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Why do an overwhelmingly larger proportion of women than men suffer from depression and emotional distress? Is it because, as feminists would argue, that women are reacting to a misogynistic world? Or is their madness mental illness, as the "experts" would claim? In this book, Jane Ussher examines these opposing viewpoints and proposes both a new understanding of women's mental distress and constructive alternatives to present treatments. Using an historical perspective, she analyzes the evidence for misogyny in different cultures and its effects on women. In a detailed examination of witchcraft - and the contradictory arguments that witchcraft was either evidence of misogyny or mental illness - Ussher sets the background for her investigation of women's madness from the Victorian era to the 20th century. She moves on to assess various critiques of the concept of madness, including those from sociologists, Marxists, the 1960s' anti-psychiatrists and feminists, and exposes their ultimate failure to explain or understand women's experience of what is called "madness". She surveys how and why women become "mad", or are labelled "mad" and conducts a critical analysis of the present forms of intervention from psychiatrists, psychologists and therapists. Finally, she suggests constructive alternatives which reconcile the needs of individual women with the needs of women as a group. Shortlisted for MIND Book of the Year 1991.
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Florence Vigneux
reviewed Women's madness on March 13, 2008
Women's madness
Ussher's book began as a feminist rant that infuriated me. I came as close as I ever have to throwing the book across the room in disgust. However, in the end, I was thoroughly convinced of Ussher's main argument: that women's mental health issues are most definitely related to our relegation as "the second sex," that patriarchal society makes us ill, and that solutions are elusive. Perhaps most surprisingly, the author takes the radical feminists to task:
"This theorizing…establishes a cosy elite which can be entered only by the chosen few. Yet the few women who manage to survive the perils of patriarchy to reach the feminist utopia are likely to share many of the characteristics of the castigated male oppressors. These women are invariably white, able-bodied, middle-class, without dependants, well educated and articulate. The majority of women who fight for survival on a daily basis, whose worries centre around feeding their families, arranging childcare, and maintaining some semblance of sanity in the face of adversity, will be completely alienated by this brand of feminist rhetoric. Who can take a psychic journey when the reality of unpaid bills, screaming children and an unsupportive partner are glaring her in the eye? Such women may, from the radical feminist view, be duped by patriarchy; but can they enter a state of higher spirituality when the demands of reality are so overwhelming?" [p. 225]
Ussher concludes that women's madness is about mental illness and misogynism. It is both, she says, and it is neither:
"It cannot be encapsulated within one explanation, one interpretation. As women, we are regulated through the discourse of madness. But the woman herself is real, as is her pain - we must not deny that. So we must listen to women." [p. 306]
The answers, Ussher argues, lie in interdisciplinary approaches that crosscut the boundaries between medical theory, literary theory, sociology, psychology, psychoanalysis, and anthropology. Similarly, treatment for mental illness must also be multidimensional in nature.
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