Women and Madness

1972

Phyllis Chesler (b. 1940)

In what ways does madness, including the question of who is labeled as mad and why, carry gendered meanings? In the mid- to late nineteenth century, for example, women’s prescribed social roles in middle- to upper-class affluent societies were so restrictive that they often developed psychological and physical symptoms as the only available form of protest against these restrictions. By the late twentieth century, it was a well-publicized fact that depression affects women at twice the rate of men.

In 1972, psychologist and feminist activist Phyllis Chesler published an important feminist critique of how women were treated by the psychiatric establishment. In Women and Madness, she argued that women in Western society at the time faced a double bind. Traditional gender stereotypes were frequently used as the basis for diagnostic categories, such as histrionic personality disorder, that pathologized women who conformed to them. At the same time, women who did not conform to these gender stereotypes were often condemned as deviant and disorderly. In short, being too feminine and not being feminine enough were both grounds for a diagnosis of psychopathology.

In this work, Chesler also characterized women’s experiences in the predominantly male psychiatric establishment as a reiteration of the unequal relationships between women and men in society at large, and as yet another opportunity for women to be “helped” by being “expertly dominated” by men. Her classic work was one part of a powerful feminist critique of psychiatry and psychology that continues to this day.

SEE ALSO Hysteria (1886), American Classification of Mental Disorders (1918), Sex Roles (1944), Gender Identity (1963), “On Being Sane in Insane Places” (1972)

Sylvia Plath’s gravestone at Heptonstall church in West Yorkshire, England, reads, “Even amidst fierce flames, the golden lotus can be planted.” The famous poet struggled with depression throughout her life before committing suicide in 1963, at the age of thirty.