Mad, Bad, and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780393335439)

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."

Author: Lisa Appignanesi
ISBN-10: 0393335437
ISBN-13: 9780393335439
Publisher: Countryman Press
Language: English
Published: 08/01/2009
Pages: 554
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.08lbs
Size: 8.38h x 5.32w x 1.07d

Review Citation(s):
New York Times Book Review 11/01/2009 pg. 20