William Graebner

This book (or essay, as the author refers to it as) is a bit academic (I found the section on her trial a bit tedious) but he captures the turmoil and class struggle that existed in the 70's, post Vietnam War, post off-the-rails 60's, a period of time when we were wandering, looking for firm ground to stand on and not yet finding it. The story is every bit as much about the times as it is about Patty Hearst and what happened to her. I remember that time all too well, as she is only one year younger than me. I remember feeling vindicated when this "rich girl" was locked up for her "crimes". After reading this, I realize just how wrong that was, but it was the mainstream attitude among those I associated with. We've come a long way from those years. Thankfully. If you have any interest in that time period, and/or the evolution of thought surrounding victims of crimes and circumstances and what those caught in that vortex are responsible for, this is for you.… (mer)

"At one level these questions were about Patty, about her personality, her identity, and her social being. At another, more fundamental level, they probed the qualities and dimensions of what social scientists called, in the 1950s, the "American character" and, in the 1970s, "human nature."

Patty's Got a Gun: Patricia Hearst in 1970s America by William Graebner

I’ve read numerous books on Patty Hearst and I found this to be the most comprehensive and informative one.

It’s a pretty thick book but it gives you as much information as you could possibly want. This book does not come to any conclusions on the innocence or the guilt of Patty Hearst. What it does do and what it does well, is take the reader into that time period while Humanizing Hearst and all the people around her.

Guilty or innocent? Stockholm syndrome? That’s for the reader to decide. Of all the Hearst books around I have found this one to be the most informative and most well written.… (mer)

Although classified as true crime, this treatment of the Patty Hearst ordeal is unlike any other true crime book I have read. Rather than present the events chronologically, this book tends to present events in the context of the culture of the nation. As someone who did not live during the time of the kidnapping and conviction of Patricia Hearst, I felt lost at times, particularly in the first third of the book. However, as an exposé of the American psyche during the 1970s, the author’s research and analysis were prodigious.

Early on in the book, Graebner states that if Patty had been tried ten years earlier or ten years later, the outcome of her trial would surely have been different. That she was tried and convicted in 1976 made a world of difference. In the 1960s, Graebner asserts, she would have been acquitted, viewed as a victim. In the 1980s, she would have been convicted, a failure at personal responsibility. The 1970s, however, was a period of transition in which the American people’s views were torn between recognizing that victimization does occur and the fact that we are all responsible for our own actions.

The first part of the book deals with the events of the abduction, imprisonment, conversion to a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), the missing year, arrest, trial, and conviction. Told mainly through a media perspective, Graebner discusses how Patty’s image in the media was transformed as time passed and her actions became increasingly misunderstood and ridiculed. She became culpable by participating in criminal activity, creating tape recordings defending the SLA and their mission, and failing to escape for more than a year with seemingly ample opportunities. During her trial, the defense relied on Patty’s victimization and need for survival to justify her actions. The prosecution relied on the growing belligerence of the public that saw far too many people attempt to explain away bad behavior through psycho-babble and a growing concern that people were failing to own up to their own actions. That Patty was eventually convicted and sent to prison was testament to the growing sentiment towards personal responsibility. Of the public’s and jury’s reactions, Graebner states, “The reclamation of social morality, then, required repudiating Patty’s amoral situational ethics, and that meant putting her in prison.” (p. 113)

The second part of the book delves into the social forces of the 1970s that played a role in viewing and convicting Patty. Of much concern to the author are the growing feelings of ambiguity and distrust of psychology at that time. Patty’s lawyers placed psychologists on the stand that affirmed the nature of persuasive coercion and the real effects of brainwashing effects on hostages, citing examples of prisoners of war. Despite this, people were still perplexed by Patty’s actions and refused to see her as strictly a victim. As an explanation, the author states of the American people:

“By 1975 that confidence was gone, a victim of assassinations, Vietnam, urban riots, Watergate, the emergence of terrorism, and global economic forces that threatened the nation’s dominance. Gone too, as Patty’s trial revealed, was the sense that anyone, least of all a psychiatrist, could know what had happened within another person’s mind. What remained was a surfeit of competing explanations, often couched in rhetorics of moral principle and politics, marking a fragmented, divided, and contentious society.” (p. 118)

In this climate, Patty became a mirror. She could be seen in such a myriad of ways and her actions could be understood from such dynamic perspectives that the tendency to project was great, and these projections “…were shaped by, and emerged from, American society and culture in the 1970s.” (p. 120) The author discusses many social-psychological topics in-depth that help to place Patty Hearst in context – the fragile self, the victim, the survivor, Stockholm syndrome, paranoia, the emergence of a conservative political force, and the longing for heroism. The 1970s as a transition period in American culture allowed these projections to be placed on Patty as the nation grappled with who they were and who they wanted to be. As Graebner concludes:

“In the end, this story was less about Patty than about what Americans wanted to believe of themselves: that they were a resilient people, possessed of free will, capable of transcending the malaise that was settling over the nation, capable even, as Patricia Hearst had not been, of heroism.” (p. 180)

This book was compelling, and all the more so because it does not provide the blow-by-blow account of the Patricia Hearst episode. It probes much deeper and finds meaning and explanation in a story mired in the inexplicable. By placing Patty in the context of a changing culture and given the events that precipitated the shift, Graebner is able to shine considerable light on what makes this case so intangible and perplexing, and he provides a framework on which to understand the divergent and often dogmatic perspectives of Patricia Hearst.… (mer)