Mad, bad and sad. From the depression suffered by Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath to the mental anguish and addictions of iconic beauties Zelda Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe. From Freud and Jung and the radical breakthroughs of psychoanalysis to Lacan’s construction of a modern movement and the new women-centred therapies. This is the story of how we have understood mental disorders and extreme states of mind in women over the last two hundred years and how we conceive of them today, when more and more of our inner life and emotions have become a matter for medics and therapists.
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Reviews
A tantalising mix of polemic and history, of ideology and fact . . . A gripping read . . . In a league far above any other book of its kind on this topic
Marvellous. At last! A serious, well-researched book on this important subject
** 'Endlessly fascinating
** 'A tantalising mix of polemic and history, of ideology and fact . . . A gripping read . . . In a league far above any other book of its kind on this topic
** 'Subtle, textured and enthralling . . . One of the great strengths of this book is the way in which it charts the uncanny relationship between fashions in psychiatric theory and sufferer s' symptoms
Subtle, textured and enthralling . . . One of the great strengths of this book is the way in which it charts the uncanny relationship between fashions in psychiatric theory and sufferers' symptoms
The triumph of MAD, BAD AND SAD is to mix evocative case studies with potted histories of the great and good of psychology and psychiatry . . . intelligent and academically rigorous
** 'Informative in startling ways, and never dull in the academic way, Appignanesi's genuinely new History of the Mind Doctors is a subtle and accessible account of that perhaps most daunting of modern relationships, the one between the Mind Doctor and his female patient. Because Appignanesi has a complex story to tell there is no blaming at work in this wonderful book, but a shrewd and sympathetic apprehension of what is at stake in the difficult histories of both the Mind Doctors and those they seek to help. It is a remarkable achievement