“I don’t think there’s a thing wrong with me, aside from seeing you–that’s the best sign of crazy I can think of.”

 After reading Marge Piercy’s, Woman on the Edge of Time, it makes me question the treatment of patients in psychiatric hospitals. Regardless of the state of mind of a person, they still deserve to be treated like a human being and I do not believe that character Connie was treated well at all. In one description of her situation she states, “Captivity stretched before her, a hall with no doors and no windows, yawning under dim bulbs. Surely she would die here. Her heart would beat more and more slowly and the stop, like a watch running down” (51). The picture that Connie paints of the treatment that is forced upon would make just about anyone crazy. I think that this novel portrays the psychiatry profession in such a negative way that it makes the readers sympathetic toward Connie and her situation.

In the beginning of the novel, I did not think that Connie was crazy. I felt sorry for the situation that she was forced in and became angry with how she was being treated. Then after reading further and finishing the novel I think that Connie very well could have been crazy, but who are we to judge? She was put in an extremely terrible situation and was treated like a lab rat. No one cared for her or for her health and mental well being so why should she? I felt that the situation that she was in drove her to be insane. At one point Connie states this about the treatment she received, “They acted as if they couldn’t hear you. If you complained, they took it as a sign of sickness. ‘The authority of the physician is undermined if the patient presumes to make a diagnostic statement.’ She had heard a doctor say that to a resident, teaching him not to listen to patients” (11). I think that this description of what Connie over heard the doctors say is crucial in beginning to realize the treatment of these patients. I mean for heaven’s sake the poor woman can not even express what is going on with her own body! I think that this would be a hard profession to be in, but the way that the doctors viewed their patients is WRONG!

I think that Luciente and Mattpoisett is fake. I think that this is all in Connie’s head and I think that is her way of keeping herself sane. I think that she would have gone completely mad without having this world to escape to. She even states, “I don’t think there’s a thing wrong with me, aside from seeing you–that’s the best sign of crazy I can think of” (57).  Connie usually sees Luciente after being on high doses on drugs which could make anyone have these kind of visions. I do not think that they were real, I think that these were visions induced by the drugs but also it was a way for Connie to escape her dark and dreary reality of being in a mental institution.