Lars Jensen:
Thank you for this opportunity to testify. To me it is a necessary but not unhappy event to tell you abut my troubles with the limited democracy in Denmark. Until the 25th September 1981 my life was well. But at this time I was taken to a psychiatric hospital. After some time with quarrels with my wife concerning what was going on in our house and surroundings. I claimed that I was under observation and occasionally under the influence of some kind of drugs. Further I claimed a stranger went into our house when nobody was at home which I …. by means of a trap arranged for that purpose. 

My wife rejected my observations calling them nonsense and unrealistic and she did it with such effort that I got the idea that she was involved. At last my wife went to our house doctor who suggested admitting me to a psychiatric hospital and my wife agreed. I disagreed. Some days later the police brought me to the hospital in an ambulance though I was as healthy as I am now and 20 years younger. In course of the whole turmoil there had never been any violence. I was too realistic to start fighting with the police and by the way, I still had some confidence in psychiatry at that time because I didn’t know anything about psychiatry. 

A few hours after I had been locked up the psychiatric hospital, I was examined by a young doctor, who told me that a further examination would go on after the weekend. I asked to be set free. This was rejected. And then I started writing my protest to the authorities, with no success. The lower courts agreed with the psychiatrists on the basis of secret documents. Some are now released and as you can find in my analysis, were distorted, incomplete and even had false information. 

My appeal to the supreme court was ignored and after the psychiatric treatment, rejected. Survivors injected with and forced to use psychiatric drugs until I was so exhausted and scared that I swore my observations were fantasy. ….. after I was delivered back to my wife and family. Again I was observed and the whole comedy was repeated but this time it ended up with divorcing instead of hospitalization. 

Observations are still going on. Many times and constantly I have asked for argumentation for why it was so necessary to treat me as a lunatic. And the main argument seems to be I have a wrong perception of reality. Another argument was and is I have been unemployed long term for 2 years before admission in hospital. In 1990 I got some documents which were used by the judges in 1981. These documents, I say, are filled with gossip and falsifications with all intent to represent me as a lunatic. For example I [supposedly] changed some electric installations to make a test on my wife. It is clear nonsense! Still some documents are kept in secret. This is an absurdity as far as the ………. the case because they claimed that there are no news in the case. I [did] not have the opportunity to see what these secret no news are. 

There have been many secrets in the case and when they are released or given free, many were nonsense, either very harmful to my representation but all of the secrets have acted as strong stresses to my family and myself. I characterize the use of secrets as “terrrorism”. Actually the courts now again are considering if there are new arguments in the case and also considering if more secret documents could be given free. 

To me and my family, I think, it has been real terrorism to have knowledge to the existence of secret documents. Know that I had and have not realized to be a lunatic and know that it could be a problem to explain that I should be a lunatic and as a consequence people had to believe in psychiatry as well as God or themselves and all the gossip. Terrorism it was when I was finally separating from my wife. Some documents were kept secret by the social welfare office. Due to some sensitive information about my wife. I asked my wife about this information but she knew nothing about them. Then we wrote a letter to this office telling that these documents should not contain any sensitive information and therefore could be given free but with no success.

The documents were kept secret until sometime after the separation from my wife and as far as I can judge, they did not contain information of special interest. They were kept secret for reasons of terrorism. 

Terrorism it was to keep me incarcerated for 56 days before the first meeting in the court could take place but it was and is in accordance with the law. Criminals have the right to the first meeting in the court within 24 hours from arrest. In this way my case was …. until just before Christmas, when I and my family was told that I would not be set free before Christmas. Just after Christmas I was just … coercive treatment and then … crazy New Year.

Very often people are astonished when I tell them I am declared “lunatic”. Then they are making their own tests on my personality, of course. And very often I have the experience of becoming a scape-goat. Ok, this has contributed to my knowledge of people and their problems but it has also complicated my life. 

Yes, you are welcome to ask me questions.

George Alexander:
Well, let me clarify a little bit of your testimony please. You were initially admitted by virtue of your wife’s concern about your statements about people in the house and so forth, is that right? 

Lars Jensen:
Yes. 

G. A.:
And you managed after this horrible period in your life to get released. How did you manage to get released?

L. J.:
The reason for the incarceration in hospital was my wrong perception of reality. When I accommodated reality, defined by psychiatrists, I swore that they had the right definition of reality, it was the beginning to be let out. It took about 3 weeks … of my new ….. and then I was released. 

G. A.:
Your cure was to see life the way the psychiatrists thought you should see life.

L. J.:
Correct.

G. A.:
Thank you. Are there questions?

Alon Harel:
I wonder about the secrecy thing that you mentioned and I didn’t fully understand. Did you try to get the documents concerning the reasons for your incarceration after you were released and you were given them?

L. J.:
From the very beginning of the whole case I have asked for all documents concerning the case. Also in the beginning I didn’t get any documents. Eight years later in 1990 I got some of the documents but there are more documents. 

A. H.:
Could you tell us what documents are still there and are not being given to you and the reasons that are being provided for this?

L. J.:
There are some documents which contain some of the information which my wife had given to the doctors from the beginning. There is an interview with a nurse who was interested in my case when I was in the hospital and there are some other documents …

A. H.:
Were you given any reasons for their reluctance to provide you documents?

L. J.:
Originally, the reason was, there was no legal right to give me the documents. Later I found out myself that there was a legal right to give me the documents but also that the doctor had the right to keep them in secret. 

A. H.:
Forever?

L. J.:
Forever, yes. 

Paulo Coelho:
Why did you establish this relationship between your first incarceration, your problems with your wife that led you to be committed to a mental hospital and then you refer to the second circumstances that it is … to divorce? Why do you establish a link between your divorce and your incarceration?

L. J.:
I have not quite understood your question but if can repeat my explanation.

A. H.:
I can rephrase it: you went to that mental hospital because you had problems with your wife or your wife decided that you should be treated and then later on in your statement, you said, if I understood correctly and then again I had the same problems by this time it led to a divorce, not to incarceration. What I wanted to know is: When you mean “by the same problems”, you mean that first and foremost problems with your wife, striving to keep the couple together. She said: “Let us give a chance to our marriage.” and “I’m going to take him in to the hospital and when it happened the second time she said: “Ok, I give up. I just ask for a divorce.” 

L. J.:
The first time when I got into a psychiatric hospital, I asked for a divorce, afterwards. They had decided to let me into the psychiatric hospital but it was over-ruled by the doctors because they said I had no legal right to a divorce. If I could have got a divorce at that time I thought I could have avoided hospitalization but it was too late. The next time when I still was observing and discussing with my wife about what was going on around us. The situation  was the same: I had learned a lesson and left. 

Ken Fleet:
I didn’t understand how long you were incarcerated in the hospital, the mental institution. How long on the first and second occasions were you actually detained? 

L. J.:
On the first and only incarceration I was detained for a total of 5 months. The first 3 months were with negotiations and discussing the cause and so on and after they had made their decision for another 2 months telling me to follow the directions of the psychiatrists.

Ken Fleet:
This was just the one occasion because you talked about the second occasion when the question of divorce was mentioned. I didn’t quite understand what the second occasion was. 

L. J.:
The second occasion I referred to was the situation when the first situation was repeated but instead of hospitalization I got separation from my wife.

Jakob Mabé:
Could you perhaps explain why you had problems with your wife? Was your wife afraid of you and if so, why?

L. J.:
I don’t think that she was afraid of me. I don’t think she saw me as an enemy or something. She said: “I love you.” She cared for my health. She could equally care for her own health. I still don’t know. I am still searching for an explanation for the whole turmoil. 

Jakob Mabé:
Did you never have that feeling in your flat at home, that your wife was feeling more and more insecure around you, that she was always going away, that there was some kind of fear? Did you never have that feeling?

L. J.:
Yes, I have observed such a feeling by my wife, yes. It was a feeling where she seemed to have preferred to go to another place. It was not happy hours, really.

Ron Leifer:
To further clarify this I would like to ask you a question but feel free not to answer it, if you feel it is an invasion of your privacy. Usually in my experience it is women who are sent to hospitals by their husbands rather than vice versa and I wonder in this situation to explore the power relationship between your wife and yourself. You mentioned that you had been unemployed for 2 years prior to your hospitalization? Was your wife employed? Thank you.

L. J.:
Yes.

Kate Millett:
I’m confused because when you began, you said you perceived certain circumstances in your environment and your home and then I got the impression you had decided that you had been deluded by these impressions and that the doctors introduced you to reality. Do you still believe you were deluded or is it possible your wife or the doctors were deluded as to actual material facts?

L. J.:
I don’t know if somebody was deluded but the very thing I know is that I am not deluded and I have not been deluded.

K. M.:
So in fact, in order to get out, you had to agree to an untruth or to an unreal thing because…

L. J.:
I had to serve a lie.

K. M.:
…and that is the most convenient way to escape from these places, I found. I have told lies to get out too. I told a lie: I said I was voluntarily there. They made it clear to me, I would never get out, if I didn’t sign that paper, so I signed it. The circumstances of people calling each other crazy as a way to punish within a marriage – and it does very frequently happen that the husband punishes his wife this way – and through the 19th century it was a very convenient way to get rid of a wife who wouldn’t obey or be subservient but it is also possible for wives to denounce their husbands and within this private relationship suddenly comes the state and its police powers and then the mysteries of psychiatry, which change the whole question from “Do I love you?” to “Are you crazy?”, which are really different questions. But I think you have testified with great common sense and eloquence.

George Alexander:
Thank you for your testimony.