CTY Cog Psych
Explore the intersection of psychology and biography with the CTY Cog Psych book list. Discover classics like An Unquiet Mind and Girl, Interrupted alongside works by Malcolm Gladwell and Oliver Sacks, exploring the mind, mental illness, and human behavior.
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An Unquiet Mind
by Kay Redfield Jamison
NATIONAL BESTSELLER ⢠A deeply powerful memoir about bipolar illness that has both transformed and saved livesâwith a new preface by the author. Dr. Jamison is one of the foremost authorities on manic-depressive (bipolar) illness; she has also experienced it firsthand. For even while she was pursuing her career in academic medicine, Jamison found herself succumbing to the same exhilarating highs and catastrophic depressions that afflicted many of her patients, as her disorder launched her into ruinous spending sprees, episodes of violence, and an attempted suicide. Here Jamison examines bipolar illness from the dual perspectives of the healer and the healed, revealing both its terrors and the cruel allure that at times prompted her to resist taking medication.
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Autobiography of a Schizophrenic Girl
by Marguerite Sechehaye
This is the astonishing memoir of a young woman called only âRenee,â whose descent into schizophrenia began at the age of five. Written with a diamond-sharp precision that lends it an eerie power, it tells the story of Reneeâs long sojourn in what she calls âThe Land of Enlightenment" or âThe Country of Tibetâ and of her gradual and painstaking return to âwonderful reality.â Renee moves in and out of hospitals, sometimes able to eat only tea and spinach, or apples and spinach, because ââThe System forbade anything else.â She regresses to a state resembling infancy, and she experiences intense despair, although she always describes her experiences with a pitiless and remarkable calm, as though she has observed herself from a great distance. And all the while she is sustained by the attention and understanding of her analyst, Marguerite Sechehaye, who has contributed an illuminating Afterword to her story. This harrowing and unforgettable work is a classic in the literature of mental illness. With a foreword by Frank Conroy.
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Girl, Interrupted
by Susanna Kaysen
30th ANNIVERSARY EDITION ⢠NATIONAL BESTSELLER ⢠In 1967, after a session with a psychiatrist she'd never seen before, eighteen-year-old Susanna Kaysen was put in a taxi and sent to McLean Hospital. Her memoir of the next two years is a "poignant, honest ... triumphantly funny ... and heartbreaking story" (The New York Times Book Review). WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR The ward for teenage girls in the McLean psychiatric hospital was as renowned for its famous clienteleâSylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor, and Ray Charlesâas for its progressive methods of treating those who could afford its sanctuary. Kaysen's memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perception while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers. It is a brilliant evocation of a "parallel universe" set within the kaleidoscopically shifting landscape of the late sixties. Girl, Interrupted is a clear-sighted, unflinching document that gives lasting and specific dimension to our definitions of sane and insane, mental illness and recovery.