McLean History

* This material gleaned from Alex Beam's Gracefully Insane"




McLean Hospital was founded in Charlestown, Mass. in 1811. That section was later incorporated into my hometown of Somerville, Mass. It was called the "Asylum for the Insane". It was founded by a group of prominent Bostonians who were concerned about the homeless mentally ill. The early benefactor was a man named John McLean. In 1895 it moved to Waverly Oaks Hill in Belmont, Mass. Fredrick Law Olmsted advised the powers-that-be about this site. Ironically he was later hospitalized at McLean and passed away there. I worked at the cottage he was hospitalized at for the past seven years.

The poet Robert Lowell coined the term "Mayflower Screwballs." But of course it has a long Brahmin lineage. When McLean was in Charlestown, Mass it housed two brothers of Ralph Waldo Emerson. One of Emerson's brothers was retarded and was in and out of the hospital. Edward Bliss Emerson suffered a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized there. He started out with promise--graduating second in his class at Harvard. He was described as being sometimes "gay" and sometimes "tortured". His mood swings would be indictive of Manic Depression Disorder. He would fly in fits and throw all his clothes out of his room for instance.

William James, ther father of American psychology, is believed to have stayed at McLean. Some doctors told Alex Beam that they saw him on the patient record list. There is still a lot of controversy around this--speculation, etc.../