Agness Jacket, Gail A. Hornstein
Agness Jacket, Gail A. Hornstein
List: $31.98 | Sale: $22.39
Club: $15.99

Agnes's Jacket
A Psychologist's Search for the Meanings of Madness

Author: Gail A. Hornstein

Narrator: Marguerite Gavin

Unabridged: 14 hr 22 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Ascent Audio

Published: 07/29/2009


Synopsis

In a Victorian-era German asylum, seamstress Agnes Richter painstakingly stitched a mysterious autobiographical text into every inch of the jacket she created from her institutional uniform. Despite every attempt to silence them, hundreds of other patients have managed to get their stories out, at least in disguised form. Today, in a vibrant underground net-work of “psychiatric survivor groups” all over the world, patients work together to unravel the mysteries of madness and help one another re-cover. Optimistic, courageous, and surprising, Agnes’s Jacket takes us from a code-cracking bunker during World War II to the church basements and treatment centers where a whole new way of understanding the mind has begun to take form.
A vast gulf exists between the way medicine explains psychiatric illness and the experiences of those who suffer. Hornstein’s luminous work helps us bridge that gulf, guiding us through the inner lives of those diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar illness, depression, and paranoia and emerging with nothing less than a new model for understanding one another and ourselves.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Paul

It is interesting to get a window on the world of the HVN (Hearing Voices Network), the high number of people who hear voices, and the support groups that have grown up over the last twenty years or so, but be forewarned that there is little discussion of Agnes's Jacket ( a good way to sell the book......more

Goodreads review by S'hi

Agnes’s Jacket is a perceptively nuanced balance between thorough research, sensitive probing & sharing and generous questioning and guidance. Gail Hornstein credits many for the insights they provided but her latent (seemingly one of her favourite words) ability to inquisitively listen has been giv......more

Goodreads review by Sabin

This book is what you get when the author treats their subject matter, the mental conditions and the people who have these conditions, with patience, understanding and empathy. Highly recommended to anyone even remotely interested in the subject matter.......more

Goodreads review by Stefan

Fantastic 4.5* read, even if a bit repetitive. It's hard to begin and describe. The main thesis of the book is that we look at psychiatric conditions (she's mainly talking about what we call schizophrenia but also others) through a false lens and treatment could be vastly improved. For Hornstein, thi......more