Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Mar 2022
320 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
In this stunning debut - both a memoir and a work of investigative journalism that joins the ranks of works by Mary Karr, Leslie Jamison, and Joan Didion - writer Sarah Fay explores the ways we pathologize human experiences.
Over thirty years, doctors diagnosed Sarah Fay with six different mental illnesses—anorexia, major depressive disorder (MDD), anxiety disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and bipolar disorder. Pathological is the gripping story of what it was like to live with those diagnoses, and the crippling impact each had on her life. It is also a rigorous investigation into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)—psychiatry's "bible," the manual from which all mental illness diagnoses come. Like the millions of Americans who'll receive DSM diagnoses in their lifetimes, she believed the DSM and its diagnoses were valid, only to discover that this revered manual has little scientific merit.
"While criticism of the DSM is not new, Fay's position as an insider suffering from the results of its application as a method of analysis gives her a unique perspective. Sharply personal and impeccably detailed, the book is bound to raise questions in the minds of readers diagnosed with any number of disorders about the validity of trying to cram individual experience into what Fay contends are essentially imaginary categories. A provocative and original examination of the flaws in mental health treatment." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"In this memorable memoir, dedicated to 'everyone who's been diagnosed and misdiagnosed and over-diagnosed with a mental illness,' Fay shares her wisdom, such as how to avoid anxiety and stop worrying about the past and fearing the future, and may convince many to take her advice and pause before blindly accepting DSM diagnoses." - Booklist
"Pathological is the best book I've read in many years. Masterfully written, distinctively researched, and deeply humane, it joins our finest literature on medicine and psychiatry and the eternal riddle we call our minds. Fay's artful work is pleasingly unclassifiable: call it medical memoir; mental health thriller; comic punctuation primer; DSM and Big Pharma smackdown. I'll just call it genius. It's also contrarian, controversial, and beautifully, validly angry. If you or anyone you love has spent time in the mental health industrial complex (or, cauldron)—buy this book now and read it." - Anthony Swofford, international and New York Times bestselling author of Jarhead
"In this brilliant and excruciating memoir, through careful reporting and exquisite analysis, Fay takes on the myriad ways in which women's minds, not simply our bodies, have become a marketplace for trendy and dangerous ideas about mental health. This book is a triumph of the spirit and the flesh for a woman who since the age of twelve has been fighting, against all odds, not only to survive, but to live." - Eliza Griswold, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Amity & Prosperity
"Sarah Fay has written one of the most compelling memoirs I have read in ages. Pathological is a must-read for anyone who has been through the roller coaster that is the mental illness industry in America. Fay creates a work of art that entertains as much as it informs; if this were a movie, it would be the sort of documentary that contains every mode from romantic comedy to art-house film to thriller in one. The prose is so electric, incisive, witty, irreverent, devastating, sparkling! Whether she is riffing on the mechanics of English grammar, confronting the DSM in full-on unapologetic manifesto-mode, or winding us through the ups and downs of a very fully-lived life, Sarah Fay has created a masterpiece that is a true original on every level." - Porochista Khakpour, author of Sick: A Memoir
This information about Pathological was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Sarah Fay is an author and activist. Her writing appears in many publications, including Longreads, the New York Times, the Atlantic, Time Magazine, the New Republic, McSweeney's, the Believer, and the Paris Review, where she served as an advisory editor. She's the recipient of the Hopwood Award for Literature, as well as grants and fellowships from Yaddo, the Mellon Foundation, and the MacDowell Colony, among others. She's the founder of Pathological: The Movement (www.pathological.us.), a public awareness campaign devoted to making people aware of the unreliability and invalidity of DSM diagnoses and the dangers of identifying with an unproven mental illness.
The Flower Sisters
by Michelle Collins Anderson
From the new Fannie Flagg of the Ozarks, a richly-woven story of family, forgiveness, and reinvention.
The House on Biscayne Bay
by Chanel Cleeton
As death stalks a gothic mansion in Miami, the lives of two women intertwine as the past and present collide.
The Funeral Cryer by Wenyan Lu
Debut novelist Wenyan Lu brings us this witty yet profound story about one woman's midlife reawakening in contemporary rural China.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
