Since the argument in my case report was not as clear as I had anticipated, I have decided to refocus my thoughts to create a clear and concise product presentation. The argument I attempted to state in my case report was that the medical field and those involved are not as they appear. I will break down this complex claim by discussing the medical institutions and the medical professionals with examples from The Physicists and other recent works. However, before I introduce my argument I will show a brief YouTube clip of a women auditioning for Britain’s Got Talent. This clip is a fun and creative way to break through the beginning struggles of introducing my argument regarding medicine. The clip helps shape my case regarding the initial judgments of a person, place, or thing. Ergo, you cannot judge a hospital because that is what it is labeled, nor can you judge a doctor because they have a fancy title on their name. There is no direct way to get around this hurdle, but I will present several techniques that may guide an individual when they are making a final decision.
How were the product and the idea for the product developed?
The idea for my product arose after reading the play The Physicists. It was after the first and second plot twist that I came to the conclusion that the medical field may in fact be corrupt. The first plot twist occurs after all of the patients reveal they are not actually insane. Two of them admit they are undercover spies and one admits he is pretending to be insane to protect society from his own thoughts. In addition, the second plot twist revealed that Doktor Mathilde von Zahnd had known about the sane individuals living in her sanatorium for years. Authoritative figures in today’s society symbolize knowledge and trust, especially in medicine. Therefore, I not only question the role of the professionals, but also the ethics throughout the entire field.
Why was this specific manner of presenting the blog topic chosen, i.e. how is this presentation reflective of the student’s interests and/or academic discipline?
The product was chosen to be in Prezi format because I am a Psychology and Political Science double major with dreams of going to law school. After attending Oxford University in England as a law student this past summer, I realized that most 1L students have to present cases in their classes. Therefore, my product is an interactive Prezi presentation, which is a more sophisticated form of power point. I selected a Prezi theme that is similar to a chalkboard to tie in an elementary vibe of an in-class presentation. Additionally, Wonneken has used “mind maps” several times throughout our course, which is why my theme is a mind map with sticky notes representing my thoughts.
ATTENTION READERS: You may want to grab a pencil and notepad to keep up with this complicated piece of literature.
For those who dare to read, be ready to have your mind blown.
Friedrich Dürrenmatt opens the play “The Physicists” (1964) in the drawing room of the sanatorium, Les Cerisiers. This private sanatorium is an extraordinary facility for treating the mentally ill and is owned by Fräulein Doktor Mathilde von Zahnd. Doktor Mathilde von Zahnd is the last descendant of a great ancient family, but is more notably known as a world-famous philanthropist and psychiatrist. Les Cerisiers is one of the most prestigious and expensive facilities in all of Europe. Therefore, the patients are mainly wealthy citizens of the country, such as millionaires, big industrialists, writers, and physicists. The primary setting of the play is in the drawing room of the sanatorium because it connects the rooms of the 3 mentally “ill” physicists and their female nurses. However, through the alter egos and ulterior motives of each of the patients and the doctor, the validity and reliability of this sanatorium are put into question. Furthermore, this tension between deceit and reality comments on the influence the medical field has on today’s society and the individuals that are directly affected when subjected to that environment.
The patient in Room 3, Herbert Georg Beutler, calls himself Sir Issac Newton, while also occasionally claiming he is the real Albert Einstein. Ernst Heinrich Ernesti is the patient in Room 2, who also calls himself Einstein. Lastly, the final patient in Room 1 is Johann Wilhelm Möbius, who is in the sanatorium for having visions of King Solomon. To the eye all of these men are insane because they are imprisoned in a building that is categorized as a facility for the mentally ill. Additionally, each of these characters portrays some sort of alter ego, which is not a common act that a sane person would commit. Though, as the play continues this appears to not be the case in The Physicists.
At the beginning of the first act “Einstein” is presumed to have strangled nurse Irene Straub, which is the second murder in the past 3 months. The first of which was done by “Newton,” who killed nurse Dorothea Moser. The third madman, Möbius, strangles his nurse and lover Monika Stettler. Doktor Mathilde von Zahnd explains that Möbius’s delusions have not subsided and that he has not shown much improvement during the past 15 years of his stay at the sanatorium. Yet, Doktor Mathilde von Zahnd is categorizing the magnitude of these delusions as mild, which makes requiring him to stay in the sanatorium a rather harsh punishment (Dürrenmatt 34). During her conversation with Möbius’s wife, Frau Rose, Doktor Mathilde von Zahnd said: “Whether the manifestations perceived by the mentally sick are real or not is something which psychiatry is not competent to judge” (Dürrenmatt 34). Psychiatry is a changing field of medicine and no one person can know the severity or damage to an individual’s state of mind. Therefore, the doctor has no power to judge the deplorable delusions of King Solomon because she cannot be in the mind of Möbius.
The second act reveals that none of these men are truly mentally ill. In fact, Möbius is regarded as the most intelligent physicist of all time. The other two patients are undercover spies who have been using aliases to follow Möbius in hopes he would reveal his knowledge of physics to them. The two spies are members of the Intelligence Service who have been sent on separate missions to abduct Möbius and return him to their agencies. In the end, both spies are unsuccessful because Möbius believes he is protecting society by pretending to be insane.
After nearly having a revolver battle, the three men decide to stay locked in Les Cerisiers to punish themselves for the crimes they have committed against their nurses and to protect society from the dangerous findings of physics. Once the men decided to stay, Fräulein Doktor Mathilde von Zahnd enters the drawing room to inform the patients that she has known about Möbius for several years. Additionally, Doktor Mathilde von Zahnd, expresses that King Solomon has appeared right before her eyes. In reality, this means the psychiatrist is the actually the delusional patient. The doctor describes how she exploited each of Möbius’s discoveries one-by-one, slowly raking up enough money to only care for these 3 physicists at Les Cerisiers.
This final act by the doctor helps prove that not all doctors and even patients in this case are as they appear. Does one have to believe a doctor just because they are wearing a white medical coat and have a certificate in an oak frame hanging on their wall? Most individuals today would believe this to be true but after reading The Physicists, the only logical answer to this question is no.
Doktor Mathilde von Zahnd appears to be an authoritative figure not only because of her degree in medicine, but also because she owns a renowned facility that treats only the wealthiest patients in the country. This relates to our current society because there are doctors all across the world that earned their title by going through medical school, which is supposed to weed out those who are not set out for that particular career. Unfortunately, Doktor Mathilde von Zahnd let her medical profession get in the way of her personal life and it took a major toll on her health. Doktor Mathilde von Zahnd was putting her personal interests for fame and money behind her responsibility as a doctor. Her responsibility as a doctor is to properly treat those who are mentally ill not to exploit her patients or to portray a patient’s illness to their family as more serious than it actually is. On top of that, she let 2 innocent spies risk their lives by being consumed in the sanatorium even though they had no reason to be there. By the end of Einstein’s and Newton’s stay at Les Cerisiers, they had convinced themselves that they were insane and had to punish themselves for the harmful crimes they had committed. Yet, it is ethical to believe that neither of these men would have committed such a heinous crime if they had not been in such a setting. This not only puts Doktor Mathilde von Zahnd in jeopardy, but also the medical field as a whole because this is a practice that is supposed to have the correct answers about our safety and more importantly, our health.
In addition, the three “mentally” ill individuals do not help the representation that a medical facility, such as the sanatorium, should have. Patients that have serious mental illnesses should in fact have 24-hour watch over them, which would make those particular individuals the perfect candidates for a facility to this magnitude. However, all three of these patients are sane and all knew what their motives were prior to agreeing to this mission. This then decreases the validity and the reliability of the sanatorium because they are holding men who have no illness whatsoever. One can apply this to a mental hospital today because society is going to believe what doctors and owners of these facilities say. No sane person would want to be under 24-hour surveillance, have medical visits everyday, and most likely have to be drugged in some sort of way. Unless you are Möbius of course…
Moreover, there are always additional options that can be taken when receiving treatment or advice regarding medical practices, especially receiving a second opinion. Today’s society heavily relies on authoritative figures because they symbolize knowledge and trust. Ergo, the saying you cannot judge a book by its cover, can now be related towards the medical field, including both the professionals and patients, after the play The Physicists.
Arzt Hannah 