Question for Week 5: Mental Illness

Linda Logan writes in her essay about bipolar disorder:

“For many people with mental disorders, the transformation of the self is one of the most disturbing things about being ill. And their despair is heightened when doctors don’t engage with the issue, don’t ask about what parts of the self have vanished and don’t help figure out strategies to deal with that loss.”

To what extent was the transformation of one’s “self” the central issue in the other women’s lives we read about this week?

 

Published by

Elizabeth Reis

Elizabeth Reis recently joined the Macaulay Honors College at The City University of New York. Before that she was Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Oregon. She is the author of Bodies in Doubt: An American History of Intersex and Damned Women: Sinners and Witches in Puritan New England. She is also the editor of American Sexual Histories: A Social and Cultural History Reader.