Have you gained sympathy for Nurse Ratched

elkpark · Oct 19, 2016

Funny you should ask that. When I first saw "Cuckoo's Nest" long before I went into nursing, back when I was a young hippie, I thought she was a horrible, sadistic, monster. Seeing the movie again after I had been in psychiatric nursing for several years, I had an entirely different view; she's a responsible, competent, caring (by the standards of the time in which the movie was set) RN; okay, wrapped a little tighter than I would like, but, still, basically okay (again, by the standards and expectations of the time).

DesiDani · Oct 19, 2016

I wander if every nurse has a little Nurse Ratched in tdnhem.

Libby1987 · Oct 19, 2016

Well now I want to watch the movie, I can otherwise only remember slivers of it, not enough to answer.

AllOfMyWat · Oct 19, 2016

In the book, she's a gas-lighting monster who doesn't advocate for her patient. She is an actual abusive nurse, including the oh-so precious lateral violence to a young, pretty coworker. No, I have no sympathy for her, and if she was my coworker IRL, I'd tell her she brought the assault from Mack on herself.

sevensonnets · Oct 20, 2016

No, Desi Dani, every nurse does not have a little Nurse Ratched in them.

kp1987 · Oct 21, 2016

Lol my dad always calls me nurse ratchet...

Buyer beware, BSN · Oct 26, 2016

In the book, she's a gas-lighting monster who doesn't advocate for her patient. She is an actual abusive nurse, including the oh-so precious lateral violence to a young, pretty coworker. No, I have no sympathy for her, and if she was my coworker IRL, I'd tell her she brought the assault from Mack on herself.

Boy did you articulate what I could only feel.

I went to see this movie in 1975 in NYC after having read the book by Ken Kesey. The zeitgeist of the 60s and part of the 70s was heavily into questioning all sorts of conventions and authority as we knew it.

This movie was meant to be an indictment of what was considered the medieval, anti-therapeutic approach to treatment of the mentally ill at the time which was defined by the use of a surgical technique known as the lobotomy for those patients considered to have severe, intractable mental illness and before the advent of of the first anti-psychotic Thorazine in 1954. The last lobotomy in the U.S. was said to have taken place in 1977.

This was the operation performed against his will on the film's protagonist, Randle Patrick Mc Murphy, played by Jack Nicholson, when he invoked nurse Ratched's wrath by attempting to strangle her for what he perceived to be her involvement in the psychological dismantling of another vulnerable patient who subsequently committed suicide.

Yes, this nurse ( character) did exhibit some therapeutic qualities but I believe these were overshadowed by a passive-aggressive streak that was characterized by one of the patients as "resembling a doll on the outside, but mechanized and steel underneath."

After seeing this movie I will say that my opinion of nurses in general and psychiatric nurses in particular remained at a low point for many years until I became one myself which in most instances redeemed my estimation of the "helping profession" at least for a while.

I will say though that the true highpoint of that movie was standing in line to get into the theatre with the very beautiful Swedish actress Maud Adams (namedropper) and having a lovely conversation about this, that and the other thing all the time thinking that she was indeed one beautiful, accomplished woman talking to a schmuck kid like me.