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.
- ISBN10 0393335437
- ISBN13 9780393335439
- Publish Date 25 August 2009
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 14 August 2016
- Publish Country US
- Imprint WW Norton & Co
- Format Paperback
- Pages 554
- Language English