- Paperback: 416 pages
- Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; 2nd Revised edition edition (19 Jan 2006)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1403968977
- ISBN-13: 978-1403968975
- Product Dimensions: 23.5 x 15.7 x 2.8 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 467,437 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Review
'In a text richly textured with classical and research references, she revisits her original study of psychiatric bias and oppression...Filled with cogent insights and applications to contemporary issues...the book embodies enough revision to make it relevant while still retaining the power of the original. With an extensive bibliography; recommended for a new generation of public library users and for all women's studies and mental health collections.' - Antoinette Brinkman, The Library Journal
Still strident after all these years, prominent feminist author and activist Chesler here updates her classic on female psychology. A new introduction is followed by a restatement of her earlier work with updated commentary. In a text richly textured with classical and research references, she revisits her original study of psychiatric bias and oppression, including sex between patient and clinician, and reviews how the feminist landscape has changed since the 1970s...Filled with cogent insights and applications to contemporary issues (e.g., biological psychiatry, eating disorders), the book embodies enough revision to make it relevant while still retaining the power of the original. With an extensive bibliography; recommended for a new generation of public library users and for all women's studies and mental health collections. - Library Journal
Praise for earlier editions:
Intense, rapid, brilliant. A pioneer contribution to the feminization of psychiatric thinking and practice. - Adrienne Rich, Front Page, The New York Times Book Review
Challenges the definition of madness itself. No serious future studies will be able to ignore its theories or its very existence. - Gloria Steinem, Ms. Magazine
Sometimes forceful, sometimes tender, Women & Madness, like all important books, has the enormous power to trouble the sleep of the world. - -Roland Jaccard, LeMonde, Paris
The right book at the right time by the right person. - Robert Seidenberg, M.D. , practicing Psychoanalyst
This is sure to be one of the most important, even distinguished books to come to us in a long while - a landmark. - Kate Millett
Chesler has synthesized history, personal pain, therapy, poetry, and a rage for liberation into a work of art. - Jack Newfield, Author
This is an extremely important book, a signal that the women's liberation movement is coming of age. Phyllis Chesler writes with high passion and compassion; What is unusual is that the passion is firmly rooted in professional research. Chesler is one of the new breed of social scientists, well trained, skilled and literate in many fields, whose loyalty is to the public rather than to any establishment. Considering the painful, shocking nature of its subject matter, Women and Madness is more robust than bitter, more hopeful than desperate - in the best sense a consciousness-raising effort. - The Saturday Review of Books
A stunning book...absolutely fascinating.- Los Angeles Times
Dr. Chesler casts her clear-eyed vision over the field of psychiatry/psychology and unveils the sexism that underlies the history and the practice of the art. Who knows how much untold damage has been caused by those who understand little about women as a sex, and could care less, as long as they establish their careers? Incorporating the mythology of women as metaphor, Chesler also paints a picture of how we, as women, have paid the price for patriarchal privilege. I read this book 20 years ago, and I just read it again. It was an enjoyable this time as it was then, maybe even more so, with the deeper understanding I have now about the roots of feminism. - Amazon Customer Review, (Rating: 5 out of 5)
Still strident after all these years, prominent feminist author and activist Chesler here updates her classic on female psychology. A new introduction is followed by a restatement of her earlier work with updated commentary. In a text richly textured with classical and research references, she revisits her original study of psychiatric bias and oppression, including sex between patient and clinician, and reviews how the feminist landscape has changed since the 1970s...Filled with cogent insights and applications to contemporary issues (e.g., biological psychiatry, eating disorders), the book embodies enough revision to make it relevant while still retaining the power of the original. With an extensive bibliography; recommended for a new generation of public library users and for all women's studies and mental health collections. - Library Journal
Praise for earlier editions:
Intense, rapid, brilliant. A pioneer contribution to the feminization of psychiatric thinking and practice. - Adrienne Rich, Front Page, The New York Times Book Review
Challenges the definition of madness itself. No serious future studies will be able to ignore its theories or its very existence. - Gloria Steinem, Ms. Magazine
Sometimes forceful, sometimes tender, Women & Madness, like all important books, has the enormous power to trouble the sleep of the world. - -Roland Jaccard, LeMonde, Paris
The right book at the right time by the right person. - Robert Seidenberg, M.D. , practicing Psychoanalyst
This is sure to be one of the most important, even distinguished books to come to us in a long while - a landmark. - Kate Millett
Chesler has synthesized history, personal pain, therapy, poetry, and a rage for liberation into a work of art. - Jack Newfield, Author
This is an extremely important book, a signal that the women's liberation movement is coming of age. Phyllis Chesler writes with high passion and compassion; What is unusual is that the passion is firmly rooted in professional research. Chesler is one of the new breed of social scientists, well trained, skilled and literate in many fields, whose loyalty is to the public rather than to any establishment. Considering the painful, shocking nature of its subject matter, Women and Madness is more robust than bitter, more hopeful than desperate - in the best sense a consciousness-raising effort. - The Saturday Review of Books
A stunning book...absolutely fascinating.- Los Angeles Times
Dr. Chesler casts her clear-eyed vision over the field of psychiatry/psychology and unveils the sexism that underlies the history and the practice of the art. Who knows how much untold damage has been caused by those who understand little about women as a sex, and could care less, as long as they establish their careers? Incorporating the mythology of women as metaphor, Chesler also paints a picture of how we, as women, have paid the price for patriarchal privilege. I read this book 20 years ago, and I just read it again. It was an enjoyable this time as it was then, maybe even more so, with the deeper understanding I have now about the roots of feminism. - Amazon Customer Review, (Rating: 5 out of 5)
Product Description
This definitive book was the first to address critical questions about women and mental health.. In this new edition, Chesler addresses many of the most relevant issues to women and mental health today, including eating disorders, social acceptance of antidepressants, addictions, sexuality, postpartum depression, and more.
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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3 reviews
16 of 21 people found the following review helpful
We have paid the price for patriarchal privilege
8 Sep 2000
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Dr. Chesler casts her clear eyed vision over the field of psychiatry/psychology and unveils the sexism that underlies the history and the practice of the "art." Who knows how much untold damage has been caused by those who understand little about women as a sex and could care less, as long as they establish their careers? Incorporating the mythology of women as metaphor, Chesler also paints a picture of how we, as women, have paid the price for patriarchal privilege. I read this book 20 years ago, and I just read it again. It was an enjoyable this time as it was then, maybe even more so, with the deeper understanding I have now about the roots of feminism.
The only thing I wish she had addressed in this revised edition is deinstitutionalization and its affects on women. Perhaps another time? Soon?
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
A GROUNDBREAKING WORK ABOUT WOMEN AND PSYCHIATRY
9 Sep 2011
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Phyllis Chesler (born 1940) is an American writer, psychotherapist, and professor emeritus of psychology and women's studies at the College of Staten Island. She has written many other books.
She wrote in the Introduction to this 1972 book, "This is a book about female psychology... This is a book about the dramatically increasing numbers of American women of all classes and races, who are seen, or who see themselves, as 'neurotic' or 'psychotic,' and who seek psychotherapeutic help and/or are psychiatrically hospitalized. This is a book about the many 'whys' of such help-seeking behavior; about 'what' is experienced and viewed as in need of help; and about 'how' those women are---or aren't---helped."
Here are some additional quotations from the book:
"Today more women are seeking psychiatric help and being hospitalized than at any other time in history... There were significantly more women being 'helped' than their existence in the population would allow us to predict." (Pg. 33)
"I think (Dr. Thomas Szasz) underestimates the deeply conditioned nature of woman's compliance with her literal and psychological self-sacrifice. Many female mental patients ... commit themselves, quite voluntarily, to asylums or to private psychiatrists. The fear of economic, physical, and ... punishment teaches women to value their own sacrifice so highly that they quite 'naturally' perform it." (Pg. 106)
"Each woman, as patient... wants from a psychotherapist what she wants---and often cannot get---from a husband: attention, understanding, merciful relief, a personal solution---in the arms of the right husband, on the couch of the right therapist." (Pg. 109)
"Paradoxically, while women must not 'succeed,' when they DO succeed at anything, they have still failed if they're not successful at everything... A woman has failed if she succeeds at winning a legal or intellectual battle and has hurt another woman's (or man's) feelings in the process ... Ironically, mothers are often seen as 'failures'... because they haven't also achieved careers or independence from their families." (Pg. 277)
She wrote in the Introduction to this 1972 book, "This is a book about female psychology... This is a book about the dramatically increasing numbers of American women of all classes and races, who are seen, or who see themselves, as 'neurotic' or 'psychotic,' and who seek psychotherapeutic help and/or are psychiatrically hospitalized. This is a book about the many 'whys' of such help-seeking behavior; about 'what' is experienced and viewed as in need of help; and about 'how' those women are---or aren't---helped."
Here are some additional quotations from the book:
"Today more women are seeking psychiatric help and being hospitalized than at any other time in history... There were significantly more women being 'helped' than their existence in the population would allow us to predict." (Pg. 33)
"I think (Dr. Thomas Szasz) underestimates the deeply conditioned nature of woman's compliance with her literal and psychological self-sacrifice. Many female mental patients ... commit themselves, quite voluntarily, to asylums or to private psychiatrists. The fear of economic, physical, and ... punishment teaches women to value their own sacrifice so highly that they quite 'naturally' perform it." (Pg. 106)
"Each woman, as patient... wants from a psychotherapist what she wants---and often cannot get---from a husband: attention, understanding, merciful relief, a personal solution---in the arms of the right husband, on the couch of the right therapist." (Pg. 109)
"Paradoxically, while women must not 'succeed,' when they DO succeed at anything, they have still failed if they're not successful at everything... A woman has failed if she succeeds at winning a legal or intellectual battle and has hurt another woman's (or man's) feelings in the process ... Ironically, mothers are often seen as 'failures'... because they haven't also achieved careers or independence from their families." (Pg. 277)
8 of 43 people found the following review helpful
Good, but narrow in scope
22 Dec 2001
Format:Paperback
Why are so many women labeled (correctly or incorrectly) "mentally ill". Certainly, there seems to be a double standard as Ms. Chesler attests. However, what are the causes of this double standard? Ms. Chesler attributes it to an oppressive, patriarchal culture. Maybe. What is more likely is a combination of factors that include male aggressiveness and female passivity, both of which are personal choices not the responsibility of outside input. Yes, over the millenia, women have chosen to be passive and that "sets the deck" against new generations of women. But, for those females who are cultured passive and not genuinely mentally ill, the ultimate choice lies within themselves not on a psychiatrist's couch.
Overall, this book was well worth the read, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in mental health. Though rare I believe, there are real abuses that take place inside some therapists' offices, and those abuses, whether they involve women or men, should be exposed and the perpetrators punished. Ms. Chesler should be lauded for bringing up the disparity of the treatment of women versus men in the mental health field. Disregarding personal choices is however a fatal mistake in her argument.
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