Mad, Bad, and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors

This fascinating history of mind doctors and their patients probes the ways in which madness, badness, and sadness have been understood over the last two centuries. Lisa Appignanesi charts a story from the days when the mad were considered possessed to our own century when the official psychiatric manual lists some 350 mental disorders. Women play a key role here, both as patients--among them Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, and Marilyn Monroe--and as therapists. Controversially, Appignanesi argues that women have significantly changed the nature of mind-doctoring, but in the process they have also inadvertently highlighted new patterns of illness.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 08/01/2009
ISBN: 9780393335439
Pages: 535
Weight: 1.08lbs
Size: 8.38h x 5.32w x 1.07d

Review Citations: New York Times Book Review 11/01/2009 pg. 20