Description

The Becoming is a brutal account of mental illness by a woman who doesnt believe in mental illness As the author embarks on a PhD at the University of Oxford a lifetime of addiction eating disorders and trauma culminates in an explosive hospital stay that sees her achieve liberation through psychosis Her journey from terror to acceptance is grueling and she makes meaning of it by weaving reflexive narrative with classic and nascent scholarship Part phenomenological recounting part social critique the text disrupts biomedical approaches to altered states by exploring their emancipatory potential It also illuminates how conventional mental health treatment pathologizes human suffering In doing so The Becoming contributes to antipsychiatry and Mad studies projects each asking What does it mean to be normal and Should we be sane in an insane world