The Heart Too Long Suppressed: A Chronicle of Mental Illness

by Carol Hebald

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Author: Carol Hebald

Publisher: Northeastern University Press

Hardcover:
ISBN 10: 1555534821
ISBN 13: 978-1555534820

A writer and Broadway actress recounts her more than forty-year struggle with mental illness, during which she pursued her career ambitions and fought against a pervasively ignorant medical system.

From Publishers Weekly

After a lifetime of mental illness, marked by repeated suicide attempts and hospitalizations, and a parade of ineffectual psychiatrists, Hebald, at the age of 44, threw her pharmacopoeia into the ocean and walked away from therapy. Since then, she has lived mostly free from madness, managing to earn her living as a writing teacher and to produce this cathartic memoir of her sexual and emotional abuse. Closer to her father than her mother, Hebald was devastated at age five when he died of cancer. Years later, in therapy, she remembered that he "made love" to her on his deathbed. Physically abused by her older sister, Hebald found no ally in their babysitter, who locked her in dark closets while Hebald's mother took over the family business. Hebald's only escape, at the age of six, was to go to the movies alone, inviting men in the theater to "play" with her, so she could experience the pleasure she had with her father. Her schooling was a disaster; by her early teens, Hebald was unable to recognize or express her feelings. One of her therapists noted Hebald's difficulty in distinguishing fantasy from reality; her readers may also find some of her story hard to believe. Her wholesale repudiation of psychiatry, though understandable given such experiences, may seem extreme to many readers. Yet Hebald's writing is smooth, her narrative is gripping and her eventual recovery provides an inspirational ending to her harrowing tale. (May 23) Forecast: Hebald's book combines solid prose with an Oprah-esque saga of overcoming adversity. Author publicity will help this book, especially given its inspirational ending.

From Library Journal

The rocky road from childhood victimization in the 1940s to self-acceptance and recovery in middle age is documented in this stirring memoir. Self-destructive impulses and a desire to expand her emotional range led Hebald to delve into psychoanalysis. Rather than help her become a well-adjusted person, the experience transformed her into a "professional patient" who was told that she was a likely candidate for suicide and would need psychiatric drugs for the rest of her life. Despite hospitalizations for her illness, the author managed careers in acting (on and off Broadway), teaching (former associate professor of English, Univ. of Kansas), and writing (Three Blind Mice: Two Short Novels), though her personal life was more clouded. Frank but somewhat ambivalent about her early abusers, Hebald boldly critiques traditional ideas about mental illness based on the treatment that she received. The range and rich details of her life experiences make this book very readable as well as significant for its insights into the stark limitations and subtly inhumane aspects of modern psychiatry. Recommended for large public libraries and all psychology collections. Antoinette Brinkman, formerly with the Southwest Indiana Mental Health Ctr. Lib., Evansville
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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The Heart Too Long Suppressed: A Chronicle of Mental Illness