Documentary

13 GOODMAN IVY GOODMAN DOCUMENTARY One carved her legs with a silver edged art tool. Her roommate pressed her shoulder to a burning light bulb until the skin crisped. A woman upstairs grated her cheeks like cheese. And someone else tied plastic bags over her head, though always in the final moments, when the bags clung damply to her features and left no room for breath, tore them open with her fingernails. All damage was done softly, in seclusion, without audible signs of pain. "Hypnosis and Pain" A lecture by Dr. H. K. Maglin of the University off Wisconsin 2:30 P.M., April 19, Psychology Seminar Room 10 Page 17 from the sophomore year journal of Rita Schlossberg; I hate myself. Hence the need to pull my face off, bang my forehead against the edges of buildings, desks, lunch counters, and the like. The cranium collapses, the blood flows forth, the rage is satisfied, I imagine, somehow. It was all the rage to be enraged. In a quiet way, it was very popular. Self-mutilation flourished all over campus. Dr. Rickerson of Psychological Services: They are girls with time on their hands. They hurt themselves when they should be doing schoolwork. In a study of employed self-mutilators, the rate of mutilation was found to be highest on weekends, when the U THE MINNESOTA REVIEW subjects had nothing better to do with themselves. Mrs. Kirsty Radaway, Assistant Dean of Women, in an informal luncheon discussion: I was the Dean on Duty last weekend, and during that short period of time alone, there were two cases. On Saturday morning, a freshman was taken to the in-patient psychiatric ward at U. Hospital. Several of her hallmates had found her in her dorm room, amidst broken records and album dust jackets, crying uncontrollably. She could not say what was wrong, but she had cut her neck and arms with a razor blade and was bleeding quite profusely. On Sunday afternoon, the intern on duty summoned me to the infirmary to escort a second student to an offcampus institution. University Hospital's ninth floor was all filled up, and the young woman in question, a sophomore, was hysterical, also bleeding, and in desperate need of hospitalization. She had jabbed herself with manicure scissors. Her roommate accompanied us in the campus police van to the private facility. Once inside, as we followed a resident down a bright corridor, the roommate reassuringly said, "Susan, really, it's like a vacation. Think of this as a resort. "Yes," Susan said, "the last one." Schlossberg, page 23: 1 want to throw myself away, down staircases , into traffic against the lights. I want to climb to the dark side of the subway tracks and die. Why? Conversations overheard by a resident advisor in the Margaret Stern-Smith Class of '34 Student Lounge: 1."Of course I'm lonely here. I've never been lonelier. For months it's been this way, but I haven't been able to tell anyone. You're the first person I've told. 2."It's not that I can't do the work. I don't think I'm stupid. But I don't want to do the work, and I can't. I look at the pages and cry." 3."It's a breeze if you go to see your advisor. Just bring in a psychiatric excuse, and they'll let you drop anything. They'll let you revamp your schedule in the middle of finals week." 15 GOODMAN Schlossberg, page 1: My father died when I was a fourteen year old. My father died when I was a fourteen year old. My father died. Lany Binet, doctoral candidate and part time lecturer, Department of English, at a friend's dinner party: I assigned them Notes from Underground last week, and some of the kids said it was too depressing. Uselessly depressing. In a way, I think that's healthy. When I was a freshman, I would have said, "Oh, yes," fervently. I was writing suicide notes all over the place in my most flowery hand. Would you believe it, that winter I tried to kill myself for the first...