The “bull goose looney” as a Totem Guide for Chief’s Writing Himself to Freedom

This paper examines the institutionalisation of psychiatric treatment in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Taking up the work of Michel Foucault, the paper examines how those suffering from mental illness were classified as disruptive and unfit for society, subsequently labelled mad and institutionalised in facilities more akin to semi-judicial structures than medical facilities. McMurphy, having manipulated a transfer for himself from a state work farm to what he perceives will be the less rigorous confines of a mental institution, epitomises the disruptive presence of the madmen, bringing a world of disorder and chaos to the staff and patients of the mental ward. Self-proclaimed as the head “bull goose looney”, McMurphy reflects the counter-culture movements of the 1960s in the United States in his rejection of the rules and regulations imposed upon him by what amounts to a totalitarian system of control. A wild indomitable force of nature, McMurphy becomes a totem for Chief and the other patients, an embodiment of the human spirit the patients have forfeited inside the institutional system.