A novel by Hannah Green (1964-11-08) - I never promised you a rose garden

Highly recommended read for anyone interested in mental health or who knows someone who is dealing with it. Green's novel withstands the test of time and raises a question still relevant: Where would Deborah be now if her parents had not had the means to provide such treatment?

This book is rather horribly dated. Mental hospitals and the treatment of schizophrenia in the 1960s have very little in common with those things today. Deborah spent years in the hospital, treated with such things as cold packs (wrapping her mummy-like in cold wet sheets) and psychotherapy, rather than the anti-psychotic drugs they used today. The author based the book on her own experiences, but I have read that her schizophrenia diagnosis was probably inaccurate and she most likely suffered from depression with psychotic features.

This book might be good for people who want to know what the mental health system was like in the sixties, but I don't think it would do a schizophrenic person any good as far as getting insight into their illness and treatment.

Magnificent authenticity, paperback sales in the millions. The rumor is that Joanne Greenberg herself was a mental patient, she knows the wards so well.

The girl's imaginary world is presented with such intensity we are stunned. The doctor who tries to cure her is herself an unforgettable character.

The book grabs you by its drama and intensity.

But the flaw is the last line, "Full weight,"' which is boring.

Consider Susan Andres's last line of The Rain Climber, "behind me, on the unseen panes (read "pain") the whisper of the rain."

Or L.P. Hartley "the SW prospect of Brandon Hall Sprang into view."

Or Faulkner, "A body does get around."

One must credit to Hartley the best first line in literary history:

"The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there."

This does not diminish Rose Garden as a classic, unforgettable book.

This is an excellent story about a girl who suffers from schizophrenia. Her experiences and symptomatology are true to form in this book. Authors almost never get the symptoms and conditions accurate. This one did. As for the age 12-plus recommendation, no child this young could meaningfully understand the work in its complexity. Guidance should be given to avoid possible fears, over-identification, and persuadability. Once again, this is a fascinating journey into the mind of a schizophrenic girl by an author who seems to understand the condition. Just as meaningful today as it was when I first read it years ago.

This review is for the Mass Market Paperback version of the book only. I had read this book many years ago in middle school and wanted to reread it. I received my copy today and am very disappointed in its size. It is a small paperback with cramped text. I paid the same amount of money for another book which is much larger. I understand reprints of novels are often printed in as cheap a format as possible, but I expected better for the price. This is going to be a struggle for my older eyes to read.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who has been touched, in any way, by mental illness particularly younger readers who may be struggling with a diagnozed mental disorder. Written in the form of a novel, it is based on the experience of the author Joanne Greenberg. It details the story of sixteen year old Deborah, diagnozed with schizophrenia, who enters a mental institution in an attempt to battle the demons inside her disturbed mind. Beautifully written, compassionate and at times heartbreaking, this book remains a classic of the genre. We are given insight into the tormented soul of one suffering a mental illness, the helplessness and anguish of loved ones and the almost saint-like patience and perserverance of the medical staff charged with the sometimes impossible task of returning the patient to some form of normal existence. Most highly recommended.

Schizophrenia is a disorder much more bizarre and incomprehensible to the healthy person than depression and other forms of neurosis. Likewise, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, Joanne Greenberg's startling story of a sixteen-year-old schizophrenic, is, despite its frilly title, much more intense and baroque than the Bell Jar, Girl Interrupted and most other titles on the bookshelf of novels featuring young women's struggles with mental illness. While the protagonists of the former novels undeniably faced gray, discouraging, slanted views of the world around them, reality for Rose Garden's Deborah Blau is something unrecognizable and alarming. Sometime during her childhood of alienation and physical sickness, the kingdom of Yr somehow developed within her mind. The Yri gods invited Deborah to escape the frustrating dimension of Earth and fly through Yr's wide-open skies, dance through its golden fields and speak its poetic language. As she grew older, Deborah became a captive of her imagination, blacking out; assaulting others and cutting and burning herself upon its whim. As Deborah enters an asylum, Ms. Greenberg masterfully takes readers behind the mask of this compulsively fascinating, deeply disturbed young woman. It may be impossible for a healthy person to completely imagine inner workings of someone like Deborah's mind, but this outstanding, somewhat psychedelic-flavored novel gives a startling, unforgettable speculative glimpse.

Young adult reading about a mentally ill 16-year-old girl who endures 3 years in a mental hospital. The story is told mostly from Deborah Blau's, the 16-year-old girl, point of view.
Deborah's mental illness established early in her life due to pent up rage, frustration, and the pain of not being accepted in life, among other things. Because of this rejection by the world, she created in her mind Yr, a fantasy land where she could escape the harsh realities of life, but Yr slowly turned into a place none-too-nice that held her captive in her mind.
I loved this book for the simple fact that we're allowed to see things from Deborah's point of view. Few books do that. Usually, we're presented with a view from someone who's sane, thus sealing the prejudices and pity associated with the mentally ill. People tend to forget that the patients are still human, preferring to ostracize them because of their state-of-mind. This story presents the patients at people, and they are surprisingly astute and introspective despite their illness, and they are aware of what people who don't have an illness thinks of them.
Deborah's story is a fascinating one. She works with a gifted psychiatrist to overcome Yr and its gods, which hurts her when she tries to tell the secrets of their world. We follow her sickness, her stages of recovery, and her eventual reintroduction to the world. It was nice to read a book that wasn't a horror that presented a view of mental illness. My lack to rate it higher comes from the fact that parts of the book were lacking in my opinion, but that doesn't void out the fact that book was a good read.

I, strangely enough, did not see Deborah's illness as schizophrenia. I am perhaps alone in this feeling, and maybe this explains why I did not feel that the book described that specific mental illness inaccurately.

For me, this is a somewhat pretentiously written novel (probably autobiographical, due to the extraordinarily vivid and descriptive parts) that runs along a suicidal/insane girl's life as she gets better. I did not find the other world parts to be so interesting. In fact, I thought they could have been done much better. It's not so difficult to just invent another world, so why not do it well? On the other hand, I really liked the parts involving other patients. It was difficult to keep track of who is who, because names once mentioned are never explained again, and sometimes names change and you forget.

I liked parts of this book, for example the sessions with Dr. Fried. I felt that they were interesting to read and just kind of cool. Deborah's adult behavior didn't particularly bother me, because I know that enough sixteen year olds sound like that, and she does grow throughout the book. I felt that the emotions were also well done in "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden", in addition to the (somewhat pretentious and) solid writing.

A solid 3 1/2 star rating, but I don't know if I'd recommend it to all. It's a bit of a difficult read (hard to do in one sitting) but on the whole it's a really interesting book that I ultimately felt positively inclined towards. There may have been many parts that I didn't like in the book, but I feel that it's still an okay, pretty good book for some people.

Not a favorite, but one that I'll return to someday to see how it's fared.

I cannot put this book down! It is absolutely gripping. The description of the Deborah's illness and her worlds is so twisted you have to wonder if Joanne Greenberg suffered from this condition herself. She writes about it so poignantly! You fall in love with all of these characters and their "flaws" and how broken they are. This book is deep and the characters complex. Despite the fact that it was first published over 50 years ago, it reads like a modern story. Highly recommend this for anyone who is interested in the world of mental illness.

Rossa Forbes is a contributor to Goddess Shift: Women Leading for a Change

This book is a fictionalized version of the author's recovery from schizophrenia within the confines of a mental institution. Her journey (the book was published in 1963) was undertaken without the use of antipsychotics and her progress rested on good old-fashioned psychotherapy. It stands in refreshing and sharp contrast to the way mental illnesses have been treated since the 1970s.

Through personal experience I have come to see the sorry state to which modern psychiatry has fallen in the intervening decades. Psychotherapy has been largely rejected as a therapy for schizophrenia in favour of antipsychotic medication. This situation is changing slightly because the drugs are finally beginning to be acknowledged as ineffective in the majority of patients. Psychotherapy is now getting a "re-think". What is remarkable about I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, apart from the sheer brilliance of its prose and insights, is that the author's recovery happened without a change of diet, the use of supplements or even energy medicine. It came about painfully, over time, through exploring the belief system that the young girl had constructed in order to protect herself from real and imagined family hurts. The exploration of the family belief system between the girl and her psychiatrist is very relevant to the Family Constellation Therapy that our family underwent.

There is hardly any information on the market today about recovery from schizophrenia, beyond advice on continuing to take your medication, to have "realistic" expectations and to monitor yourself for signs of relapse. I believe that one of the explanations for this lack of information is that many doctors believe that recovery from schizophrenia is not possible and that anyone who "recovers" probably didn't have schizophrenia to begin with. (Joanne Greenberg would beg to differ.) Just getting off the medications is not recovery for most people. It is only the beginning of recovery. The roller coaster ride of recovery is painful and long. Set-backs often look like relapse. The temptation is always there to go back on the medications, which adds a further painful dimension, the worry over whether you are doing the right thing. Very few people believe, thanks to the power of the pharmaceutical lobby, that recovery is possible without medication. Many people believe that the medications are meant for life (and the doctors will tell you so). Many people are waiting for the next miracle drug - a drug that, in my opinion, will never fix the problems of the psyche.

I thought this was a good book. For me personally, it wasn't the type of book I would always choose, and I couldn't really get into it. It took me awhile to finally get intreseted in the book, so it was easy for me to forget about it and set it asid.I Never Promised You a Rose Garden was an extremely well written book. It goes into great detail about a teenager suffering from schizophrenia. In my opinion though, it was a bit slow moving, and it could be confusing at times. When I first began reading the book I was confused because it didn't state that she had schizophrenia right away. Therefore, when it went from the real world to Deborah's world I got confused at times, until I finally found out exactly what the problem was with her, 18 pages into the book.

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden tells the story about a 16-year old girl, Deborah Blau suffering from schizophrenia. She is brought to a mental hospital, without her consent, in an attempt to make her situation better. Her mother and father keep her condition quiet, and they don't even tell their youngest daughter, Suzy, the real reason why her sister was taken away, and why she will be gone for such a long period of time. This books tells you about Deborah's journey from a world of her own, back to the real world, hopefully to her own light at the end of the tunnel.

I recommend this book to teenagers, around the ages of 14 and up. I would also say that you should be able to comprehend things easily because towards the beginning of the book the lack of detail of what was going on, and exactly what was wrong with Deborah made it hard to understand.

A book about schizophrenia, its symptoms and the psychoanalytical treatment of a patient. To begin with, Deborah, the main character, is manifesting the classical symptoms of the disease in that there is abundant evidence of disturbance of thought and of attention, which is provoked by the elaboration of her private world of Yr. She is depicted as retreating for greater periods of time into Yr, to the extent that delusions and hallucinations become part of her everyday experiences. The more she lives in Yr, the more she is subjected to inner and outer attacks, both from the "citizens" who people that world and from the world of her objective environment.
Throughout the book we can see ideas of reference developing as well as the emerging of paranoia. Oversensitivity leads to inappropriate and excessive emotional reactions, which are eventually followed by momentary and prolonged catatonic behavior patterns. The author has lumped together many of the possible symptoms of a schizophrenic disorder, which characterizes Deborah. In so doing, we are given an over-simplified picture of an extreme psychopathological case. The explanation of the causes of schizophrenia is also limited in that the author lauds the efforts of one therapeut school, that of psychoanalysis. There is no glint of behavior therapy or of the humanistic approach to the disorder. Possible organic pathological reasons underlying Deborah's condition are never mentioned; therefore, we are led to believe that schizophrenia is due solely to unresolved psychological crises in childhood. Although there is noted the use of drugs, there is no allusion to drug therapy as such. Whatever medication presented seems to have a "calming" effect on the patients, but there is no talk of antischizophrenic drugs.
Somatic therapy is used regularly in that patients are put into "pack" (cold wet sheets tightly bound around the entire body in mummy fasion); but no other approach besides the psychoanalytic seems to be in effect, at least not on Ward D (the disturbed ward). The time period in which this case is presented (1930's-1960's) does suggest that psychoanalysis would have been the up-to-date and "in" therapy of the day.
Evidence of family conflicts as being the result of a schizophrenic's presence within the family unit is noted several times by Dr. Fried, Deborah's therapist. The author gives us the impression that Esther, Jacob and Suzy can relax a bit more when Deborah isn't with them. In this sense, the family is shown as reacting to the elder daughter's psychopathological disorder rather than family conflicts being the cause of her illness.
On the whole, this book presents an accurate view of schizophrenia and its symdome. Disturbance of thought and of attention, withdrawal, inappropriate emotions, catatonia and inability to focus in time and space are seen as the symptoms. On the other hand, all physiological pathology, such as biochemical defects and heredity, is lacking, whereas environmental precipitants are often discounted in favor of overriding psychololgical factors. As a result of this one-sided view, which favors the psychoanalytical school, the therapeutic process lacks in wholeness. Dr. Fried helps Devotah interpret life and her environment throughout her therapy in terms of appreciation. The mental institution provides possibilities for decentralization when on Wards A and B by promoting workshop interests, and the social worker encourages educational training by suggesting that Deborah take the high school equivalency test. Yet, this help is "intermediate" and of no longterm value because the "beginning" and "terminal" phases of the therapeutic process are missing, i.e., "beginning" phase: organic pathological investigation; "terminal" phase: guided and supported social integration.
I NEVER PROMISED YOU A ROSE GARDEN leaves the reader with a sense of hopelessness since Deborah is still committed to the care of a mental institution, albeit now with a high school diploma...
An holistic view of schizophrenia, as of any disorder and/or disease, is essential if its immediate and remote causes are to be discovered and if a cure (or at least adequate social functioning) is to be provided to these patients by science.

"i never promised you a rose garden" is an excellent book about a 16-year-old girl named Deborah Blau, who just so happens to be schizophrenic in a bad way. Deborah is admitted to an unnamed mental hospital in a small town, where her problems begin to surface as she stops hiding them. Deborah, it turns out, doesn't quite live on earth. She lives in a kingdom called Yr, speaking to her gods, flying around, and, if she slips up, being severely punished. She is assisted in her troubles by a famous psychologist who seems to understand her better than the rest of the hospital staff. Thus begins her three long years at the hospital and her journey towards reality.

"i never promised you a rose garden" is a book about the troubled mind of a schizophrenic, from her point of view. Actually, it's third person omniscient, so it's not from her point of view, but you know what she's thinking. It is an excellent dramatization of the mind of a seriously ill person. When i say dramatization, i mean that this is a drama, not an action or a western, but i also mean that it is not a cold and distanced psychology novel. It is emotional, raw, and doesn't step around subjects that some people may not want to deal with. It describes Deborah's world with vivid and believable prose. There is no mark of sentimentality, melodrama, or philosophy. It deals with the one thing not often discussed: the fear that one day, Deborah may have to face the world again; "the little maybe." As such, it carries a message for everyone who would rather hide that face their fears. I would recommend this book to anyone, whether they are interested in psychology or not. It is an excellent and believable insight into the world of the insane, and one hell of a story as well.

Living in two separate worlds is an idea that seems to only be portrayed in science fiction or fantasy novels. However, for Deborah Blau, this concept is part of her reality. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden reveals the story of Deborah, an adolescent diagnosed with schizophrenia who comes from a background of mixed feelings within her immediate family, an overpowering grandfather that holds expectations for her that seem almost out of reach, and anti-Semitic discrimination from her peers. Instead of a lengthy exposition, the plot begins with Deborah's parents finally making the decision to remove her from high school and send her to a mental institution for intense psychological treatment.

The reader learns about Deborah's dark history and the deep processes of her mind through her thoughts and consultations with her therapist, Dr. Fried. Since setting is primarily in the different wards of the mental facility, leaving little room for any major plot development outside of Deborah's successes and failures while receiving treatment, the character development is paramount in this novel. The author, Joanne Greenberg, does a superb job of depicting dysfunctional characters that not only serve the purpose of comic relief because of their erratic behavior, but also reveal deeper, more melancholic aspects of the life of a mentally ill individual.

Greenberg juxtaposes the horror of mental illness with the relative safety it provides for the affected from facing the challenges of the real world. This is the core of Deborah's conflict within her mind. She must decide between her imaginary place, Yr, that offers safety yet keeps her locked away from the world, or she must face her fears and experience life with both its challenges and opportunities. The friendships that she makes in the institution highlight the novel's stress on the importance of building relationships for personal growth and allow her to accept the fact that most people have problems and possess the ability to work through them.

Dr. Fried is the epitome of a knowledgeable, patient, and committed therapist that is dedicated to helping Deborah release herself from the depths of Yr and to bringing her back to a relatively normal life. Though the novel is focused on Deborah's life in the mental facility, there are several parts that allow the reader to experience, through heartfelt descriptions, the effect that her institutionalization has on her family. Her parents learn to accept and ward off judgments from others that stem from Deborah's "label" of being mentally unstable. Despite their problems, the Blau family members are readily supportive of Deborah and hope for a successful recovery.

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is an absolutely fascinating book because it provides clear insight into the complicated lives of the mentally ill and stresses that people should neither fear nor revere these individuals due to their altered state of consciousness. Rather, society should endeavor to view them and their issues in an unbiased manner, for there is not a person living without some type of challenge that he or she must face.

As a writer myself and the playwright of several healing plays, I am in awe of what Hannah Green not only survived but was able to express in the most clear and perceptive description of the healing from mental illness process that I have ever read. And I am not one to use hyperbole.
For those who have never had to undergo any recovery process, I recommend this book as the most perceptive description of the "inside view." For those who may be battling their own "demons" hold this book with your life. It is the only one I have seen which depicts the human love between therapist and patient as the force that fosters recovery. It also validates the instinct to withdraw from a therapist one doesn't like. Most profoundly, Hannah Green's ability to use words with poetry and motion enhance the understanding of what is happening in the inner world of one who has "left" the world of reality.
An inspiring read for people dealing with mild neuroses as well as more serious disorders.

I read this book when it was first published back in 1964. It was written by Hannah Green, and from the comments on the dust jacket, she, herself, had suffered from schizophrenia and I think much of the novel was based on her own experiences. I have just re-read it again, in 1998--34 years later and can't praise enough the insight it has given me in dealing with a family member's problems. Back when I was dealing with this member, there was little to nothing written about so-called "mental illness." Today I hear that if you want to know more about this disease you write for a pamphlet put out by the association dealing with both schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder--manic/depressive illness. They are quite similar in that you are dealing with two different attitudes coming from one person. All this is most confusing until you read about Deborah Blau and her "secret world"--a world of her own making because the "real world" is more than she can handle. This is a book where, if you want to really understand, you must read every word, and re-read where you didn't quite get it the first time. All of us fight the same demons. In the case of the schizophrenic, they have had exceedingly traumatic experiences which have led to withdrawal from the real world, or else they are not strong enough to face that real world to begin with. They need help, and we need to understand. It goes without saying, I enjoyed the book the second time around and will want to read it again to reinforce that understanding whenever I find myself becoming intolerant of another's inability to handle today's world and its problems. Seems to me that the "druggie" does it with drugs, but it's all the same thing.

Its an amazing book ! a book that gives a totally different perspective on the illness, the reasons and the magnitude of it and it makes a poignant plea for understanding. It was a moving experience to find the patient struggle and get well again...
If u are interested in psychology, psychiatry and mental illnesses this is a must read.. Its dark and disturbing at times and requires a certain interest in the area....

We inherit our illnesses from our parents. This was not known in the Sixties or even later, and young sensitive people were forced into institutions if they did not fit in. Deborah was unique and yearned for a better existence, thereby creating her own fictional world far from reality. We all have scars on the inside due to the way we were brought up, according to their beliefs, strictness, and harming the child through criticism instead of praise and love. These scars cannot be seen as they are buried deep in our pysches. "Positive thinking" was believed to be a solace to the disturbed but it was only a kind of crutch to destroy one's self-image.

The self-image is the foundation stone of our whole personality; it is the most important tool to feel worthy. It is the concept of the sort of person you are on the inside. One will act like the sort of person he thinks he is. The mind, on the other hand, thinks, hopes, fears, grows happy, becomes sad, remembers, envisions and can turn mountains into molehills and vice versa. Happiness is a habit we learn to imagine and try to enrich. The inner self draws from the confidence of past success to give one the courage to live and grow. Some people become their own worst enemies and feel that they must hide their true selves and pretend to be someone they're not. This is common in radio and in the movies.

Back in the Seventies, I liked the Lynn Anderson recording of the song, "I Never Promised You A Rose Garden," and remember it playing on my car radio as I raced to a PTA meeting out of town and visualized how life could be better. I have never enjoyed country music as it is weepy (like Tammy Wynette) and sad. But life is just that way sometimes, in youth who take drugs and drink alcohol and later in life when the older person drinks in excess to dull his senses and his lifestyle.

Deborah wondered if she would ever be out of that place her strict parents took her and if she would survive the drugs they forced on her to make her think differently. Her rose garden was in her thoughts of being well again and able to get on with life. The Sixties were hard on the young people because of what was taking place out on the streets, something they could not deal with, which is a tragedy. Life changed drastically in such a short time. Everything in life changes, but it should be gradual and not bad all at once. Now, people are no longer deemed insane if they are schizo or bipolar. To a degree, we all have some little mental snag to hold us back from reaching our potential. Some in power also have the same thing but are able to hide the truth. Which is better, living in peace with beauty all around, or in bittle combat out in the real world. Many people could identify with Deborah and wish her the best.

Not many fictional novels are considered "classics" in the scientific literature. Greenberg's I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is an exception to this notion. This book has allowed insight into the world of someone diagnosed with schizophrenia, yet it upholds the integrity of imagination and creativity as of any great novel.

The story begins with the introduction of a 16-year-old girl, Deborah Blau, and her parents, Jacob and Esther Blau. They were all traveling in a car and reflecting about the past events leading up to the present. Greenberg did not overtly explain their destination, but I could sense that it was a dismal situation. There was little dialog in the beginning of the book. This is due to the fact that Deborah's parents were not comfortable discussing the issue of her illness.

Mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, were not accepted in society during that time period (i.e., 1940's), and therefore, were not discussed. This was accurately portrayed by Greenberg. Deborah's parents often would cope with her actions by making excuses (i.e., rationalization), or they would attempt to fix the situation. In this process, they were perceived by Deborah as deceitful. This, according to the book, contributed to her mental illness.

Deborah and her parents arrive at a mental institution, or in that time period, insane asylum, in which will be her home for approximately three years. For the first time, Deborah was able to identify with something, the institution. The institution served as recognizable and defined thing, a banner under which to stand. There, she was appointed to a psychiatrist, Dr. Fried, who is based from a real-life psychotherapist, Dr. Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, ex-wife of Erich Fromm. She will begin to indulge in her struggle with Yr, which is her fictional world, and reality.

Deborah's Yr is basically the foundation for her illness. Schizophrenia is usually characterized by withdrawal from reality, illogical patterns of thinking, delusions, and hallucinations. Yr is, to her, another dimension from which she believes that she belongs. Yr dulls her senses; she perceives the world as "grey." Yri is comprised of gods, (e.g., The Great Collect, Censor, Anterrabae, Lactamaeon, and Idat), different rules of physical reality, and a different language, Yri. In times of stress, Deborah escapes into Yr. I do not know if Deborah's Yr was based off of an actual schizophrenic case study. If not, it was brilliantly originated; however, I am unsure about the degree of accurateness of which her illness is portrayed.

During Deborah's sessions with Dr. Fried, they attempt to penetrate Yr and to hopefully discover early childhood events that are to be held responsible. I attempted to classify Dr. Fried's therapy style. It appeared to me as somewhat of an eclectic style. In the beginning of therapy, she appeared to be using an indirect approach and after time, progressed into a more direct approach. Dr. Fried appeared empathic and understanding, which would be indicative of either person-centered therapy or cognitive behavioral therapy. On the other hand, her approach seemed to be an insight-based therapy, which would be indicative of psychoanalysis. Either way, it had very little, if any, behavioral aspects, and Dr. Fried never seemed to consider a biological basis for Deborah's schizophrenia. Her medications consisted only of nighttime sedatives. Of course, given the time period, this is understandable due to the fact that little was known about brain physiology of mental illness.

As therapy begins, Deborah becomes worse before any overt improvement starts to prevail. Sometimes the transitions from worse-to-better and better-to-worse were, for me, unexpected. Just as I would begin to believe that she is making progress, a stressful event would provoke Deborah to black out, which would result in a demotion to a higher-security ward, or floor. This made the story more interesting, and it probably mimics reality much closer than if she were to progressively improve in absence of downfalls until recovery.

Despite Deborah's intermittent problems and failures, which were inevitable, she begins to gradually make progress. She begins to realize that she had created Yr as a defense mechanism against the deceitful world, which all began in her childhood with the discovery and removal of a malignant tumor. This was one of the first times that she had been treated as if she were different from other people. She also begins to realize that she has many false, distorted memories and that she is an earth being who does not "infect" those around her with her poisonous presence. Deborah's world then turns from grey, dull, and numb to a wonder of miraculous sensations. She eventually moves from the asylum to outpatient housing, and she attains a General Equivalency Diploma (GED). Even then, Deborah is not completely recovered, and she may never be. As Dr. Fried had told her once in a session, "I never promised you a rose garden," which meant that she had never promised Deborah that it would be an easy journey. At the end of the novel, she faces her fears and accepts the fact that she must choose between Yr and the real world.

That everyone says "healthy" people can't understand this book almost disturbs me.. I identify very strongly with the main character, though I have never been diagnosed and don't suffer from episodes. In any event, I found the book utterly wonderful and could see it in my mind very clearly. I found myself wanting so badly for everything to come out all right for Deb, for her to be able to feel and see and touch again.. and it made me feel so much more alive. To merely be breathing and seeing things as they are seems so much more precious, even several years after reading this book.... I highly recommend it...

I really enjoyed this book, although it wrongly displayed schizophrenia. Deborah is admitted into a mental hospital for schizophrenia. She goes into another world she calls Yr where she is frequently punished because she can do no right in Yr. She has her own name in Yr and a whole other language in her world. She is completely detached from everyone else. Deborah has family problems and we learn about her past and more about her mother and father. Deborah needs to find her own cure, which the hospital helps her start by setting her with a wonderful psychologist.The book has a deep plot and can be a little hard to follow at times, but the small struggles are worth it.

This is an engaging, insightful story. It's hard not to identify with our young heroine, regardless of whether you're afflicted with mental illness or not. One of the main messages I gleaned from it is that medication may not be the answer for everyone, and the relationship with one's doctor is critical for proper healing....

Not many fictional novels are considered "classics" in the scientific literature. Greenberg's I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is an exception to this notion. This book has allowed insight into the world of someone diagnosed with schizophrenia, yet it upholds the integrity of imagination and creativity as of any great novel.

The story begins with the introduction of a 16-year-old girl, Deborah Blau, and her parents, Jacob and Esther Blau. They were all traveling in a car and reflecting about the past events leading up to the present. Greenberg did not overtly explain their destination, but I could sense that it was a dismal situation. There was little dialog in the beginning of the book. This is due to the fact that Deborah's parents were not comfortable discussing the issue of her illness.

Mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, were not accepted in society during that time period (i.e., 1940's), and therefore, were not discussed. This was accurately portrayed by Greenberg. Deborah's parents often would cope with her actions by making excuses (i.e., rationalization), or they would attempt to fix the situation. In this process, they were perceived by Deborah as deceitful. This, according to the book, contributed to her mental illness.

Deborah and her parents arrive at a mental institution, or in that time period, insane asylum, in which will be her home for approximately three years. For the first time, Deborah was able to identify with something, the institution. The institution served as recognizable and defined thing, a banner under which to stand. There, she was appointed to a psychiatrist, Dr. Fried, who is based from a real-life psychotherapist, Dr. Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, ex-wife of Erich Fromm. She will begin to indulge in her struggle with Yr, which is her fictional world, and reality.

Deborah's Yr is basically the foundation for her illness. Schizophrenia is usually characterized by withdrawal from reality, illogical patterns of thinking, delusions, and hallucinations. Yr is, to her, another dimension from which she believes that she belongs. Yr dulls her senses; she perceives the world as "grey." Yri is comprised of gods, (e.g., The Great Collect, Censor, Anterrabae, Lactamaeon, and Idat), different rules of physical reality, and a different language, Yri. In times of stress, Deborah escapes into Yr. I do not know if Deborah's Yr was based off of an actual schizophrenic case study. If not, it was brilliantly originated; however, I am unsure about the degree of accurateness of which her illness is portrayed.

During Deborah's sessions with Dr. Fried, they attempt to penetrate Yr and to hopefully discover early childhood events that are to be held responsible. I attempted to classify Dr. Fried's therapy style. It appeared to me as somewhat of an eclectic style. In the beginning of therapy, she appeared to be using an indirect approach and after time, progressed into a more direct approach. Dr. Fried appeared empathic and understanding, which would be indicative of either person-centered therapy or cognitive behavioral therapy. On the other hand, her approach seemed to be an insight-based therapy, which would be indicative of psychoanalysis. Either way, it had very little, if any, behavioral aspects, and Dr. Fried never seemed to consider a biological basis for Deborah's schizophrenia. Her medications consisted only of nighttime sedatives. Of course, given the time period, this is understandable due to the fact that little was known about brain physiology of mental illness.

As therapy begins, Deborah becomes worse before any overt improvement starts to prevail. Sometimes the transitions from worse-to-better and better-to-worse were, for me, unexpected. Just as I would begin to believe that she is making progress, a stressful event would provoke Deborah to black out, which would result in a demotion to a higher-security ward, or floor. This made the story more interesting, and it probably mimics reality much closer than if she were to progressively improve in absence of downfalls until recovery.

Despite Deborah's intermittent problems and failures, which were inevitable, she begins to gradually make progress. She begins to realize that she had created Yr as a defense mechanism against the deceitful world, which all began in her childhood with the discovery and removal of a malignant tumor. This was one of the first times that she had been treated as if she were different from other people. She also begins to realize that she has many false, distorted memories and that she is an earth being who does not "infect" those around her with her poisonous presence. Deborah's world then turns from grey, dull, and numb to a wonder of miraculous sensations. She eventually moves from the asylum to outpatient housing, and she attains a General Equivalency Diploma (GED). Even then, Deborah is not completely recovered, and she may never be. As Dr. Fried had told her once in a session, "I never promised you a rose garden," which meant that she had never promised Deborah that it would be an easy journey. At the end of the novel, she faces her fears and accepts the fact that she must choose between Yr and the real world.

That everyone says "healthy" people can't understand this book almost disturbs me.. I identify very strongly with the main character, though I have never been diagnosed and don't suffer from episodes. In any event, I found the book utterly wonderful and could see it in my mind very clearly. I found myself wanting so badly for everything to come out all right for Deb, for her to be able to feel and see and touch again.. and it made me feel so much more alive. To merely be breathing and seeing things as they are seems so much more precious, even several years after reading this book.... I highly recommend it...

I really enjoyed this book, although it wrongly displayed schizophrenia. Deborah is admitted into a mental hospital for schizophrenia. She goes into another world she calls Yr where she is frequently punished because she can do no right in Yr. She has her own name in Yr and a whole other language in her world. She is completely detached from everyone else. Deborah has family problems and we learn about her past and more about her mother and father. Deborah needs to find her own cure, which the hospital helps her start by setting her with a wonderful psychologist.The book has a deep plot and can be a little hard to follow at times, but the small struggles are worth it.

This is an engaging, insightful story. It's hard not to identify with our young heroine, regardless of whether you're afflicted with mental illness or not. One of the main messages I gleaned from it is that medication may not be the answer for everyone, and the relationship with one's doctor is critical for proper healing....

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is Joanne Greenberg's autobiographical novel about her schizophrenia. In it, Deborah, a 16-year-old girl, spends several years in a mental hospital overcoming her illness.

There is little doubt that the story is rooted in personal experience. There seems to be no other way to explain schizophrenia in such minute detail. Emphasis on certain details, particularly with Deborah's parents and Dr. Fried, clearly indicates to the reader that many aspects of the story have not been fictionalized.

There are some problems with the writing. At times, Deborah reads people, both doctors and patients, in impossible detail that is annoying rather than profound. Just when the reader has decided, "Wow, maybe Deborah should be a psychiatrist," we're immediately told how Deborah never knew why many people disliked her.

The dialogue is also problematic. Deborah certainly doesn't talk like the average 16-year-old, which is fine, but everybody else in the book is similarly refined and sophisticated. The dialogue is stilted. This, combined with the author's narrative style, causes the book to come across as pretentious from time to time.

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden starts out promisingly enough, but after its first third it becomes rather tedious. The reader may well skim and then skip page after page of internal rambling monologue and dialogue and interaction with other patients that does nothing to advance the story. Ultimately, the novel is boring.

A note: the book also comes across briefly as unfriendly toward both pacifists and Christianity.

Come for the personal insights into mental illness, stay for- well, there's really nothing else to stay for.

NOT RECOMMENDED

I read this book before in high school, before having any real knowledge of mental illness and found it terribly confusing. Reading it now as a psychology major in college was a totally different experience. This fictional story tells of Deborah, a young woman committed to a mental hospital in the 1950's. This was written before doctors knew of chemical imbalances, so Deb's schizophrenia is attributed to a traumatic childhood surgery and an over-bearing grandfather. It's fascinating to explore her secret world of Yr and the gods that inhabit it. Also interesting to see how earlier psychologists might have treated patients. Even though this book is outdated it is still a very good book on mental illness.

I thought the book was kind of confusing when she kept going back and forth from Earth to Yr. The book has some places where it is hard to understand and it also has parts that makes you want to keep reading to find out what happens next.

This book respectfully offers a view of the mentally ill. It's so well written, I walk away from a chapter feeling amazed at the fortitude of those who are not mentally well. It's an interesting perspective not often put forward: the mental institution offering protection & not imprisonment, the need to be sick to get better. I found the main charactor Deborah believable & her fears understandable. I liked the description of those who protect themselves with the false "fine-fine." It made me laugh at the idiosyncracies of the sane, too.