1st Edition

Women's Encounters with the Mental Health Establishment Escaping the Yellow Wallpaper

Edited By Elayne Clift Copyright 2002
    242 Pages
    by Routledge

    242 Pages
    by Routledge

    Explore women’s first-person experiences with the mental health establishment!

    This unique contemporary anthology of women’s experiential writing shares women’s realities, perceptions, and experiences (positive and negative) within the therapeutic environment. These artistic expressions of personal experience will help women understand their own encounters in a new light. They are also instructive and enlightening for any practitioner working with women in a mental health setting.

    Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s famous short story (included here), The Yellow Wallpaper, which inspired this title, has come to represent the struggle of contemporary women to be understood by the therapeutic milieu from whom they seek psychological support and psychiatric treatment. An icon of feminist writing, the 1892 story symbolizes affirmation and validation for the female experience regarding mental health and therapy. This anthology, in the spirit of Gilman’s work, gives voice to today’s women so that their own encounters with the mental health establishment can be validating and affirming to others. It will also enlighten those in the helping professions as they extend their services to women in a time of growing need and shrinking resources.

    In addition to The Yellow Wallpaper and a foreword and afterword by noted psychiatric professionals, Women’s Encouters with the Mental Health Establishment: Escaping the Yellow Wallpaper also contains works by authors including:

    • Sylvia Plath
    • Kate Millett
    • Anne Sexton
    • Lauren Slater
    • Martha Manning
    • Elayne Clift
    • and many more!

      Through prose and poetry, the contributors to this volume offer a creative, artistic, and highly readable contribution to the literatures of women’s studies and psychology!

      Visit the author’s website at http://www.sover.net/~eclift.

    • About the Editor
    • Contributors
    • Foreword: Women As Subjects of Their Experiences
    • Acknowledgments
    • Prologue: The Yellow Wallpaper
    • I. Hospitals
    • From The Looney Bin Trip
    • Life Inside
    • Ode to Carrie White
    • From The Bell Jar
    • For Love Nor Money
    • Since You Asked, Here Is Why
    • Death Interrupted
    • Outstanding Charges
    • The Setup
    • The Scream
    • Hospital
    • Safe Places
    • The Waiting Room
    • Home Sweet Nuthouse
    • i remember
    • Bathing in the Bin
    • Outtakes
    • You, Dr. Martin
    • II. Therapy
    • From Welcome to My Country
    • The Caregiver’s Dance
    • The Psychoanalyst’s Daughter: A Memoir
    • Vested Interests
    • Putdown
    • Is She Really Listening?
    • We Go a Little Over the Hour
    • Suite 506
    • Escaping the Cabin
    • Therapy
    • Preview
    • From Undercurrents
    • It’s Going to Be a Great Daypro
    • Side Effects May Include:
    • Transference
    • Consult
    • Why Have You Come to My Office Today? Why Have You Come to the Hospital?
    • My Last Freudian
    • Fragments
    • Misinterpreting Body
    • Dr. Abe’s Psychotherapy
    • Going Out
    • Therapy Session
    • Just One Question Doctor—About My Termination
    • The Story of My Therapy
    • III. Hope
    • Mrs. Gould
    • Woman Knows It’s Time to Quit Therapy
    • Simple Prayer
    • Clarity
    • Saying Goodbye
    • Keeping Our Distance
    • Carol
    • Reflections for a Psychiatric Resident
    • When Therapy Works
    • Afterword

    Biography

    Elayne Clift