Sounds from the Bell Jar: Ten Psychotic Authors (Paperback)

~ (Author), Ruth Pryor (Author), Gwen Watkins (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

This ground-breaking work is a unique collaboration between an Oxford psychologist and two literary critics. It explores the lives and works of ten authors, among them Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath, who embody both serious mental illness and great originality of thought. Drawing upon personal diaries, historical archives, clinical records and literary productions, the book examines modes of thinking, such as divergent thought, over-inclusiveness, and autism, which psychosis and creativity might have in common.

Using genetics, experimental abnormal and clinical psychology, personality research, descriptive psychiatry, and literary analysis, Claridge, Pryor, and Watkins present the revolutionary idea that normality and psychosis are continuous with each other. Healthy varieties and styles of thought and perception substantially overlap with the inclination to psychotic breakdown, and indeed might at times be identical.

Psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, therapists, and general readers will gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between madness and creativity from this book.

From the Inside Flap

Gordon Claridge is a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and Universitiy Lecturer in Abnormal Psychology. He was previously Reader in Clinical Psychology in the Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Glasgow. His publications include Origins of Mental Illness (Malor), Sounds from the Bell Jar: Ten Psychotic Authors (Malor), Personality Differences and Biological Variations (with S. Canter and W. Hume), Drugs and Human Behaviour, and Personality and Arousal.

Ruth Pryor has held teaching and research posts at the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of Washington, Seattle; Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford; and the University of Wales. She is the editor of Letters to Vernon Watkins and The Collected Poems of Vernon Watkins.

Gwen Watkins taught at the University of Washington and the Extra-Mural Department of the University College of Swansea. Her publications include Portrait of a Friend, about Dylan Thomas and Vernon Watkins, and Dickens in Search of Himself.

Product Details

• Paperback: 260 pages
• Publisher: ISHK Book Service; 2 edition (September 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1883536154
• ISBN-13: 978-1883536152
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: No customer reviews yet. Be the first.
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #271,688 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)