Frieda Fromm-Reichmann Discusses the “Rose Garden” Case

Abstract

In December 1956, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann was invited to give a lecture at the Ypsilanti Psychiatric Institute. It may have been the last lecture she gave, and it certainly was the last lecture that was recorded. Several years later, when I was invited to the same place, we talked about Fromm-Reichmann, and they gave me a copy of the tape. The transcription of the tape appears below. In a few places it has been necessary to indicate that sections of the tape are inaudible. Material in brackets is an approximation of that on the tape. This lecture is based on Fromm-Reichmann's notes for a book she had hoped to write on the treatment history of an adolescent patient--the patient who later wrote I Never promised you a Rose Garden under the name of Hannah Green. In 1955-56, when Fromm-Reichmann was at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto, California, she planned to write the book, including material prepared by the patient herself, but she was sidetracked by many other activities and did not finish it. I know that she worked on the book while in Palo Alto, but I do not know what happened to the manuscript. The patient, however, had done her part, and when Fromm-Reichmann speaks of the patients' "treatment history" she is referring to the patient's manuscript, which I read at that time. The patient's version of the "treatment history" provided some of the material for her later novel. This "history" is different from occasional written notes, which are also mentioned in the text of the lecture.