Surviving Madness

Betty Berzon, renowned psychotherapist and author of the bestselling book Permanent Partners, tells her own incredible story here. Berzon's journey from psychiatric patient on suicide watch - her wrists tethered to the bed rails in a locked hospital ward - to her present role as a groundbreaking therapist and gay pioneer makes for purely compelling reading. Berzon is recognized today as a trailblazing co-founder of a number of important lesbian and gay organizations and as one of the first therapists to focus on means of developing healthy gay relationships and overcoming homophobia. Along her sometimes bumpy road to success she encountered such luminaries as Anais Nin, Eleanor Roosevelt, the Sitwells, Evelyn Hooker, and Paul Monette. It is, however, the intimate story of Berzon's own private passage toward self-discovery - from mental breakdown and suicide attempts, through hospitalization, eventual triumphant recovery, and her own coming out as an open lesbian at the age of forty - that makes this memoir an urgent, insightful, and deeply emotional testament to human survival.