Mad, Bad, and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: puerperal madness, body madness, partial madness, Miss Beauchamp, Anna Freud, Mary Lamb (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Award-winning British novelist Appignanesi (The Memory Man) has written a fascinating if somewhat diffuse study of how, over the past two centuries, women's ability to live creative lives has been controlled by culture, and how their unsuccessful attempts to rebel frequently lead to mental illness-itself a slippery, ever-evolving cultural concept. Appignanesi's sources are wide-ranging but largely literary, based upon letters, diaries, articles and fiction from feminist writers such as Betty Friedan, historians like R.D. Laing and Jacque Lacan, psychologists such as Melanie Klein, and troubled subjects like Zelda Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe. Beginning with the lives of mentally ill women in the 19th century, Appignanesi moves chronologically through the history of psychology-as ideas like schizophrenia replace earlier notions of hysteria-and its relationship to the creative woman, using in-depth profiles of Virginia Woolf, Alice James and others. Looking at the complex cultural, political and familial circumstances under which mental illness emerges, and their implications for the present (in which depression and eating disorders have become major problems), Appignanesi convincingly asserts that "symptoms and diagnoses... cluster to create cultural fashions in illness and cure," suggesting provocatively that "what is at issue here is not psychic disorder so much as social deterioration of a radical kind."
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Review

Ambitious . . . brilliant . . . a powerhouse of a book.

(Daphne Merkin - New York Sun )

Fascinating. . . . A meticulous and exhaustive account.

(Kathryn Harrison - New York Times Book Review )

Sophisticated, vigorously written, full of striking subtexts . . .an entertaining and well-researched book that avoids easy answers.

(Andrew Scull - Times Literary Supplement ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 560 pages
• Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co. (April 17, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393066630
• ISBN-13: 978-0393066630
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #482,512 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enlightenment, May 30, 2008

By	DG or GD - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This book heralds a new and renewed enlightenment about women, the mind, literature, and history. Recently I purchased the American edition and can not speak highly enough for it. The writing is superb and the text opens so many windows and doors. It is not easy to put down as it sails forward. I highly recommend it to everyone and that must be a wide audience of public and scholar alike. The book is a treasure.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Introduction to the Subject, June 11, 2008

By	Daniel Raphael - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The author demonstrates how, from its origins in English asylums run by "carers" to the world's first modern psychiatric facility in revoutionary France, the image of women and of mental illness ("madness") mutually informed each other. These images changed across the decades, and with them, both the prospects and limitations on women, and the understanding of emotional suffering that gave rise to varied diagnoses.

Though studded with Britishisms, this is a highly readable introduction to the subject of mental illness and especially the role of the "mind doctors" in both helping and hindering half the world's prospects for a sane and free life.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolute aanrader, September 8, 2008

By	C. A. De Raad "Lydia" (Netherlands, Europe) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Al na het lezen van de inleiding wist ik het: dit is een topboek. Zorgvuldig, grondig, uitgebalanceerd en prikkelend om te lezen en vooral om over na te denken. En ik hou van nadenken.