Tag: Sisti

Reading of the Week: Dreams of My Uncle – Husock on His “Unmentionable” Uncle & His Mental Illness

From the Editor

“To say that I didn’t know my great-uncle, Wolfe Levine, would understate things. I didn’t even know of such an uncle, brother of my mother’s father (a grandfather with whom I was close). In retrospect, it’s clear that my great-uncle was simply unmentionable.”

So begins Howard Husock, Vice President of the Manhattan Institute for Public Policy, in a long essay that traces the illness and institutionalization of his great uncle.

The author’s great uncle

The piece asks a simple question: “Are we treating the mentally ill better today than we did a century ago?”

It’s a beautiful essay, that touches on history, psychiatry, and a family member who was “unmentionable.”

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