The Loony-Bin Trip - Softcover

Millett, Kate

3.83

995 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0252068882 ISBN 13: 9780252068881

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2000

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Millet, author of the landmark Sexual Politics , tells of her struggle to regain control of her life after being diagnosed with manic depression. Haunted by recollections of two brief commitments to mental hospitals, she becomes increasingly terrified of being committed again. Her nightmares come true when she is confined to a mental hospital while traveling in Ireland. A new preface comments on recent movements for patients' rights and notes books that have begun to tread the still-taboo ground of psychiatric confinement. Lacks a subject index. Millet is a feminist activist and writer. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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They have come to make a bust. But they call it "talking." My legs shake. The terror in my mind is like a machine out of order. But I must talk. I must look good. I must answer the trick questions perfectly. Maybe I can dissuade them. A bust is an examination-which I am fool enough always to imagine I can pass. A life-time of passing tests has never prepared me for the kind that are rigged, for the ones that cannot be passed, were not meant to be.

Of course there is no denying the misery and stress of life itself: the sufferings of the mind at the mercy of emotion, the circumstances which set us at war with one another, the divorces and antagonisms in human relationships, the swarms of fears, the blocks to confidence, the crises of decision and choice. These are the things we weather or fail to, seek council against, even risk the inevitable disequilibrium of power inherent in therapy to combat-they are the grit and matter of the human condition. But when such circumstances are converted into symptoms and diagnosed as illnesses, I believe we enter upon very uncertain ground.

Review:

"Not since Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest has the literature of madness emitted such a powerful anti-institutional cry." -- Washington Post ADVANCE PRAISE "The forced incarceration, the mental anguish, and the sheer humiliation of 'going mad' are made real in Millett's detailed and passionate narrative of her own experiences. This is a brave book. Once again, the pioneer of women's liberation in our century makes us consider the nature of freedom--what it is and who has a right to it." -- Andrea Dworkin, author of Letters from a War Zone "[Millett] takes you inside her mind in a way that no psychiatrist has ever done, and what you see there is not a mad woman, but another person, just like you, only a little bit more talented, and very, very sane (but damned mad). It is a magic book." -- Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, author of The Assault on Truth "Kate Millett is magnificent: a historical figure in her own lifetime, a truly exciting writer, a chronicler of our times... [Her] critique of institutional psychiatry and our well-meaning collusion with it is devastating and true... Millett's spirit is indomitable, her bravery thrilling, her return long awaited." -- Phyllis Chesler, author of Women and Madness

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