Smoking Cigarettes, Eating Glass
A Psychologist's Memoir
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
"A fiercely honest and beautifully written book." —Paul Austin, author, Beautiful Eyes and Something for the PainA cautionary tale of careless psychiatric diagnosis, treatment, and resilienceSawyer's memoir is a harrowing, heroic, and redeeming story of her battle with mental illness, and her triumph in overcoming it. In 1960, as a suicidal teenager, Sawyer was institutionalized, misdiagnosed, and suffered through 89 electroshock treatments before being transferred, labeled as "unimproved." The damage done has haunted her life. Discharged in 1966, after finally receiving proper psychiatric care, Sawyer kept her past secret and moved on to graduate from Yale University, raise two children, and become a respected psychotherapist. That is, until 2001, when she reviewed her hospital records and began to remember a broken childhood and the even more broken mental health system of the 1950s and 1960s.
Customer Reviews
Smoking cigarettes, eating glass.
Staggeringly honest, heart breaking, intensely intimate presentation of a woman with the heart of a loving lioness. The book absorbed me completely. I couldn't put it down. Knocked me flat when it wasn't sending me on the wildest of emotional roller coasters. Ultimately a thrilling confirmation of life and the will to live. Dear Annita, thank you and congratulations!