MENTAL BJsABHTTY IN THE SHAKERS


This is a small attempt to looR at the amounts or mental
disorders in the various Shaker communities and their ways of
coping with it. While I have read the Watervliet New York
journals and, by a generous loan of microfilms from Steve
Paterwic, the Journals of the New Lebanon Ministry, I have also
relied on the offerings of other Shaker scholars to tell me of
the other communities. For this I would like to credit the
friendships I have formed through the Berkshire Seminars and
profer my most sincere thanks to those who responded so quickly
and completely.

One author, Louis J. Kern, in his book AN ORDERED LOVE, made an
attempt through New Lebanon records to study the effect of
celibacy on the Shaker members. He included suicide because he
attributes the suicide rate at New Lebanon -- four times that of
New England and that more suicides and insanity occurred during
the 1830s and 1870s. Times of greater apostasy. He attributes
the suicides to "the regimentation of Shaker life to crush out
sexual desire, a sense of social disintegration, personal
disorientation and isolation generated by guilt or shame" leading
to despair. I hesitate to cite him as an authority not only
because I question where he obtained his knowledge of the
feelings of the individual Shakers, but also because in some of
the cases he studied at Lebanon he included two I know occurred
at Watervliet.

However, when their mental confusion became too great, suicide
seemed to be the only way out and, of the eighteen cases I found,
nine chose drowing, seven hanging, two starved themselves and one
cut her own throat. Of these, five were probably cases of
senility, and two were teenagers.

I think we also have to remember that, while in some cases, those
that joined truly believed, they were a minority. For the
majority, as I heard Faith Andrews say at the Chatham Museum in
the program "A Talk with Faith Andrews", they joined because it
offered a better way of life than they could procure through
their own efforts on the outside. For some it meant that they
were "different" from others in the mainstream; for others it
offered a better way of life than they were able to procude by
their own efforts. Nowadays we perhaps better cope with those who
are different, at least I hope so. Certainly there are many
social agencies ready to help those whole mental capacities are
below average, as well as those who need help to support their