Psychology Articles Critique Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Psychology Articles Critique - Essay Example In the 16th century, most of the women confined in asylums were unfortunates who were shut up by their husbands for what was perceived as mad behavior. A century later, those confined were victims of violence, prostitution, or bad luck, and most of them were women on the poor receiving end of a male-dominated patriarchal society. Chesler points out (p. 94) that by the end of the 19th and throughout the 20th centuries, madness became associated with being a woman by both psychiatrists and novelists, painting a skewed reality where the numbers of men confined for madness were equally increasing. What could account for these misguided perceptions is a mistake of masculine logic: just because male psychiatrists and novelists cannot understand women who as medical evidence has now revealed are anatomically and biologically different, does not mean that all women are mad and that all mad people are women. Chesler attempts to correct such monumental mistakes. Third, by mirroring within the walls of the asylum the inherent 'defects' of outside society - the patriarchal nature, the well-defined gender roles, and expected modes of repressed feminine behavior - the cure may have made the 'sickness' worse. Chesler provides details of her arguments by looking t... And fourth, given these mismatches between diagnoses and prescriptions, asylums did not offer asylum and need to be run differently if these are to cure women patients. Chesler provides details of her arguments by looking through the window of three psychopathological symptoms of how the female social role clashed in and with the outside world. Clinical depression (p. 102-104) is associated with women's emotional makeup and their propensity to search for meaning in daily reality and in everything. As scientific findings point out, most symptoms of depression may be the result of biochemical reactions taking place from hormonal changes that wreak havoc on the mind. What this leads to is frightening, because it is possible that several women were characterized as mad in the past and locked up in asylums because they were classified as mad and depressed, when it could be possible that a weekend walk in the park, a good conversation, or maybe even just a few more hours of rest or sleep would have been enough to cure them. Frigidity (p. 105-108) is a reaction to the masculine worldview of women as sex objects whose self-worth is determined by the presence or intensity of orgasmic experience. She reflects the feminist view that by giving women power over their bodies, birth control pills helped them overcome their insecurities by seemingly gaining the upper hand. Although it made casual sex more guilt-free and opened the door to excesses of irresponsibility by both the woman and her partner, sexual liberation may have even enhanced the male view of women as sex objects and piled up another layer of sex-centered insecurity on what already is a social burden. Suicide (p. 108-109) is the end result of