Surviving Madness by Betty Berzon

Surviving Madness by Betty Berzon

Betty Berzon, renowned psychotherapist and author of the bestselling book Permanent Partners, tells her own incredible story here. Berzon's journey from psychiatric patient on suicide watch - her wrists tethered to the bed rails in a locked hospital ward - to her present role as a groundbreaking therapist and gay pioneer makes for purely compelling reading. Berzon is recognized today as a trailblazing co-founder of a number of important lesbian and gay organizations and as one of the first therapists to focus on means of developing healthy gay relationships and overcoming homophobia. Along her sometimes bumpy road to success she encountered such luminaries as Anais Nin, Eleanor Roosevelt, the Sitwells, Evelyn Hooker, and Paul Monette. It is, however, the intimate story of Berzon's own private passage toward self-discovery - from mental breakdown and suicide attempts, through hospitalization, eventual triumphant recovery, and her own coming out as an open lesbian at the age of forty - that makes this memoir an urgent, insightful, and deeply emotional testament to human survival.

I loved itBerzon does a terrific job of telling a rich, conflicted, and ultimately triumphant life story and setting it in the context of milestones in the history of the gay rights movement, a history that parallels her own growth. I was genuinely moved. - Joan Larkin, Living Out series editor ""Identity crisis is too mild a phrase to do justice to that witless period of my life. I punished myself in the mirror of society's image of me. They were, in fact, right I thought. I was all wrong for this world."" - Betty Berzon ""Betty Berzon is a treasure to the gay civil rights movement, a pioneering therapist who has shown many the way in battling homophobia. Now, in Surviving Madness, we get a rich account of the fascinating journey of her own life, the remarkable people and places that punctuated it, and the war that raged inside her head within a culture that has often demonized homosexuality. It is an enthralling, instructive, and ultimately uplifting story."" - Michelangelo Signorile, author of Queer in America and Life Outside

Betty Berzon has been a psychotherapist for thirty years. A member of the American Psychological Association since 1964, she is author of several popular books, including Permanent Partners: Building Gay and Lesbian Relationships That Last and Setting Them Straight: You Can Do Something About Bigotry and Homophobia in Your Life.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780299176204
ISBN 10	0299176207
Title	Surviving Madness
Author	Betty Berzon
Series	Living Out: Gay And Lesbian Autobiographies
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	University of Wisconsin Press
Year published	2002-03-30
Number of pages	250
Prizes	Winner of Lambda Literary Awards (Autobiography) 2002
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.