The vast literature on Virginia Woolf's life, work, and marriage
falls into two groups. A large majority is certain that she was
mentally ill, and a small minority is equally certain that she was
not mentally ill but was misdiagnosed by psychiatrists. In this
daring exploration of Woolf's life and work, Thomas Szasz--famed
for his radical critique of psychiatric concepts, coercions, and
excuses--examines the evidence and rejects both views. Instead, he
looks at how Virginia Woolf, as well as her husband Leonard, used
the concept of madness and the profession of psychiatry to manage
and manipulate their own and each other's lives.
Szasz argues that Virginia Woolf was a victim neither of mental
illness, nor psychiatry, nor her husband--three ways she is
regularly portrayed. He finds her to be an intelligent and
self-assertive person, a moral agent who used mental illness,
psychiatry, and her husband to fashion for herself a life of her
own choosing. This is not to impute to Virginia Woolf some sort of
limitless freedom of the will, nor is it to deny that the cultural
and social milieu in which she grew up and lived had a profound
impact on her psyche and her sense of the life choices open to her.
It is only to remind us of the primacy of Virginia Woolf as an
active, goal-directed, moral agent, responsible equally for her
madness-badness and her genius-creativity.
Do we explain achievement when we attribute it to the fictitious
entity we call "genius"? Do we explain failure when we attribute it
to the fictitious entity we call "madness"? Or do we deceive
ourselves the same way that the person deceives himself when he
attributes the easy ignition of hydrogen to its being "flammable"?
Szasz interprets Virginia Woolf's life and work as expressions of
her character, and her character as the "product" of her free will.
He offers this view as a corrective against the prevailing,
ostensibly scientific view that attributes both her "madness" and
her "genius" to biological-genetic causes. We tend to attribute
exceptional achievement to genius, and exceptional failure to
madness. Both, says Szasz, are fictitious entities.
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