Your wife is nuts!

November 3, 2008 9:17 PM

In 1960, what level of confidentiality could a woman going to a psychiatrist expect in terms of her husband?

That is, would a doctor treat a woman patient like a child, and report back to the husband on their discussions without thinking he was violating confidentiality?

Or, would a psychiatrist who shared details about a conversation with a female patient with her husband be breaking the norms of the time?

posted by JakeWalker to Society & Culture (6 answers total)

OMG. Have you been watching the first season of Mad Men? For the uninitiated, that's exactly what the show's main character Don Draper was doing to his dissatisfied and somewhat depressed wife Betty. He was getting regular, detailed, telephone reports from her psychiatrist on her progress--or lack thereof--unbeknownst to her. Turned out, the main reason for Betty's "issues" was her husband's rampant infidelity, which Don didn't realize she knew about until...well, I won't spoil it. That may or may not have been the norm of time but it certainly was discomforting to watch, even in a fictional setting.
posted by fuse theorem at 9:57 PM on November 3, 2008

Response by poster: Hahaha. That's what inspired the question. Got into a fight about whether it was common or he was sending her to someone he knew he could compromise. I won't tell you what side I took.
posted by JakeWalker at 10:05 PM on November 3, 2008

On MadMen, I'm pretty sure Don initiated, arranged, and paid for Betty's appointments with the shrink. So, it could be argued that the fix was in from the outset that Don would get regular reports.

Had Betty herself sought-out psychiatric help, independent of Don, I think it would take some serious arm-twisting to get the shrink to secretly report to Don (assuming no personal relationship with Don, or membership in the "old boy" network) Even in patriarchal 1960.

MadMen rocks.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:34 AM on November 4, 2008

Happened in the 80s too. Probably still does.
posted by gjc at 4:40 AM on November 4, 2008

I'd guess it was very common. Mad Men's creators are perfectionists when it comes to these sorts of details, and very few mistakes have been found in the show as a whole. I can't imagine that they'd allow something so central to the plot to be ahistorical.

Aside from that, I these sorts of legal rights probably varied state to state during the period. The patients' rights movement didn't really begin until later in the 1960s. Similarly married women in particular lacked a number of basic civil rights during the period -- states didn't even begin to define marital rape as a crime until the 1970s, for example.
posted by susanvance at 7:45 AM on November 4, 2008

You could contact the APA and find out about their Code of Conduct at the time. I expect that now, that sort of thing would be considered unethical.
posted by Gor-ella at 8:37 AM on November 4, 2008