Product Description

In this informative, timely and often harrowing study, Elaine Showalter demonstrates how cultural ideas about 'proper' feminine behaviour have shaped the definition and treatment of female insanity for 150 years, and given mental disorder in women specifically sexual connotations. Along with vivid portraits of the men who dominated psychiatry, and descriptions of the therapeutic practices that were used to bring women 'to their senses', she draws on diaries and narratives by inmates, and fiction from Mary Wollstonecraft to Doris Lessing, to supply a cultural perspective usually missing from studies of mental illness.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #54054 in Books
• Published on: 1987-05-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
'She writes with penetration, precision and passion. This book is essential reading for all those concerned with what psychiatry has done to women, and what new psychiatry could do for them' ROY PORTER, WELLCOME INSTITUTE FOR THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE

About the Author
Elaine Showalter was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1941. From 1967 to 1984 she taught English and Women's Studies at Rutgers University, and she now chairs the department of English at Princeton University.

Customer Reviews

Brilliant and moving book
This book was reccomended to me by one of my university tutors. I couldn't put it down. As a psychiatric nurse i regularly read books about the history of mental illness. This has to one of the best covering the treatment of women. For myself the chapter covering victorian attitudes was the greatest. How, men returning from the trenches of World War 1 suffering from shell shock made specialists look more into environmental and biological factors of illness. Brilliant read, a must have

Balanced, informative, induces fury.
Elaine Showalter has exhaustively researched her subject, and her findings vary from the fascinating to the merely statistical. But anyone who has the slighest interest in Feminism, or even social history, would really enjoy this book. Also, for fans of Pat Barker's 'Regeneration' trilogy, the chapter on the treatment of shell shock during the First World War provides some fascinating background colour: Barker herself obtained much of her factual input from this section. Showalter's style of writing, full of verve and subtle humour really raises this book from the educational to the enjoyable. Try it - you might like it!

sad.
This is a very enlightening book. Very thorough and yet still readable for people with no prior knowledge of mental health history.
Is very hard to read in areas regarding the way many people have been treated. Hard to believe we have been guilty of such practices- but still a very interesting book.