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Surviving Madness: A Therapist's Own Story (Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiographies)
Surviving Madness A Therapist's Own Story - Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiographies Author:Betty Berzon Betty Berzon, renowned psychotherapist and author of the bestselling book Permanent Partners, tells her own incredible story here. Berzons journey from psychiatric patient on suicide watchher wrists tethered to the bed rails in a locked hospital wardto her present role as a groundbreaking therapist and gay pioneer makes ... more »for purely compelling reading. Berzon is recognized today as a trailblazing co-founder of a number of important lesbian and gay organizations and one of the first therapists to focus on means of developing healthy gay relationships and overcoming homophobia. Her sometimes bumpy road to success never fails to fascinate. Along the way she encounters such luminaries as Anaïs Nin, Eleanor Roosevelt, the Sitwells, Evelyn Hooker, and Paul Monette. Her recollections here provide a collective portrait of her fellow pioneers and a stirring lesson in twentieth-century history. It is, however, the intimate story of Berzons own private passage toward self-discoveryfrom mental breakdown and suicide attempts, through hospitalization, eventual triumphant recovery, and her own coming out as an open lesbian at the age of fortythat makes this memoir an urgent, insightful, and deeply emotional testament to human survival. "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« less