“On Being Sane in Insane Places”

“On Being Sane in Insane Places” It was very interesting to read about Rosenhan's study and how psychiatrists, who go through big coursework and training, could wrongly classify a patient. It surprised me how some psychiatrists couldn’t say they don’t know what’s wrong with patients instead they could possibly diagnose someone as insane. Though reading this chapter I found the strange things from Rosenhan’s study that was hard to believe. Slater states, “The strange thing was, the other patients seemed to know Rosenhan was normal, even while the doctors did not.” (69). I believe patients can know that better than doctors because they are in that situation already and some doctors don’t analyze their patients carefully to know what’s actually happening with them. For example, if someone studies about one culture doesn’t mean that person knows way better that person who actually lives with that culture. Both chapters I found interesting because it relates to my life very well. I found out Elliot Aronson, Darley and Latane all kind of try to show that people needs to find reason for their actions. I believe each person as a human have to help everyone no matter what.
Darley and Latane’s mention is about how to help someone in an emergency that relates with Catherine Genovse murder. Slater says, “You must interpret the event as one in which help is needed” (95). We read about Catherine’s murder and saw that after she had asked for help, someone yelled, leave that girl alone, instead of helping, and the only thing that happened was that the killer ran away (95). I agree with Darley and Latane’s that we need to know which help is needed and what help is not. The person may have helped with getting the killer away, but Catherine needed the help the most, so she wouldn’t die. I been in so many situations that someone needed my help and I helped as much as I could, but knowing what helped was needed help me a lot. Leon Festinger talked about how people