According to Chesler, mental illness in women is the result either of a dysfunctional exaggeration of the prescribed sex role or of its unacceptable rejection.Ĭhesler devotes a chapter to the way female patients are viewed clinically and points out that mental health in women is measured by the extent to which they adjust to a role which demands guilt, conservatism, passivity, and self-hatred. Women and Madness takes the feminist position that, throughout history, women have been assigned a secondary and aberrant status in society consequently, they have often been seen as mad-simply by definition. She is politically active in the women's movement and is the founder of the Association for Women in Psychology (1970) and the National Women's Health Network (1976). Chesler has taught at the Institute for Developmental Studies, at the New School for Social Research, and at City University of New York. She has written and lectured widely on a variety of subjects, especially those dealing with the cultural and psychological significance of male and female roles. She attended Bard College and the New School for Social Research, from which she earned a Ph.D. Chesler is a psychology professor and psychotherapist as well as a feminist activist and writer. In 1972 Phyllis Chesler published the controversial Women and Madness, a book which quickly became seminal to 20th-century feminism. Daughter of Leon and Lillian Hammer Chesler married NachmyBronstein, 1973 children: Ariel, 1978
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |