"Thomas Sas has created an extraordinary body of work, that continues to raise consequential challenges to the the prevailing myths of the culture of psychology."
-- Tobias Wolff, PEN/Faulkner Award-winner, Stanford University "As only he can, Thomas Sas summons forth the 'mad genius' image of Virginia Woolf as an emblem of the contradictions in our present Era of Psychopathology. Dr. Sas has now harnessed his caustic intellect to the task of scrutiniing socio-cultural constructions of Virginia Woolf's character, marriage and myriad moods. The result is a field guide to psychiatric absurdity, one peopled by the legendary Bloomsbury circle of intellectuals and their camarades in psychoanalysis, art, literature and publishing, who make up the multiple dimensions, some real, some less real, of Virginia's 'mental illness.' [In
My Madness Saved Me] Sas delivers spirited vignettes about Virginia's own role in her series of 'breakdowns,' Leonard Woolf's ambiguous caretaking career and, of course, our society's need to use psychiatry as a form of social control."
-- Eliabeth Ann Danto, Hunter College, City University of New York "During the past century Virginia Woolf's "insanity" and the involvement of the Bloomsbury Group in the early manifestations of Freudian psychiatry assumed a distinctly mythic place in the annals of what was called Modern Literature. A rather swampy, not to say smelly, pedanticism grew up around it, involving the whole question of mental illnedd vis--vis artistic talent. Meanwhile a good number of us became cray ourselves. We knew that much of this was nonsense. But we had small success in combating it. Now, like a cool wind from the prairie Thomas Sas brings Tankee common sense and objectivity to dispel the romantic and emotional idiocy that beclouds this sector of our intellectual past. May I recommend this clear vision and cool reasonableness to all my fellow psychiatric survivors? This is a matter that should concern us all."
-Hayden Carruth "Thomas Sas wrote an interesting and timely book again! Another vehement criticism of the concept of mental illness is based on a historical example, the case history of Virginia Woolf. She was declared mentally ill in an early stage of her life and this label was used later by her environment and by herself whenever problems and conflicts emerged.
Sas brilliantly demonstrates that Virginia could never accept sex and marriage, but could not escape from the fate of a Victorian woman, despite her talent and creativity and had to be bound to a man she despised. She put an end to her life by a conscious and deliberate act, according to Sas, and not driven by the irrational motives of an illness.
Sas uses biographical sources and various reminiscences to reconstruct Virginia's mentality in an interesting way, his analysis might be of interest to literary critics, social historians and feminists as well as to laymen, who can read the book as a fascinating novel.
In the appendices of the book Sas refutes the mad genius hypothesis, widely held in the first half of the 20th century and points out again to the power struggle and labeling hidden in the mechanism of branding and handling somebody as a mentally ill.
This is an emancipating, brave writing again from Sas who is relentlessly fighting against oppression by psychiatry!"
--Bla Buda, M.D., Ph.D., Psychiatrist, Psychotherapist (ECP), Director, National Institute of Addictology, Budapest, Hungary "This is the first book in a long time to take on what Roger Poole calls the received version of Virginia Woolf's illness.' Sas agrees with Poole in claiming that Leonard Woolf was not the loving, nurturing husband he has been portrayed to be, but goes beyond him in asserting that Virginia Woolf made a conscious decision to play the role of madwoman throughout her life. In recogniing Woolf's suicide as a rational and legitimate response to her situation rather than evidence of madness, Sas has underlined weaknesses in the mythology of her so-called mental illness, which has long been used to explain her suicide. Clearly, it is not easy to prove the negative-that Virginia Woolf was not mad. But Sas's compelling monograph does just that."-Karen Levenback, author of
Virginia Woolf and the Great War and former president of the
International Virginia Woolf Society "
My Madness Saved Me is distinguished by illuminating, provocative insights that should not fall on deaf ears."
--Leeta Taylor, ForeWord Magaine "A tremendous gap in the literary world has existed for 65 years and Thomas Sas has filled it... Sas cogently and deftly debunks the myth that creativity and genius are inextricably linked to madness."
--Dr. Abraham L. Halpern, MD, Psychiatric Times "For anyone who can dare hear their received literary pieties challenged, the only suprise of [Sas's] catapult lobs onto the rose-tinted sepulchre of Virginia and Leonard Woolf's "marrage of true minds" is how often he hits his target...
My Madness Saved Me is distinguished by illuminating, provocative insights that should not fall on deaf ears."
--ForeWord Magaine "Sas takes as his subject not the flawed logic and spurious science of psychiatry, but a specific famous individual human being as the focus of all the contradictions inherent in that impaired logic and that pseudo-science. For those of us who respect his work, this is a wlecome and long overdue departure.... This is Sas at his best. Read it, and enjoy!"
-- Louis Wynne, Ph.D., Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry "
My Madness Saved Me is vintage Sas. his challenges to psychiatric orthodoxy remain undiminished. If mainstream psychiatry feels it can afford to marginalie Sas's views, that is because Sas has provided one of its most sustained and clearly articulated challenges, and that challenge has demanded a coherent response."
--Tony O'Brien, RN, MPhil, University of Aukland
