Surviving Madness: A Therapist's Own Story

Betty Berzon, renowned psychotherapist and author of the bestselling book Permanent Partners, tells her own incredible story here. Berzon's journey from psychiatric patient on suicide watch--her wrists tethered to the bed rails in a locked hospital ward--to her present role as a groundbreaking therapist and gay pioneer makes for purely compelling reading.
Berzon is recognized today as a trailblazing co-founder of a number of important lesbian and gay organizations and one of the first therapists to focus on means of developing healthy gay relationships and overcoming homophobia. Her sometimes bumpy road to success never fails to fascinate. Along the way she encounters such luminaries as Anaïs Nin, Eleanor Roosevelt, the Sitwells, Evelyn Hooker, and Paul Monette. Her recollections here provide a collective portrait of her fellow pioneers and a stirring lesson in twentieth-century history.
It is, however, the intimate story of Berzon's own private passage toward self-discovery--from mental breakdown and suicide attempts, through hospitalization, eventual triumphant recovery, and her own coming out as an open lesbian at the age of forty--that makes this memoir an urgent, insightful, and deeply emotional testament to human survival.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Published: 03/29/2002
ISBN: 9780299176204
Pages: 256
Weight: 1.08lbs
Size: 9.24h x 6.38w x 0.78d
Award: Lambda Literary Awards - Winner

Review Citations: Women's Review of Books 09/01/2002 pg. 9
Lambda Book Report 09/01/2002 pg. 13