbara Taylor was born in Saskatoon, Canada and has lived in London, UK since 1971. She is currently a Professor of Humanities at Queen Mary University of London.
‘The Last Asylum: A Memoir of Madness in Our Times‘ is both an important historical study of mental health within the UK and to a degree within North America and an engaging memoir of a woman’s struggle with madness. Taylor’s personal and historical account of mental illness is not an easy read. In part, the difficulty lays in the fact that actually being two books have been interwoven into one. On one hand The Last Asylum is an academic account by a noted historian of the rise and fall of mental health hospital. The other side of the coin is the author’s, at times distorted, life within those walls. Merged together Taylor brings a clearer understanding of the world of mental illness blurring the lines between academia and real life.
Taylor was admitted to London’s Friern Hospital in 1988 six years after her first appointment with a psychoanalyst. She fell into a maze of instability and alcoholism that took years before she would emerge feeling well enough to go through life on her own without her doctors. During the years that Taylor was most ill changes were taking place reducing the spaces that those struggling with mental health issues could find help.
Asylums, or ‘stone mother’ as Taylor describes Friern, were commonplace in the UK from the 1850s to the mid 1970s. By the 1980s hospitals were closing their doors opting for day therapies where former and new patients would merge within the community instead of behind walls. During their reign asylums ranged from horrific structures of torture to places where patients were nurtured with kindness with the majority leaning in both directions depending on how was in charge at the time. During it’s peak Friern was a comforting place for some of the patients while those suffering from dementia were treated cruelly and denied basic human rights, they were the people that the rest of society forgot about.
Taylor entered her ‘stone mother’ at a critical time of mental health care reform. In the past thousands were housed at Friern Hospital but by 1988 those numbers had plummeted to mere hundreds. Her ward, where she stayed during each of her admissions, never had more than 50 patients at a time. Within the walls she was able to escape the outside world feeling safe even though the ward at times were violent. Today those that wander the vast hallways are rushing off to work or returning their condo homes at Princess Park Manor, the new name for the former asylum. Most of the former surviving patients still requiring care spend their days at drop-in day centres and their nights in hostels or with their family. The many that require constant round the clock care struggle to find one of the few remaining beds within the health care realm, unless they can afford private hospitals.
Taylor benefited from being cared for in hospital during her darkest times. Even with serious system wide flaws the “stone mother” was a safe haven where she could be ill and tended for like the internal child she was. That woman-child, often spoiled and begging for total attention from those around her, was self-destructive. Her decades of daily appointments with “V”, her psychoanalyst that she loved and hated, centred on that destructive nature and how her childhood had shaped her illness. Taylor’s memories are at times rather unhinged with poetic images.
Reading her accounts one has to question if her time with “V” drove her over the edge. As Taylor describes sessions and her deepening descent into madness, her need for “V” grew stronger often leaving her in a dark state that threatened her own survival. Reliving her childhood, with a mother who was in truth as ill as Taylor and a father who blurred the lines of appropriate sexual conduct at times, was a constant theme. Years later Taylor was able to be part from “V” whom she continued to see daily even after her psychiatrist “Dr. D.” had released her from care.
Taylor’s book is well worth a read.
The Last Asylum is on the Shortlist for the RBC Taylor Prize. On March 2 the 2015 winner of the RBC Taylor Prize will be announced at The King Edward Hotel in Toronto. The winner of the prize will receive $25,000 and a crystal trophy. The runners-up each are awarded $2,000.
