Sounds from the Bell Jar: Ten Psychotic Authors - Softcover

Claridge, Gordon; Pryor, Ruth; Watkins, Gwen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1883536154 ISBN 13: 9781883536152

Publisher: Malor Books, 2017

Synopsis

This groundbreaking work is a unique collaboration between an Oxford University psychologist and two literary critics. It explores the lives and works of 10 authors – among them Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath – who embody both serious mental illness and great originality of thought. The book draws upon personal diaries, historical archives, clinical records and literary productions, and examines modes of thinking – such as divergent thought, over-inclusiveness and autism – that psychosis and creativity might have in common. Using genetics, experimental abnormal and clinical psychology, personality research, descriptive psychiatry and literary analysis, Claridge, Pryor and Watkins present the revolutionary idea that normality and psychosis are continuous with each other. Healthy varieties and styles of thought and perception substantially overlap with the inclination toward psychotic breakdown and, indeed, might at times be identical. Psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, therapists and general readers will gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between madness and creativity from this book.

About this title

About the Author

Gordon Claridge is a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and University Lecturer in Abnormal Psychology. He was previously Reader in Clinical Psychology in the Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Glascow. His publications include Origins of Mental Illness (also published by Malor Books).

Ruth Pryor has held teaching and research posts at the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of Washington, Seattle; Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford; and the University of Wales. She is the editor of Letters to Vernon Watkins and The Collected Poems of Vernon Watkins.

Gwen Watkins taught at the University of Washington and the Extra-Mural Department of the University College of Swansea. Her publications include Portrait of a Friend (about Dylan Thomas and Vernon Watkins) and Dickens in Search of Himself.

Edition details

• Publisher: Malor Books
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1883536154
• ISBN 13: 9781883536152
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 274