Configurations of Compulsory Care and Alternative Treatments in Beate Grimsrud’s En dåre fri and Linda Boström Knausgård’s Oktoberbarn

Abstract

This article addresses the critique of Swedish compulsory psychiatric care as it has been portrayed in novels and art projects over the last fifteen years. The aim is to examine how Swedish compulsory care is portrayed from a patient perspective by analysing two autobiographical novels: Beate Grimsrud’s En dåre fri, 2010 [A fool, free] and Linda Boström Knausgård’s Oktoberbarn, 2019 [October child]. Within Scandinavian research on illness narratives, depictions of contemporary compulsory care have received little to no attention, which makes this study particularly needed. Analysis of representations in the novels is put in relation to the understanding of compulsory care expressed in recent medical literature and to humanistic research on psychiatric care and treatment.

The analysis shows that the novels depict Swedish compulsory care and its coercive measures—chemical restraint, physical restraint and electroconvulsive therapy—in highly critical terms. The power of doctors and their attitudes towards patients are also criticised, while relationships with other healthcare professionals are portrayed as being based more on equality and thus as more constructive. Through depictions of alternative treatment methods in the novels—conversation, memory work, and writing—the novels also show that another kind of compulsory care is possible, in which coercion is downplayed and interpersonal relationships and the spoken or written word are in focus.