A Mind That Found Itself

Character Guide

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Clifford Whittingham Beers (the narrator/author)

A young Yale-educated businessman who suffers a severe mental breakdown, partly triggered by fear of epilepsy, and is committed to a series of mental institutions; he narrates his own descent, confinement, and observations of asylum life.

Beers's brother

An older brother whose sudden onset of epilepsy early in the narrator's college years plants the seed of terror that eventually contributes to Beers's own breakdown.

Beers's conservator

A family-appointed guardian who manages Beers's affairs and visits him during his confinement; Beers grows suspicious of his identity during periods of delusion.

The assistant physician ('Jekyll-Hyde') (Jekyll-Hyde)

A doctor at the private sanatorium whom Beers nicknames for his double nature—outwardly professional, but capable of cruelty, including tightening a strait-jacket out of spite.

The attendants (brute-force type)

Several hospital attendants, poorly paid and untrained, who use physical force, curses, and restraint devices on patients, including Beers himself, in the violent wards.

The capable/protective attendant

An attendant who treats Beers and other patients with more decency than most, and later provides sworn testimony (an affidavit) about conditions he witnessed.

Fellow patients (the Yankee sailing-master, the hodcarrier, the old man, etc.)

A range of institutionalized men—some elderly, some physically powerful, some nearly incoherent—whom Beers observes being routinely abused, neglected, or restrained alongside him.

The tramp-turned-attendant

An untrained former railroad laborer hired on the spot to sit with a dying elderly patient, illustrating how casually and cheaply attendants were hired at some institutions.

Glossary

Camisole

A canvas restraint garment, essentially a type of strait-jacket, that laces behind the back and binds the arms across the chest — often used by institutions to avoid the stigma of the term 'strait-jacket.'

Strait-jacket

A canvas restraint coat with closed sleeves tied behind the body to immobilize a patient's arms; used for hours or days as punishment or control in the asylums Beers describes.

Muff

A padded canvas restraint device, buckled and locked around the wrists, used (often at night) to keep a patient's hands immobilized while overlapped.

Mechanical restraint

Physical restraint using devices like strait-jackets, muffs, mittens, or restraint sheets, as opposed to drugs.

Chemical (or medical) restraint

The use of sedating drugs, especially hyoscine, to render a 'troublesome' patient unconscious or docile for extended periods.

Hyoscine

A sedative drug used in early 20th-century asylums as a form of chemical restraint on difficult patients.

Bull Pen

Slang used in the book for a block of bare, unfurnished isolation cells within the violent ward where difficult patients were confined.

Paresis

A term (short for general paresis) referring to a severe, then-incurable form of neurological/mental deterioration linked to late-stage syphilis, marked by delusions of grandeur and physical decline.

Conservator

A legal guardian appointed to manage the financial and personal affairs of a person judged mentally incompetent.

Sanatorium

A private institution for the treatment of mental or nervous illness, as distinct from a public state hospital.

Violent ward

The section of an asylum reserved for patients considered dangerous, agitated, or unmanageable, often subject to harsher treatment and restraint.

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