The Heart Too Long Suppressed

A Chronicle of Mental Illness

Author: Carol Hebald
ISBN: 9781555534820

After a Psychiatrist spitefully told Carol Hebald that she would someday commit suicide, that it was simply a question of when, something inside her clicked. Thirteen years later, in a move that would have panicked the dozens of doctors and friends who had witnessed her mental problems over three decades, the forty-four-year-old writer and former actress threw her medication into the ocean. It was an act symbolic of her rupture with therapy and a step that may very well have saved her life. In this beautifully crafted memoir, Hebald tells of her spiral into mental illness from the late 1930s into the 1970s and of the role played by therapists and hospitals in that descent. She describes the frightening blur between reality and fantasy that fueled her childhood imagination and recounts the times of sexual and emotional abuse. By adolescence, acting had become her life's ambition. It was a defense mechanism and a way of creating emotions she otherwise could not feel. As she pursued a pro

Publisher: UPNE
Publish Date: 2001

Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Women, Psychology / Mental Illness, Social Science / Women's Studies

This book is available in the following Community Centers: Women's Center (Location: Biography/Autobiography)