Essay Questions

Deconstruct Dr. Grene’s analogy of ‘Ewes, shepherd and cliff edge.”

Dr. Grene expounds, “So often my patients seem to me like a crowd of ewes pouring down a hill towards the cliff edge. What I need to be is a shepherd that knows all the whistles. I know none of them. But we shall see.” The ewes are representative of the vulnerable psychotic patients whose madness would lead them to precarious situations which the ‘cliff edge’ embodies. Dr. Grene is an archetypal shepherd who is anticipated to safeguard the patients from the destruction which is inherent in cases of lunacy. The primary tool which facilitates Dr. Grene’s shepherding is psychoanalysis as it qualifies the doctor to distinguish the causes and repercussions of the patients’ insanity.

Expound the primary realities which Roseanne submits to.

Roseanne explicates, “I am completely alone, there is no one in the world that knows me now outside of this place, all my own people, the few farthings of them that once were, my little wren of a mother I suppose in chief, they are all gone now. And my persecutors are gone in the main I believe, and the reason for all this is that I am an old, old woman now, I may be as much as a hundred, though I do not know, and no one knows. I am only a thing left over, a remnant woman, and I do not even look like a human being no more, but a scraggy stretch of skin and bone in a bleak skirt and blouse, and a canvas jacket, and I sit here in my niche like a songless robin – no, like a mouse that died under the hearthstone where it was warm, and lies now like a mummy in the pyramids.” First Roseanne submits to loneliness since most of her family members are deceased. Second, Roseanne weathers the degeneration which is inherent in old age. As a result of the deterioration and solitary lifestyle, Roseanne loses her feeling of self-importance for she equates herself to a rat. Accordingly, Roseanne does not derive optimal utility from her existence.