I was looking for a book that would provide an introduction to abnormal psychology. But I didn’t want the standard lists of symptoms, typical course of development of different disorders, and statistics of prevalence. Instead, I wanted a book that would provide a sense of what mental illnesses are like from the inside, how they affect thinking and behavior, and what kind of difference they make to a person’s life. Abnormal Psychology in Context is just what I was looking for.

This is a collection of first-person accounts of mental illness, divided into thirteen chapters. The division of topics is pretty standard: anxiety disorders, dissociative disorders, mood disorders, suicide, schizophrenia, personality disorders, and so on. The accounts are from well-written, mostly well-known accounts. Contributors include Temple Grandin, Joan Didion, Kay Redfield Jamison, William Styron, Elizabeth Wurtzel, and Susanna Kaysen. There are some accounts by professionals too, such as Lauren Slater, Elizabeth Loftus, and Judith L. Rapoport. Furthermore, the editors have also managed to find some much less well known descriptions, and they deserve credit for doing their homework. These extracts really help to convey the lived experience of mental illness, bringing it alive and also making it seem less alien. Of course the thoughts and feelings of the mentally ill are odd and often unpleasant, but having these accounts helps us to at least get a sense of what it is like.

Of course first person accounts leave out some facts, are intrinsically subjective, and may even be somewhat unreliable. After all, they were written some time after the writers actually had the experiences, and their memories and descriptive powers are probably not perfect. Furthermore, while these accounts are not explicitly theoretical, they may implicitly endorse controversial theoretical ideas.

But so long as one reads these accounts with an awareness of the shortcomings of the form, they will be extremely useful. Not only do they help to humanize mental illness, but they also help us to place it in social, interpersonal and moral contexts. That is to say, they lead us to think deeper about these crucial issues.

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