"Rubber Room"

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Mar 1, 2006, at 8:21 AM, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:

> Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>>
>> the development is pretty clearly from the psychiatric-care sense (a
>> rubber room is one so designed that potentially violent psychiatric
>> patients confined in it  cannot harm themselves) to the sense of a
>> room that *makes* you crazy, specifically because there's nothing for
>> you to do in it.  so the psychiatric connection is preserved, but
>> reinterpreted.
>
> Arnold, that's not my interpretation--if I saw something like one's
> office being referred to as a "rubber room", my assumption would
> be not that it _makes_ you crazy, but that it _reflects_ your
> craziness: I am crazy, therefore I work in a rubber room.

i said that because this interpretation was explicit in one of
barry's quotes.

arnold

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