Women, Madness And The Law ― A Feminist Reader

In this collection of 13 articles, an international panel of contributors, including researchers, theorists, and activists, focus on the psycho-legal control of women. Their topics include moving beyond positivism and constructivism toward a "material-discursive-intrapsychic" approach, the social constructions of mentally disordered female offenders, sex bias in psychiatric diagnosis and its effects on confinement and the courts, the treatment of women in secure hospitals, the mental health effects of post-abortion syndrome publicity, the outcomes of women being referred to a mobile crisis intervention team, historical regulation of "insane" women murderers, battered women defending themselves from charges of homicide, madness and gender in New Zealand from 1870 to 1910, pigeonholing of women that continues into the current century, and the feminist anti-psychiatry praxis from a Canadian perspective. Distributed in the US by ISBS. Annotation c2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)