“She knows it is all a load of old socks”: Doris Lessing, anti-psychiatry and bodies that matter
Myler, Kerry S (2017) “She knows it is all a load of old socks”: Doris Lessing, anti-psychiatry and bodies that matter. Twentieth-Century Literature. ISSN 0041-462X (In Press)
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Abstract
In The Golden Notebook (1962), The Four-Gated City (1969) and Briefing for a Descent into Hell (1971), Doris Lessing examines the inadequacies of traditional models of madness and replaces them with an anti-psychiatric model. While ostensibly the three novels strive to conceive of madness in terms of R. D. Laing’s anti-psychiatric theories, this paper will argue that they in fact serve to reveal an impasse between Laing’s “lived body” (but gender neutral) theory of schizophrenia and the discursively constructed, “inscribed” bodies of Lessing’s female characters. Lessing’s madness novels deconstruct Laing’s phallocentric approach to schizophrenia by rewriting his theory of madness as a gendered and embodied experience.
| Item Type: | Article |
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| Additional Information: | This is the accepted manuscript of an article accepted for publication in Twentieth-Century Literature. |
| Divisions: | Faculty of of Arts, Society and Professional Studies > Department of Art and Humanities |
| Depositing User: | Jane Faux |
| Date Deposited: | 31 Oct 2017 14:11 |
| Last Modified: | 20 Feb 2018 12:29 |
| URI: | https://newman.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/16240 |
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