Randle Patrick McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) escapes work on a prison farm by feigning mental illness, but he finds himself in a far more coercive institution than the one he left behind. A wisecracking, rebellious patient and prisoner, 38 years old, is escorted into the ward where he meets some of the bizarre, most memorable patients and inmates. The other men, both sane and insane, are just like him: they hide in the locked ward from the law, their families, or the despair of their own lives. Its allegorical theme is set in the world of an authentic mental hospital at the Oregon State Hospital in Salem, Oregon in the 1970's.

The life is dull and repetitive. The inmates are so used to its repetitiveness that they have tuned the exciting part of life out completely. Everyone on the ward seems to mutually fear Nurse Ratched, who instigates very strict policies. McMuprhy, who was diagnosed with Schizophrenia, knows right away that something is wrong and doesn't like the way they are treated. He sees the inmates not caring that they are

Kesey, Ken, & Milos Forman (1975). One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. Republic Pictures.

there and not thinking for themselves. He decides to breathe some fun into their existance on several occasions. He starts a world series game, as well as several betting card games. He makes a bet that within a week, he will completely and utterly destroy Nurse Ratched's routines... basically screw up the works indefinately. They all say that it will never happen but are willing to help in anyway. McMurphy soon becomes a leader to his fellow patients and overturns the dominion held by iron-fisted Nurse Ratchet. Nurse Ratched signs him up for shock treatment, and what not, but she never manages to break him. He forms a strong bond with everyone on the ward, and they begin to smile.

Since there is no real cure for schizophrenia there are only treatments. Treatments can be anything from group therapy to antipsychotic drugs. First of all I want to tell you about some well-intended therapies of this century that were carried out with little scientific bases and unhappy results. These include the insulin coma, electroconvulsive therapy, and a form surgery called the frontal lobotomy. Insulin is a hormone in the body that controls the levels of blood sugar. When given too much insulin the supply of sugar to the brain decreases to the point where coma occurs. 1933 a German physician named Manfred Sakel induced insulin comain some schizophrenics concluding that it helped relieve their syptoms (Stone 66). Happy to the news, American doctors rushed to induce insulin coma into severe schizophrenics, and most died as a result (stone 67). Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is another example of a widely used therapy with little evidence of it's usefullness. ECT is breif pulses of electricity that are passed through the brain. Unfortunately it works for severe depression but not schizophrenia. Probably the most outrageous therapy, if you want to call it that, was the frontal lobotomy. The American psychiatrist Soloman H. Snyder has called it "barbaric" and "diabolical" (Anderson 20). A frontal lobotomy is the surgical removal of p

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Approximate Word count = 1429
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)