Out of Her Mind Review by Gary Carden Out of Her Mind: Women Writing on Madness edited by Rebecca Shannonhouse New York: Modern Library Edition - 2000 $21.95 - 175 pages And there were the women in perpetual motion: they paced, lurched, fled. Some moved like sleepwalkers, somniferous in their tranquility, others were propelled by rages, by the snare of waking dreams unfolding before them. "Thorazine Shuffle" - Allie Light Modern psychiatry persists in concluding that there is no known link between creativity and mental illness; yet writers, poets, painters, filmmakers and actors continue to constitute a "signifcant percentage" of this country's mental patients. In recent years, the painful testimonials of "notables" like William Styron, Mike Wallace and Dick Cavett have resulted in thousands of secret "depressives" finally seeking help. Recently, Tipper Gore noted that mental illness was the "last great stigma of the twentieth century" -- a statement that may prove to be a rallying call for a furtive and guilt-ridden multitude... a multitude that is increasing at an alarming rate. This anthology contains the autobiographical experience of twenty-two women. Beginning with "The Book of Margery Kempft" in 1436, Out of Her Mind chronicles over 500 years of mental suffering. The majority of the selections are personal experiences -- poets, dancers and filmmakers who manage to function as artists despite depression, schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorders. Some have become psychiatrists and therapists themselves; all are witnesses. One of the most compelling entries in this collection is from a woman named Dorthea Dix, who became an advocate for the mentally ill after visiting the "mad farms" (such a facility was commonly called "a ship of fools" in England) in Massachusetts in 1843. At that time, the mentally ill were treated much as cattle in regard to food and shelter and were even "rented out" to farmers who "bid" on them at auctions. Even in our jaded age, Dorthea's descriptions of freezing and starving mad creatures are both shocking and daunting. Dix's testimony before governmental agencies lead to major changes in the housing and treatment of the mentally ill. (As a child, I remember my grandmother reading reprints of Dorthea's articles in the Asheville Citizen during the 1940s.) However, many of the selections in this anthology recount other abuses that are equally shocking -- especially those relating to the astonishingly misguided methods of identifying and treating mental illness. Wives were once summarily committed on the recommendation of their husbands -- an action that socially prominent and/or wealthy men could freely exercise simply because their wives either disagreed with their religious or political beliefs, or because the wives "flaunted social norms." In effect, eccentricity and insanity were the same. Nor has treatment improved markedly. From the ludicrous medical justifications attending the "floating uterus" theories (thought to be the cause of hysteria), to the blatant misuses of electroshock, insulin therapy and lobotomy, a significant part of clinical treatment emerges as misguided and inept. Indeed, the current abuse and misuse of prescribed drugs such as Prozac, lithium, Zoloft and thorazine seem equally misguided. These accounts include letters of Zelda Fitzgerald who underwent insulin treatment at the Highland Hospital in Asheville; Mary Jane Ward who underwent (and wrote about) electroshock treatment in 1946; "The Autobiography of a Schizophrenic Girl" which is an actual account of the terror attending a mental collapse; Janet Frame ("Faces in the Water"), New Zealand's most gifted poet and writer who was misdiagnosed as a schizophrenic, underwent a prolonged program of electroshock treatment and barely escaped a lobotomy, rescued only because an attending physician learned that one of her books had just won a literary award. A selection from Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar demonstrates that despite a regimen of electroshock treatment this poet's gift for descriptive detail and her memory remain unimpaired. Maxine Hong Kingston gives a poignant description of the mental disintegration of a Chinese woman ("The Woman Warrior"); Kate Millett's "The Loony-Bin Trip" testifies to her own experience in a mental hospital where the abundance of drugs kept the patients in a state of drugged compliance. The consequences of coping with a mother's suicide is recounted by Linda Gray Sexton, the daughter of the poet Anne Sexton ("Searching for Mercy Street"), and Signe Hammer in "By Her Own Hand." In both accounts, the legacy is a continuation of mental illness. Tracy Thompson's The Beast gives an unforgettable portrait of the terrors of manic-depression. This excerpt describes her sense of doom and her recurring nightmares of "The Second Coming" when the righteous will be gathered to Jesus, and Tracy will be left, a sense of abandonment that dates from a childhood experience in which she and her sisters were "set out" on a lonely road in south Georgia. Lauren Slater, a gifted writer about mental illness, recounts her own experience with obsessive-compulsive behavior and her gradual disillusionment with Prozac, a skepticism that is shared by Merin Danquah, a black dancer who suffers from bouts with a depression that "is not black" but vividly colorful and blinding. Martha Ellen Hughes provides a beautiful essay on the connection between southern eccentricity and insanity -- using her own family she demonstrates that isolation and eccentricity breed mental illness. Finally, there is Allie Light ("Thorazine Shuffle"), a filmmaker who has devoted her talents to exploring mental illness in documentary films. "Dialogues with Mad Women," released last year, consists of interviews with six patients. Allie, a former patient herself, continues to suffer from "a sense of impending doom." (She used to sleep with the car keys under her pillow in case she needed to take her children to the hospital.) Out of Her Mind is an impressive and comprehensive anthology that embodies a kind of history of mental illness in women. From the days of demonic possession (Margery Kempt) through "floating uterus hysterics" ("Confessions of a Nervous Woman") and EST to current obsession with prescription drugs as the final panacea, this collection verifies what we already know. Drugs are not a cure, but a treatment. We are still battling demons, unknown causes, and the whims of a frequently inept and occasionally arrogant profession. If madness is a metaphor and if mental illness in all of its variable forms is on the increase, perhaps it will eventually become "the norm," as pervasive as the common cold. I already have friends who talk readily about their own manias, drugs and therapy. Perhaps this is part of the final cure -- the willingness to talk openly about it. One friend suffers from nightmares and a sense of nameless dread; I am a manic-depressive. Occasionally, I work with the director of a major state agency who undergoes intermittent treatment for obsessive-compulsive behavior. We all talk about our treatment. Confession as therapy... the removal of the final stigma, perhaps. Go to Review 3 ("The Death of Satan") Books Music Enter keywords...