![]() ![]() ![]() None of my professors ever said that women (or men) were oppressed, or that oppression is traumatizing - especially when those who suffer are blamed for their own misery and diagnostically pathologized. We also learned that it was mothers - not fathers, genetic predisposition, accidents, and/or poverty - who caused neurosis and psychosis. During the 1950s and 1960s, clinicians were still being taught that women suffer from penis envy, are morally inferior to men, and are innately masochistic, dependent, passive, heterosexual, and monogamous. Much of what we take for granted today was not even whispered about fifty or sixty years ago. In this excerpt, Chesler shares her thoughts on how some things have changed, how some have stayed the same, and how important it is that women living with mental illness get the respect and care they deserve. Now reissued nearly fifty years after its original publication, it remains just as relevant now as it was then. When Phyllis Chesler’s landmark bookWomen and Madness was first published in 1972, it solidified her status as an icon at the intersection of feminism and mental health. ![]()
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