Sounds from the Bell Jar: Ten Psychotic Authors

by Gordon Claridge

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Author: Gordon Claridge

Publisher: Malor Books

Paperback:
ISBN 10: 1883536154
ISBN 13: 978-1883536152

Using genetics, experimental abnormal and clinical psychology, personality research, descriptive psychiatry and literary analysis, the authors present the revolutionary idea that normality and psychosis are continuous with each other. This groundbreaking work explores the lives and works of ten authors, among them Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath, who embody both serious mental illness and great originality of thought. The book draws upon personal diaries, historical archives, clinical records and literary productions, and examines modes of thinking such as divergent thought, over-inclusiveness, and autism, which psychosis and creativity might have in common.

From the Inside Flap

Gordon Claridge is a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and Universitiy Lecturer in Abnormal Psychology. He was previously Reader in Clinical Psychology in the Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Glasgow. His publications include Origins of Mental Illness (Malor), Sounds from the Bell Jar: Ten Psychotic Authors (Malor), Personality Differences and Biological Variations (with S. Canter and W. Hume), Drugs and Human Behaviour, and Personality and Arousal.

Ruth Pryor has held teaching and research posts at the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of Washington, Seattle; Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford; and the University of Wales. She is the editor of Letters to Vernon Watkins and The Collected Poems of Vernon Watkins.

Gwen Watkins taught at the University of Washington and the Extra-Mural Department of the University College of Swansea. Her publications include Portrait of a Friend, about Dylan Thomas and Vernon Watkins, and Dickens in Search of Himself.

About the Author

Gordon Claridge is a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and University Lecturer in Abnormal Psychology. He was previously Reader in Clinical Psychology in the Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Glascow. His publications include Origins of Mental Illness (also published by Malor Books).

Ruth Pryor has held teaching and research posts at the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of Washington, Seattle; Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford; and the University of Wales. She is the editor of Letters to Vernon Watkins and The Collected Poems of Vernon Watkins.

Gwen Watkins taught at the University of Washington and the Extra-Mural Department of the University College of Swansea. Her publications include Portrait of a Friend (about Dylan Thomas and Vernon Watkins) and Dickens in Search of Himself.