Excerpt from Letter about Manfred Bleuler from Jeffrey Fortuna to Edward Podvoll

Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler, the father of Manfred Bleuler who is discussed in this letter, worked alongside his patients “in an experimental healing community that he founded at the old monastery at Rhineau [the Rhine]” (Podvoll, Recovering Sanity, p. 4).

22 March 99

Dear Mingyur,

Yes, hello Ed ... I'm in the Frankfurt air terminal waiting for my next flight. I've just finished up a Windhorse visit to Zurich, which went well as far as I can tell.

I ended up spending quite a bit of time with Daniel Hell, Director of the Burgholzli Hospital (which has since been renamed). I asked him several questions about Manfred Bleuler's last days and death. He died at age 86 or 87. He spent the final year of his life at home, where he died, mainly in bed. Apparently, there was no specific cause of death, but rather slow and steady weakening of the system—maybe “heart failure” they say. Just plain old age. His wife is a nurse, I think maybe 10 years younger, and she was his primary attendant and caregiver into death. So he died quietly at home with his wife. There are significant archival materials kept away somewhere. 

One story is ... he originally followed the training of a surgeon, his first career choice, but due to an accident (I think related to a horse) he was unable to use his hands well and so changed over to psychiatry. I tried to get up to see the old monastery/therapeutic community at Rheingau, but it was too far from Zurich for our schedule. I did visit the Burgholzli, which is up on the hill overlooking the Zurich lake, as you may recall. It was there that I gave a public lecture on Windhorse—in fact, in the very old lecture hall that Manfred Bleuler used to teach in ... on his very spot! Somehow, that made quite an impression on me—a call, an insistence to live up to a high standard of compassion and intellectual precision, and especially to raise the banner of recovery. 

No one mentioned a word about Manfred’s actual legacy, his teaching, his focus on recovery ... only me! I quoted The Seduction of Madness's reference to the “only 3 interventions that matter” according to Manfred during my 2-day workshop, in the evening lecture. And I told the brief story of your and Candace's visit to him many years ago, and of his long-standing struggle against the "prejudice" that once one is mentally disturbed one will always be so. But again, no one came back to this in the discussion period following the lecture. So, there I sat in the Manfred Bleuler spot, looking up at about a hundred people who had come to hear about Windhorse—the seats were seat/desk combos going up in rows like a theatre. Apparently, this was a wide array of people, psychiatrists, other mental health people, mental health consumers, family members—Daniel Hell was the host, introducing me formally, and he was very excited and impressed by the amount and range of people attending ... he said it was sort of “first time for this.”

I tried to sense if there were any Bleuler family dralas around, but who knows. I was struck by the amount of intelligence in the room—such mature, thoughtful people ... very good questions. Later everybody commented on the good energy and high degree of alertness/awareness everybody was in—good material! A mighty fine horse we have here, Ed.

Ed — sometimes I wonder what you think of me these days! I, among many others, not soaked in daily practice and living from that place. I imagine I sometimes appear as a worry-wart, impatient, maybe even greedy and attached to people, ideas, things ... my own safety or laziness preoccupations. Sometimes I feel this way in contrast to the spirit of your retreat glimpsed thru your letters. I am swimming, climbing, warrioring in what seems a world in free-fall, at least on societal and environmental levels. The world is at war in Yugoslavia, as I'm sure you are aware of.

Anyway, I realize I "can't do it all" so I'm experimenting with relaxing and lightening up ... 

So, dear friend — thank you for your letters and our on-going exchange.

Much love,

Jeff