Later, the work of feminist sociologist Kate Millett grew as a significant element of antipsychiatry and patient power. Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, published in the United States in 1971, as well as the publication of Virginia Woolf’s five volume diaries (1977–1984) underlined women’s experiences with mental illness and raised awareness of the dangers women faced at the hands of the mental health system.Īltogether, these books humanized the suffering and the social controls that women had to deal with if they didn’t act according to the so-called norm or accept their role in American society.
Other books besides The Feminine Mystique displayed the complicity and willing participation of mainstream psychiatry in disciplining women, and placing constraints on what was regarded as unfettered emotional, sexual, and artistic activity. Works like Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, for instance, suggested that mass tranquilizer use during the 1950s had pacified women and had facilitated women assenting to the limits imposed on them. Those women who did not behave “properly” risked ending up in psychiatric care and possibly chemically sedated, or worse. Radicals criticized psychiatry for reinforcing notions of the dutiful mother and obedient housewife, suggesting psychiatry (and pharmaceuticals, yes) were a means to regulate women. Critics drew from second-wave feminism to refocus on the role of women in mental health. These changes occurred because of the actions of both patients and doctors.īack then, psychoanalysis and psychopharmacological interventions were criticized both Freud’s focus on sexual fantasies and the use of “mother’s little helpers” (benzodiazepines) came under fire. And transformative change was the result. Feminism and sexual politics in the late 1960s and 1970s led to a reassessment of gender-based hierarchies in the mental health establishment. Sound familiar?Īs we reflect on the #MeToo era, Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, and other deeply unseemly characters in 2020, it’s important to note that women’s issues and mental health were embedded in radical mental medicine fifty years ago. The caucus also worried about the United States as a whole. The group, while somewhat small, felt that mental medicine needed to undergo change. A half century ago a “radical caucus” formed in the American Psychiatric Association.
0 kommentar(er)
