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Mad, Bad And Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800 to the Present
Lisa Appignanesi
Prose: non-fiction, Psychology
'In every generation there are quite firm rules on how to behave when you are crazy' Ian Hacking
Mad, bad and sad. From the depression suffered by Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath to the mental anguish and addictions of iconic beauties Zelda Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe. From Freud and Jung and the radical breakthroughs of psychoanalysis to Lacan's construction of a modern movement and the new women-centred therapies. This is the story of how we have understood mental disorders and extreme states of mind in women over the last two hundred years and how we conceive of them today, when more and more of our inner life and emotions have become a matter for medics and therapists.
Praise for Mad, Bad And Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800 to the Present
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A tantalising mix of polemic and history, of ideology and fact . . . A gripping read . . . In a league far above any other book of its kind on this topic - SUNDAY BUSINESS POST
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Subtle, textured and enthralling . . . One of the great strengths of this book is the way in which it charts the uncanny relationship between fashions in psychiatric theory and sufferers' symptoms - SUNDAY TIMES
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Marvellous. At last! A serious, well-researched book on this important subject - Pamela Stephenson
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The triumph of MAD, BAD AND SAD is to mix evocative case studies with potted histories of the great and good of psychology and psychiatry . . . an intelligent and academically rigorous - OBSERVER
Lisa Appignanesi
Lisa Appignanesi was born in Poland and grew up in France and Canada. A prize-winning writer and novelist, she was chair of the Freud Museum from 2008-2014, chair of the Royal Society of Literature from 2016-2021 and is a former president of English PEN. She was awarded an OBE for services to literature in 2013. Her non-fiction includes Freud's Women (with John Forrester), Mad, Bad and Sad, All About Love, Trials of Passion, and the memoirs Losing the Dead and Everyday Madness.
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