Sounds from the Bell Jar: Ten Psychotic Authors

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.