Varieties of Psychopathological Experience by Carney Landis

One can find personal descriptions of exorcism, purging, leeches, insulin coma therapy, ECT, pharmacological treatments from ancient to modern times, various types of psychotherapy, and self-help groups. The books span different centuries and cultures and include women and men of different ages, occupations, socioeconomic classes, and education, representing a multitude of diagnostic categories and treatment procedures. The accounts show the disorder in its family and environmental context. Some authors are celebrities for whom a large amount of biographical information is available, permitting comparison of multiple data sources. The books are interesting to read as narratives with a strong story line. The accounts are written in the person’s own words and emphasize issues that the writer, as distinct from a clinician, deems important. In this way, memoirs complement research and case studies performed from the outside looking in. This genre views mental disorder from the inside looking out, drawing upon the human capacity for self-description and self-analysis. First-person narratives provide a valuable archival record of the phenomenology of mental disorder and the changes that have occurred in diagnosis, treatment, and public response over several centuries. Other types of books about individuals with mental disorders, such as biographies, case studies, and fictionalized accounts, can be useful data sources and teaching tools however, we have chosen to focus on autobiographies for several reasons. Several of the autobiographies have been made into feature films. These anthologies have brought the books to the attention of a wide audience of students, practitioners, and the public. There are at least 25 published bibliographies and anthologies (3- 27), the latter often meant to be used as corollary readings in psychopathology classes. Several accounts, such as those by Schreber (1) and Beers (2), have become classics in mental health education, while others remain largely unknown. The formats of these books range from privately printed tracts with little or no editing to books issued by major publishers.

Autobiographies written by individuals diagnosed as mentally ill are available in the English language going back at least as far as the fifteenth century.

Varieties of Psychopathological Experience by Carney Landis