Women & Madness
When is a Woman Mad.....and Who Decides Whether She Is?

Publisher:  Doubleday & Company, New York, USA
Year Published:  1972
Pages:  359pp   Resource Type:  Book

Chesler criticizes conventional psychiatric theory and practice, and calls for a new apporach to female psychology.

Abstract: 
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Madness
One: Why Madness?
Women in Asylums: Four Lives
Mothers and Daughters: A Mythological Commentary on the Lives
Heroines and Madness: Joan of Arc and the Virgin Mary

Two: Asylums
The Mental Asylum
The Female Social Role and Psychiatric Symptoms: Depression, Frigidity, and Suicide Attempts
Schizophrenia in Three Studies

Three: The Clinicians
How Many Clinicians Are there in America?
Contemporary Clinical Ideology
Traditional Clinical Ideology
The Institutional Nature of Private Therapy

Four: The Female Career as a Psychiatric Patient
The Interviews

Women
Five: Sex Between Patient and Therapist

Six: Psychiatrically Institutionalized Women

Seven: Lesbians

Eight: Third World Women

Nine: Feminists

Ten: Female Psychology: Past, Present, and Future
Female Psychology in Our Culture: Women Alone
Female Psychology in Our Culture: Women in Groups
Amazon Societies: Visions and Possibilities
The Problem of Survival: Power and Violence
Some Psychological Prescriptions for the Future
Thirteen Questions

Appendix: The Female Career as a Psychiatric Patient: The Sex, Class, Race, and Marital Status of America's Psychiatrically Involved Population, 1950-1969

Footnotes
Index