Lou Reed’s sister talks about singer’s electroshock therapy

Days before Lou Reed’s posthumous induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, his sister wrote about long-held rumors concerning the musician’s mental health treatment and history. Merrill Reed Weiner said she hoped the piece would provide “clarity and context” to Reed’s childhood, which has been subject to increased scrutiny since he died of liver disease in October 2013. In the essay, she disputes rumors that he was sent to electroshock therapy for homosexual urges and that he was abused by their father.

“For all those whose families’ lives were damaged by the pervasive medical thinking of the time, I hope to offer solace and comfort,” wrote Weiner, a psychotherapist. She published the story on the online publishing site Medium.

She said that as a teenager in Long Island, New York, Reed avoided socialising and was very anxious, sometimes hiding in his room to avoid meeting people.

“Panic attacks and social phobias beset him. He possessed a fragile temperament. His hyper-focus on the things he liked led him to music and it was there that he found himself.”

She said that at 16, he started gigging in New York City, experimenting with drugs and closing off communication with his parents.

Weiner chastised the mental healthcare system of the 1960s and how it was treated as a family secret by society.

“Families at a loss for how to deal with their loved ones’ genetically based mental illness were treated as perpetrators by the psychiatric establishment,” Weiner said. “They were blamed for poor parenting, left feeling hopeless and guilty.”

She said their parents sought psychiatric help again after Reed suffered a “nervous breakdown” in his freshman year at New York University. The doctor accused Reed’s mother of causing schizophrenia by not picking her son up enough as an infant. Weiner repeatedly emphasized that her parents believed they were responsible for all of Reed’s mental issues. “It was a belief and a burden she took to her grave,” Weiner said of their mother.

Reed had returned to a state of high anxiety and avoidance, when a psychiatrist recommended electroshock therapy. “Each of us suffered the loss of our dear sweet Lou in our own private hell, unhelped and undercut by the medical profession,“ Weiner said.

Weiner struck down the rumor that Reed was sent to electroshock therapy because he had homosexual urges. “My parents were many things, but homophobic they were not,” she said.

But she acknowledged that the treatments were a mistake that tore apart the family and disputed claims that their father hit Reed.

“I must say that I never saw my father raise a hand to anyone, certainly not to us and never to my mother,” Weiner said. “Nor did I see a lack of love for his son during our childhood.”

Source: The Guardian