| Psychologist and author Lauren Slater has written several memoirs and nonfiction works on the topics of mental illness, psychology, and identity. In this thesis, I untangle the complicated skein of themes in and reactions to Slater's work, which has been met with controversy in the popular press, the medical sciences, and the disability studies community. In the first chapter, I suggest that situating her "metaphorical memoir" Lying (2001) in the context of illness deception and hysteria can uncover ways in which the text reveals and attempts to recover historical trends in the misuse of diagnosis, and how it posits a space between pathology and fakery where psychosomatic illnesses demand more respect. In the second, I read Slater's memoir of practicing psychology against her memoir of mental illness, drawing out her rhetorical emphasis on creating "joint narratives" in the former and her rejection of these same narratives in the latter. The discomfort with which her later work was read emphasizes our cultural anxiety about destabilizing medical and narrative authority. In the third and final chapter, I investigate how both the medical community and the disability studies community have used Slater's works as "outsider" texts against which to reaffirm their values, and suggest how incorporating rather than rejecting Slater's critiques can recuperate social critiques in the medical field and medical concerns in the disability studies field. Ultimately, I draw on feminist and disability theory to emphasize moments where Slater's life writing speaks back to a culture of medical authority and stigma about mental health. |
