Women and Madness was a little hard to get through, but ultimately worth reading. The experiences of the women are compared and analyzed. Some women were listed in more than one category. She categorized the interviewees as women who had been sexually involved with their therapists, those who had spent time in psychiatric hospitals, those who identified themselves as lesbians, those who thought of themselves as feminists, and "third world women" who came from a background of poverty. She discussed the nature of asylums, and the therapeutic relationship between clinician and patient.Ĭhesler conducted 60 interviews with women who had been in treatment for mental illness. Her story is compared with those of Plath, Fitzgerald, and West in the first chapter.Ĭhesler goes on to look at attitudes of therapists of both sexes toward women. She argued persuasively for basic rights for mental patients. She later became an activist, urging state and federal legislators to change laws that permitted men to commit their wives to institutions virtually at will. She spent three agonizing years in the Illinois state mental hospital, and subsequently wrote about her experiences. in the 1860's, Packard was committed on the say-so of her minister husband, purely because of her progressive views on religion. Packard, since she was one of my great-great-great grandmothers. I was particularly interested in the perspectives on E.W.
As an introduction to the topic, Chesler cites writings of and by four women who were institutionalized as psychiatric patients: Sylvia Plath, Zelda Fitzgerald, Ellen West and Elizabeth Ware Packard. Issues in the myth of Demeter and Persephone are explored. The author explores perception of women and gender roles, making a case that "madness" can be a normal response to intolerable pressures and exploitations experienced by women.
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