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Autobiography / Psychotherapy / Lesbian Interest / Women's Issues

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Surviving Madness A Therapist's Own Story Betty Berzon Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiographies "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, 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 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 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. "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 (1928­2006) was 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. There is a web site about Betty Berzon at Berzon web site. Betty Berzon won a Lambda Literary Award, May 29, 2003, for her memoir, Surviving Madness: A Therapist's Own Story.

April 2002 250 pp.      26 B/W photos     6 x 9 ISBN 0-299-17620-7  Cloth $27.95 t To order, you can accumulate titles in the Shopping Cart by clicking on the bulleted lines below. You can submit your order electronically, paying for it with MasterCard or Visa. Click here for further explanation of shopping cart feature. Never ordered from us before? Read this first.

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