Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

Mimi: 1951, Colorado Springs, Colorado

Shortly after moving to Colorado Springs for the first time, Don and Mimi befriended a zoologist who agreed to teach them the basics of falconry. Although trapping and taming wild birds wasn’t something Mimi would ever have envisioned herself doing, the practice’s illustrious history appealed to her: Mimi had been born into a wealthy family from Texas, and while her parents divorced when she was just five, Mimi never stopped priding herself on her pedigree.

A childhood spent in New York City following her mother’s remarriage had further cemented Mimi’s love of fine culture and introduced her to Don, whom she met and began dating in high school. After graduation, Don enrolled at Georgetown in the hopes of one day working for the State Department. However, while serving in the Marine Corps Reserve, Don was fast-tracked as a naval officer, and in 1944, he received his first posting.

Mimi had initially enrolled in college, but she never completed her degree; she and Don eloped shortly before he shipped out, and shortly after Mimi’s discovery that she was pregnant. As Don took part in the final months of fighting near Okinawa, Mimi suffered severe morning sickness. She gave birth to their first son, Donald, in July of 1945.

1903, Dresden, Germany

One foundational text in the study of schizophrenia is a firsthand account from a turn-of-the-century German man named Daniel Paul Schreber. After experiencing a psychotic break at the age of 51, Schreber was diagnosed with “dementia praecox”—the original term used to describe schizophrenia—and was committed to Sonnenstein Asylum, where he wrote Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. In this work, Schreber described the many strange spiritual and cosmic events he believed himself to have experienced: for instance, being impregnated by God.

At the time Schreber was committed, the idea of mental illness was still relatively new; for most of human history, mental disorders had been considered moral or spiritual in nature. However, while the scientists who coined the terms dementia praecox and schizophrenia believed they were dealing with a physical disorder, its mechanism was unclear. Certain families experienced high rates of mental illness, but schizophrenia didn’t seem to be inherited in any predictable pattern, and in some cases, it appeared spontaneously.

Meanwhile, another theory of the disease was taking shape. After reading Schreber’s work, Sigmund Freud determined that psychosis stemmed from unresolved Oedipal issues. The debate about the relative importance of nature and nurture would remain unresolved for decades to come: “This is the argument the Galvins were born into. By the time the Galvin boys came of age, the field was splitting open and dividing and subdividing almost like a cell” (20).

Mimi

Don returned from the Pacific six months after his son’s birth and finished his bachelor’s degree. The couple’s second son, Jim, was born in 1947, at which point Don’s naval career took the family to Rhode Island and then to Virginia. Faced with Mimi’s frustration—she had wanted to remain in New York and hoped Don would enter law school—Don reassured her that the Navy would pay for his further education, though they’d be disappointed: “Despite glowing reviews and hearty recommendations from his commanding officers, he was turned down each time he applied for graduate-level course work” (22). Meanwhile, Mimi gave birth to a third son, John, in 1949.

That same year, Don finally resigned from the Navy, only to join the Air Force as a lieutenant. Initially, it seemed as though the family would still be able to live in New York, but at the last moment, the Air Force chose Colorado Springs rather than Long Island for its new headquarters. The Galvins moved there in early 1951, and Mimi slowly overcame her disappointment to make a new life for herself, becoming involved in an amateur opera group, taking up watercolors, and converting to Catholicism to please Don’s family.

With Don increasingly absorbed by his work and hobbies, Mimi was also the primary disciplinarian for her children, who now numbered five (Brian and Michael having been born in 1951 and 1953, respectively): “Who needed anyone else, Mimi thought, when she obviously was the best person to teach the boys, as they grew older, about opera and art and the observation of exotic birds, the examination of strange insects, and the identification of wild mushrooms?” (27).

In 1954, the Galvins left Colorado Springs for four years in Quebec and California. By the time they returned, they had three more sons: Richard (1954), Joe (1956), and Mark (1957). 

1948, Rockville, Maryland

In 1935, a therapist named Frieda Fromm-Reichmann joined the staff of Chestnut Lodge, which had been treating schizophrenic patients since its opening in 1910. Fromm-Reichmann adhered to the Freudian view of schizophrenia as stemming from childhood trauma; she also believed that it was curable with psychotherapy, and her efforts with patients seemed to produce results. Her most famous success story involved the teenager Joanne Greenberg, who published a fictionalized account of her treatment—I Never Promised You a Rose Garden—in 1964.

In some ways, Fromm-Reichmann's methods were revolutionary; typical psychiatric “treatments” of the time consisted of injections of turpentine, insulin-induced comas, and lobotomies. What's more, the view of schizophrenia as a hereditary disorder had often gone hand in hand with advocacy of eugenics.

However, in shifting the conversation surrounding mental illness to environmental factors, Fromm-Reichmann ended up placing a disproportionate amount of blame on parents—particularly mothers. In 1948, Fromm-Reichmann coined the term “schizophrenogenic” to describe women whose inappropriately dominant role in the family supposedly set the stage for their children’s illness. Although this theory had little evidence to support it, it quickly became widespread amongst practitioners.