Brant Wenegrat - Illness and Power: Womens Mental Disorders and the Battle Between the Sexes
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Illness and Power: Womens Mental Disorders and the Battle Between the Sexes
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Since ancient times, physicians have believed that women are especially vulnerable to certain mental illnesses. Contemporary research confirms that women are indeed more susceptible than men to anxiety, depression, multiple personality, and eating disorders, and several forms of what used to be called hysteria. Why are these disorders more prevalent in women? Brant Wenegrat convincingly asserts that womens excess risk stems from a lack of social power. He reviews womens social power from an evolutionary and cross-cultural perspective and places mental disorders in the context of evolution and societal organization. In this comprehensive look at mental disorders commonly associated with women, Brant Wenegrat convincingly asserts that womens excess risk stems from a lack of social power.
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Illness and Power : Women's Mental Disorders and the Battle between the Sexes
author
:
Wenegrat, Brant.
publisher
:
New York University Press
isbn10 | asin
:
081479310X
print isbn13
:
9780814793107
ebook isbn13
:
9780585339580
language
:
English
subject
Women--Mental health--Sociological aspects, Social isolation, Women--Social conditions.
publication date
:
1995
lcc
:
RC451.4.W6W46 1995eb
ddc
:
616.89/0082
subject
:
Women--Mental health--Sociological aspects, Social isolation, Women--Social conditions.
Page iii
Illness and Power
Women's Mental Disorders and the Battle between the Sexes
Brant Wenegrat
Page iv
New York University Press New York and London Copyright 1995 by New York University All rights reserved
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wenegrat, Brant. Illness and power : women's mental disorders and the battle between the sexes / Brant Wenegrat. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8147-9282-0 1. WomenMental healthSociological aspects. 2. Social isolation. 3. WomenSocial conditions. I. Title. RC451.4.W6W46 1995 616.89'0082dc20 94-40877 CIP
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Page v
Contents
Acknowledgments
vii
1 Introduction: Explaining Women's Disorders
1
2 Depression and Anxiety: Responses to Lack of Power
13
3 Women's Mental Disorders as Illness Roles
47
4 Two Modern-Day Epidemics
78
5 An Evolutionary, Cross-Cultural View of Women's Social Power
110
6 Conclusion
136
Notes
163
Index
207
Page vii
Acknowledgments
Numerous friends and colleagues contributed to the writing of this book. Adolf Pfefferbaum and Bert Kopell maintained the institutional arrangements that made it possible for me to study and write. Over the years, Walton T. Roth consistently helped me to refine my thinking on many of the topics discussed in later chapters, as did many of the psychiatry residents with whom I have been privileged to work. Linda Garfield, Annette Hollander, Robert Ornstein, Margaret Nesse, Randolph Nesse, and others read this manuscript at various stages and offered important suggestions. Robert Ornstein and Kitty Moore provided invaluable help in finding a publisher. Niko Pfund, of New York University Press, provided important advice and shepherded this book through the publication process.
I am especially indebted to my wife, Anne O'Reilly, and to my son, Jacob O'Reilly Wenegrat. Both supported me during the writing process. As a clinical psychologist, Anne also contributed to many of the ideas and arguments in this book.
Of course, I am solely responsible for any errors, whether in fact or in reasoning, found in the following pages.
Page 1
1 Introduction: Explaining Women's Disorders
Since ancient times, physicians have believed that women are especially vulnerable to certain mental illnesses. Modern-day research studies confirm that women are more susceptible than men to anxiety, depression, multiple personality, eating disorders, and several forms of what used to be called hysteria.1 Women's excess risk of these disorders is real; it cannot be accounted for by use of different diagnostic criteria in men and women, by greater willingness of women to admit psychological symptoms, or by help-seeking behavior by women patients. This study tries to explain why these disorders are more common in women.
The thesis of this book is that mental disorders that are more common in women are partly caused by lack of social power and that women's higher risk of these mental disorders results from their relative powerlessness in many societies. Social power is the ability to provide for one's needs and security and the needs and security of loved ones, to stand up for oneself in conflicts with others, and to make life decisions based on one's own desires. To
Page 2
explain women's relative lack of social power and to understand its psychological meaning, I will review women's powerlessness from an evolutionary, cross-cultural perspective. Although men in most societies have much more power than women, women in some societies do have sufficient power to provide for their needs and security, to stand up for their interests, and to make life decisions. Men's power advantage results from differences in men's and women's strategies pertaining to reproduction. The allocation of power in particular societies is determined by diverse factors, the most important of which is women's control of resources. Societies in which women produce more material goods are those in which women control the greatest resources and thus wield more social power.
An important corollary point is that mental disorders can be understood only when their larger social settings have been given more attention than is often the case. Not only personal circumstances but also general conditionssociological, economic, and culturalshape and define the symptoms and signs of these disorders and determine their course and incidence. This point is illustrated by many of the illnesses discussed in later chapters. For example, in the late nineteenth century, Jean-Martin Charcot, the great neurological pioneer in charge of the Salptrire, the Parisian women's asylum, failed miserably to understand grand hysteria, the disorder that most intrigued him, because he was insufficiently attentive to his patients' sociological and economic handicaps.2 Charcot's student, Pierre Janet, working just twenty years later, first understood how hysteria could serve an adaptive function for disadvantaged patients. By talking to patients about their lives, Janet founded the modern practice of psychotherapy. Charcot and Janet are discussed in chapter 3.
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