Mad, Bad And Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800 to the Present

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It might not have been intentionally misleading, but "staging his own murder" could only really have two logical meanings: that he faked his own death, or (the only one that made sense in this situation) that he staged his suicide to look like a murder. With this in mind, Appignanesi does not reach a table-thumping conclusion; she prefers analysis and exploration to blame and political point-scoring. As the book progressed, I felt concerned that the 'mental health biographies' of modern figures were almost salacious: I felt this most strongly with the passages concerning Sylvia Plath and Marilyn Monroe.

On the whole I'm glad I read it, but would only recommend it if you have a strong The sheer density of the material ultimately defeated me, and when I found myself skimming entire chapters I knew it was time to set this one aside. The answer can be found when seeing the glamourisation of drug-taking and 'mad' women in the media (especially celebrities), the way the same media treats female criminals (whether they're mad or bad) as 'foxy' and 'vamp', and the way terms like 'mad' and 'hysterical' are still easily flung at women who may just be vocal about their rights. What is clear is that as we have moved through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, an ever wider set of behaviours and emotions have become 'symptomatic' and fallen under the aegis of the mind doctors. It would be simpler and more reassuring to believe that it's all just imbalances in the brain chemicals that a pill can fix.Although there is a strong association between psychopathy and criminality, this is not always the case. Previously a TV sports presenter and Green Party spokesman, Icke once declared himself the “son of God” and now maintains that the world is ruled by alien shape-shifting lizards from the constellation of Draco that include The Queen, Tony Blair and George Bush. Yet I can't help feeling that this adds further complexity to already fraught popular perceptions of mental illness.

Regarding CBT, I think the impact of the therapist being a sympathetic person who wants to understand the nature of the problem and help may be underestimated. I dare say that if the book focused more on the women and their histories, I would have enjoyed it better, however that wasn't the point of this particular book. We may have moved beyond 19th-century practice of observing and cataloguing 'female hysteria', but we have not lessened the incidence of mental illness in women.

My only moments of confusion came with her odd comma placement, and too many phrases contained within one sentence.

Pierwsza część to historie szaleństw, opisy przypadków kobiet, które czasem faktycznie traciły zmysły, a czasem po prostu odstawały od innych swoim rewolucyjnym sposobem bycia.However, there is increasing concern about the progressive medicalising of eccentricity and bad behaviour (Wakefield, 2011). Given that the advent of remotely efficacious medicines for mental illness is relatively recent, these are largely dealt with in the final chapter. As philosopher Ian Hacking puts it: 'In every generation, there are quite firm rules on how to behave when you are crazy. g. Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Marilyn Monroe) to doctors and psychiatrists from the little-known to the canonical such as Freud and Lacan.

Madness', the book claims, is often as much a function of power hierarchies and capitalist interests (the diet industry, Big Pharma, the role of everyday therapy and the self-help industry) as it may be of mental health. et al (2009) The response of mental health professionals to clients seeking help to change or redirect same-sex sexual orientation.

dokładnie rozumiemy jaki wpływ filozofowie nauki (Lock i Hume) wywarli na złagodzenie warunków panujących w szpitalach i więzieniach dla osób chorych. Sociologists say we risk losing the distinction between people who are mentally ill and those showing normal stress responses to social conditions such as loss of status, resources and attachments (Horwitz, 2007). In fact, she did exhibit many erratic and theatrical behaviours that could be described as histrionic. From Freud and Jung and the radical breakthroughs of psychoanalysis to Lacan’s construction of a modern movement and the new women-centred therapies. Mary Lamb, Theroigne de Méricourt, Alice James, Anna O (Bertha Pappenheim), Dora (Ida Bauer); Augustine, Elizabeth Severn, Bryher (Annie Winifred Ellerman), HD (Hilda Doolittle), Princess Marie Bonaparte, Anna Freud, Dorothy Burlingham, Zelda Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, Marilyn Monroe, Sylvia Plath and Anna Kavan.