Interrogating the relationship between women and psychosis from a variety of perspectives, this edited collection explores personal, literary, spiritual, psychological, biological, and psychodynamic approaches. The contributors reflect on medieval mystics and witches, postpartum psychosis, disordered eating, art and literature, feminism, and male/female differences in schizophrenia. Women with experience of psychosis, psychotherapists, and a shaman provide first-person accounts to give the book a personal grounding. Curated with the intent to expand the way we think about women and psychosis, the contributors to this collection recognize that "voices and visions" do not occur in a vacuum, but are experienced within, and are influenced by, particular socio-cultural contexts.
Marie Brown is clinical psychology doctoral candidate at Long Island University and co-founder of the Hearing Voices Network NYC. Marilyn Charles Marilyn Charles, PhD, is practicing psychoanalyst and staff psychologist at the Austen Riggs Center.
Chapter 1. Women and Madness in Context Chapter 2. Explicate or Relate: Recognizing and Differentiating Literary Madwomen Chapter 3. Stories Chapter 4. Snakes in the Crib: Psycho-Social Factors in Postpartum Psychosis Chapter 5. Disordered Eating and Disordered Thinking in Women: A Continuum in Objectification in Anorexia and Psychosis Chapter 6. Mystics, Witches or Hysterics? The Therapeutic Stakes When Spirituality Becomes a Symptom Chapter 7. From Sick to Gifted: Discovering Shamanic Illness Chapter 8. Psychosis in Women: A Perspective from Psychiatry Chapter 9. Schizophrenia in Women as Compared to Men: Theories to Help Explain the Difference
Marie Brown and Marilyn Charles have assembled a book that bridges different perspectives and disciplines to contextualize and complicate women's experiences of psychosis through culture, the body, spirituality, and psychiatry. Reading Women and Psychosis itself becomes a polyphonic experience that changes how we understand what psychosis is, how it has been construed, and for women, with what consequences. -- Annie Rogers, Hampshire College Not since Phyllis Chesler's Women and Madness has there been a book that focuses on the important topic of psychosis in women. Kudos to Brown and Charles on this timely and welcomed collection of insightful essays, which I strongly recommend to all who are interested in learning more about the causes, manifestations, misunderstandings, and treatment of psychosis in women. -- Danielle Knafo, Long Island University - Post "Women & Psychosis offers an inspiring example of how lived experience, clinical insight, and critical theory can be woven together to illuminate a complex set of psychological issues. By challenging monolithic thinking about madness - whether by psychiatrists, patients, or feminist scholars - the authors are able to explore a much greater diversity of women's experiences. A major contribution!" -- Gail A. Hornstein, Mount Holyoke College and author of Agnes's Jacket: A Psychologist's Search for the Meanings of Madness
