Bellevue Hospital
The New York City public hospital whose psychiatric ward held Mailer for seventeen days of observation, 22 November–8 December 1960, after he stabbed Adele Morales in the early morning of 20 November.
After his arrest, Mailer was diagnosed by Dr. Conrad Rosenberg as having “an acute paranoid breakdown with delusional thinking” and, over his own protest, committed by a magistrate to Bellevue’s violent ward for observation. He fought the commitment publicly, fearing it would discredit his work: “If this happens, for the rest of my life my work will be considered as the work of a man with a disordered mind”. He was released after seventeen days, on 8 December 1960.
Stub; to be expanded as the episode’s later treatment (in Mailer’s own writing and in the biographies) is brought into the register.
Related pages
- 1960 | Adele Morales
- Norman Mailer to Undergo Test in Wife Stabbing | Norman Mailer Sent to Bellevue | Norman Mailer Sent to Bellevue over His Protest in Wife Knifing