Shannon Lee 11/11/19

Memoir Paper 2

The Last Time I Wore a Dress

The Last Time I Wore a Dress highlighted mental patients and mental hospitals so bluntly

that it made me, as a reader, a little uncomfortable. In general, mental patients have a certain

label or stigma that our society has associated them to. They are considered unstable, crazy, and

not capable of surviving in “normal” society. It’s also not uncommon to think of patients in

mental hospitals as dangerous to themselves and others. After reading through this book, I would

say that there is some truth to these generalizations, but there is so much more complexity and

shades of gray than people realize. I think that as a society, myself included, people tend to

forget that patients at mental hospitals are still humans, with real, complex emotions. I think that

our tendency as humans is to disassociate from things that we don’t know or understand with

mental disorders being the perfect example of this. In The Last Time I Wore a Dress Daphne

Scholinski, or Dylan Scholinski as he likes to be called now, forces the reader out of that

dissociation and brings back the humanity that was lost.

For every generalized truth about mental hospitals, Scholinski relates to it from a human

perspective rather than an academic one. An example would be the assumption that residents of

mental hospitals are dangerous. There are some people that Scholinski talks about that need to be

looked after for both their safety and the safety of others. The first example that comes to mind is

Anne. Anne was a woman with eight different personalities and who consistently tried to hurt

herself and others. Anne scared Scholinski, even threatened to kill her, and yet as a reader you

weren’t scared of her. In fact, there was a sense of vulnerability to Anne that made you want to
help her. I felt this especially strong when Scholinski upset her by telling her that her family was

on the way. Her family was obviously a source of distress and fear for Anne and that

vulnerability made me want to sympathize with her. It’s hard to sympathize with something that

you don’t understand but Scholinski’s blunt way of narrating forced me out of my comfort zone

and highlighted characteristics that forced me to do exactly that. It also made me realize how

wary I am about mental hospitals because of my pre-conceived notions.

I never gave a lot of thought to mental hospitals because I was wary of them. I never

attempted to understand the people behind their diagnosis. I just took these stereotypes as facts

because that is what I always heard growing up. Scholinski revealed an uncomfortable fact about

myself that I didn’t know I had. The Last Time I Wore a Dress forced me out of my comfort zone

and made me realize that not everything is about a diagnosis. It made me remember that there’s

actual people behind those diagnosis with emotions, fears, and hope. A diagnosis doesn’t define

a person, in fact psychiatrists can be wrong. Before reading this book, it never occurred to me

that patients lie to their therapists about their disorders.

Scholinski exaggerated her alcohol and drug use to distract from her problems with her

gender. She exaggerated her alcohol and drug use so much that she was put into the rehab unit

when she transferred to Forest Hospital. This wasn’t the first time that she lied to her therapist

about her symptoms. During her stay at Michael Reese Hospital, Scholinski and some other

patients made bets on what different disorders they could get the doctors to add to their charts. It

shocked me how easy it was for them to fool the doctors and add random disorders to their chart

that they don’t have. The fact that these teenagers were so easily able to influence these trained

doctors was scary, especially because the disorders that they were adding to their chart seemed

so farfetched from the reason why they were in the hospital in the first place. I don’t know
whether Scholinski and her friends were that skilled in acting that they could successfully pull

off symptoms for different disorders or if the doctors in charge were looking for any opportunity

to label them with another diagnosis. It seemed to me, that therapists wanted their patients to

have more than one disorder, otherwise known as Comorbidity (Beidel, Bulik, &Stanely, 2016).

From out textbook, I know that disorders are complex and that they can’t be so simply defined

by one single disorder (Beidel, Bulik, & Stanely, 2016). I know that comorbidity allows for a

more encompassing diagnosis, but I got the feeling that there was another motive in the

Scholinski’s case.

Dr. Browning, Scholinski’s psychiatrist, seemed to think that the more disorders that he

could diagnosis her with, the more validation he would receive. It would mean that he’s doing

his job right, and he never tried to delve deeper into these “issues” that would randomly spring

up. There was no investigation into the causes of these new symptoms, it was just anther label

that was put onto her. I think a lot of problems could have been solved if Dr. Browning or any of

the nurses attempted to see through the distractions she caused by her exaggerations and lies. It

seemed like her doctors and nurses did what many people in our society do with regards to

mental disorders. They looked at Scholinski and her friends as experiments rather than human

beings and because of that she was able to easily distract them from her real problems with her

gender identity. Out of all the disorders she was diagnosed with gender identity disorder was the

one she related to, and because of that, it’s the one she tried her hardest to hide.

The way that Scholinski was treated for not being girly enough frustrated me throughout

the entire book. I know that this book is set in the 1980’s and that the idea of gender and Gender

Dysphoria wasn’t something that many people were comfortable with (Beidel, Bulik, & Stanely,

2016). I wasn’t alive during the 1980s, but I know that even now, some people can’t understand
how someone’s biological sex and gender are different, and I could only imagine how gender

and Gender Dysphoria were viewed back then. Scholinski is diagnosed with Gender Identity

Disorder, and she doesn’t like that label, it made her feel abnormal, like a “freak”. Reading about

the treatments that Scholinski had to endure because she wasn’t what society thought a girl

should be, caused me to become frustrated. My irritation was fueled by the fact that people who

were supposed to be her support system failed her.

Her parents should have been her two biggest sources of support, that’s what parents are

meant to do. They’re meant to protect their children, especially while they are young and

vulnerable. Scholinski’s parents didn’t do that. Both or her parents went through traumatic times

in their lives and because of that their ability to be good parents was almost non-existent. I think

that both parents were suffering from Posttraumatic stress disorder (Beidel, Bulik, & Stanley,

2016). Scholinksi’s mother grew up in an abuse, controlling household, while her father suffered

and broke down during the Vietnam War. Each of her parents dealt with their PTSD in different

ways, none of them were healthy, and all of them hurt Scholinski. Her dad would become angry

and frequently beat her, while her mother ran away from her children and her responsibilities.

Whenever Scholinski went to stay with her mother, she would never get any attention, and in

most instances her mother acted just as immature, if not more so than Scholinski herself. Many

times throughout the book, Scholinski would talk about her parents and the feeling that if she

disappeared, her parents would be relieved. This feeling of being a burden was also very

apparent in the book that we read for our first memoir paper. Both books had very different

disorders and experiences but, their relationships with their parents had some similarities. In both

books, the parents blamed their children their existence. Both sets of parents had their own
undiagnosed mental disorders that they didn’t handle well, and the biggest commonality is that

they failed to support their children.

In Scholinski’s case that lack of support continued with all of the adult authority figures

in her life. Whenever Scholinski did feel a shred of that support from an adult, she would do

anything to keep that support in her life, so much so that it became obsessive and unhealthy. In

turn, that unhealthy obsession would drive away that source of support and again she would find

herself without a support system. We saw a perfect example of this in form of her attachment to

a nurse she had at Michael Reese Hospital named Kay. Scholinski desperately wanted love and

attention, and if she ever received just a little, she would latch on to it with all her might. Nurse

Kay would listen to Scholinski and would give her that positive attention she craved and because

of that Scholinski desperately wanted Nurse Kay to adopt her. All she wanted to be part of a

normal loving family and she thought that Nurse Kay would be the one to give it to her. When

Nurse Kay left the hospital for a brief period, Scholinski sent Nurse Kay letter after letter telling

her how much she loves her and trying to convince Nurse Kay should to adopt her. I think that

Scholinski was experiencing some of the symptoms of Separation anxiety disorder (Beidel,

Bulik, & Stanely). She grew attached to Nurse Kay and didn’t know how to act when she was

gone. Unfortunately, her separation anxiety and her fear of being abandoned caused her to latch

onto Nurse Kay in an unhealthy manner and Nurse Kay ended up distancing herself from

Scholinski. The only people that Scholinski seemed to have was the other residents of the

hospitals that she lived in.

As a reader, I got the feeling that Scholinski found comfort in the fact that she wasn’t

considered as abnormal as other residents in the hospital. It seemed like she never took anything

thing that the nurses or the doctors told her seriously. Outside of the hospital walls, she would be
exhibiting very Abnormal behavior (Beidel, Bulik, & Stanely, 2016) but compared to the other

residents her behavior seemed extremely tame. I think that’s part of the reason why she made

such exaggerated stories, so she would be able to fit in with the rest of residents. Scholinski

didn’t feel like she fit in anywhere. She didn’t fit in with “normal” society because of her

behavior was different from the societal and culture norms that she was supposed to follow,

while at the same time she felt too “normal” to fit in with the residents of these mental hospitals.

She was in this in-between stage where, her riding a bike down the street shirtless broke an

important societal norm, but she also had to exaggerate her alcohol and drug use in order to be

considered “unstable” enough to belong at a mental hospital. She never felt like she belonged,

not inside of the hospital, not outside with her family, not even in her own body. She lived a

really lonely existence and I couldn’t help but sympathize with her and I had such a strong desire

to help her while I was reading this book. I wanted to help her understand this disorder they

labeled her with instead of dismissing it.

In the ending of The Last Time I Wore a Dress, Scholinski gives a definition of Gender

Identity Disorder according to a book called the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel of Mental

Disorders”. Scholinski didn’t agree with the manual’s definition, in fact she called it “ludicrous”

and she couldn’t relate to it. I wondered whether this was because she didn’t have Gender

Identity Disorder, or if the definition itself was so biased and constrictive that she couldn’t relate

to it. My curiosity caused me to do a little more research on Google, and the first thing I found

out is that Daphne Scholinski is now Dylan Scholinski. He decided to transition away from his

biological gender. I still referred to Scholinski as a “her” throughout this reflection, simply

because Daphne Scholinski is still penned as the author of this book. She still identified as a

female throughout this book, so that’s the pronoun I used when talking about her experiences
during this time period. This research did satisfy my curiosity and gave me the answer to my

questions. I think that the definition in the DSM was biased and had negative connotations to it

that Scholinski automatically dismissed the entire disorder.

Modern’s society’s view on gender dysphoria and transgendered people in general isn’t

perfect and our society has a lot more work to do in terms of education, but I think that

Scholinski would have had such a different experience, had only she been born a few years later.

This book not only educated me on the flaws that occur within the mental disorder community =,

but it also made me think how many other people have been told that they’re crazy or wrong for

being themselves. It made me wonder how people just lumped everyone with a mental disorder

together. It made me think about my own opinions and subconscious prejudices and what I can

do to better myself. No matter how uncomfortable or frustrated this book made me, I think I’m

better for reading it.

Beidel, D. C., Bulik, C. M., & Stanley, M. A. (2016). Abnormal Psychology: A Science

Practioner Approach (4th ed.). Pearson.

Scholinski, D. (1998). The Last Time I Wore A Dress. Riverhead Books.