as someone who studied in psychology a lot in the past, i had only ever heard of this movie's title invoked the same way as things like Little Albert and the Stanford Prison Experiment. i think it way maybe on a test once. anyways, now i'm older and most of the information i studied really has only left me with this exact kind of passing familiarity. however, i can tell you now if i had actually Watched this in any of my classes, it probably would have had a greater effect on me than the texts i was reading (i'm a visual learner, what can i say)
horrifying look at bureaucracy and (literally) institutional abusers of power. really puts on full display how much the wider system of psychology of the time was still fully in the "winging it" approach and already falling into the "well, you don't really think you Can do anything for them, and then one of them writes you saying it worked!" pitfall of social work. a perpetually underpaid, understaffed pit of Good Intentions that still ends up just being a different kind of prison to send people that society would kindly like swept away please thank youuuuu
really love Wiseman's directing here, his editing really carries the film. so many great moments of weaving together inhumane cruelty, long shots of faces to show the humanity rather than the spectacle, politics (believe it or not: the late 1960s was a TIME for politics), and the rituals we come to for community and comfort (primarily music and religion) into a cohesive narrative with no voiceover or talking heads segments. excited to watch more of his stuff
definitely had the thought "some of these guys would have done numbers in early-10s tumblr" by the end lmao