# The Rosenhan Experiment · The Cult Dossier · The Atlas · The Congregation of Tomorrow

Source: https://congregationoftomorrow.org/atlas/library/cults/162-the-rosenhan-experiment/ · The Congregation of Tomorrow · the Atlas · language: en
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The Cult Dossier · No. 162 · Psychiatry / The Asylum
The Rosenhan Experiment
On Being Sane in Insane Places
1973 (challenged from 2019) · United States
XV. THE ASYLUM — WHEN MEDICINE DECIDED WHOSE MIND WAS WRONG
None.
### Who led it
### What it worshipped and taught
### Who was in it
### How it ended, or where it stands
### The dead
### Of note
### Its timeline
- 19 JANUARY 1973 ON BEING SANE IN INSANE PLACES is published in SCIENCE. Rosenhan reports that EIGHT PSEUDOPATIENTS presented at TWELVE HOSPITALS, each saying only that they heard a voice saying empty, hollow or thud. All were admitted; seven were diagnosed with schizophrenia. They then behaved normally. Stays ranged from 7 to 52 days, averaging 19. ALL WERE DISCHARGED AS SCHIZOPHRENIA IN REMISSION — that is, still ill.
- 1973 A second, more damaging claim: a teaching hospital, told pseudopatients would be sent over three months, rated 41 of 193 new patients as impostors, with 42 more suspected. ROSENHAN SAID HE HAD SENT NOBODY.
- 1973–1980 The paper lands during a crisis of confidence in psychiatric diagnosis and becomes a standard citation for the unreliability of the categories. IT CONTRIBUTED MATERIALLY TO THE PRESSURE THAT PRODUCED DSM-III IN 1980, with its operational checklists — an irony, in that a study attacking diagnosis helped produce the most rigid diagnostic manual yet written.
- 2019 SUSANNAH CAHALAN PUBLISHES THE GREAT PRETENDER after years in Rosenhan's archive. She could identify only TWO of the eight pseudopatients: Rosenhan himself and BILL UNDERWOOD, a Stanford graduate student. She found a third, HARRY LANDO, WHOSE EXPERIENCE HAD BEEN POSITIVE AND WHO WAS LEFT OUT OF THE PAPER on the stated ground that he had falsified parts of his personal history. She found Rosenhan's own admission record, which showed he had reported far more than a single voice: months of symptoms, putting copper pots over his ears to drown out noises, and being suicidal for many months. She concluded that the remaining pseudopatients may never have existed.
- 2019–present Cahalan does not claim to have proved fabrication and this file does not either. WHAT IS ESTABLISHED IS THAT NO EVIDENCE INDEPENDENT OF ROSENHAN'S OWN ACCOUNT SUPPORTS THE EXISTENCE OF SIX OF THE EIGHT, and that at least one real participant was excluded for reporting the wrong result. Rosenhan took an advance for a book about the study and never finished it.
- FEBRUARY 2023 THE HISTORIAN ANDREW SCULL publishes ROSENHAN REVISITED: SUCCESSFUL SCIENTIFIC FRAUD in History of Psychiatry.
### Its people
### David Rosenhan
David L. Rosenhan
Author of On Being Sane in Insane Places · 22 November 1929 – 6 February 2012 · active 1973–2012
Before the law. No proceedings. The paper has NOT been retracted and Science has not withdrawn it.
Where things stand. Deceased 2012, seven years before the archival findings were published, so HE NEVER ANSWERED THEM. This file does not assert that the study was fabricated; it records that the evidence for six of the eight participants cannot be found, and that one real participant was excluded for reporting the wrong result.
- 19 JANUARY 1973 ON BEING SANE IN INSANE PLACES published in Science.
- 1970s The paper contributes to the pressure that produced DSM-III in 1980.
- 1980s Contracted to write a book on the study; never delivers it and returns the advance.
- 2012 Dies.
- 2019 CAHALAN PUBLISHES THE GREAT PRETENDER, documenting that most of the pseudopatients cannot be shown to have existed.
Checked 2026-09-05
### Susannah Cahalan
—
Journalist; author of The Great Pretender · born 1985 · active 2019–present
Before the law. None.
Where things stand. Living. SHE HAS BEEN CAREFUL NOT TO CLAIM PROOF OF FABRICATION, and this file follows her in that. What is established is an absence of corroboration, plus one documented exclusion.
- 2009
- 2012 BRAIN ON FIRE published.
- 2019 THE GREAT PRETENDER published.
Checked 2026-09-05 · living: health details are kept at home
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