ABSTRACT
The forces of sex and madness have historically been linked together in a multitude of ways. Notoriously, psychodynamic theories of mental disturbance, particularly those of a Freudian provenance, have accorded pride of place to sexuality in accounting for the etiology of mental disturbance. Theories of a differential, gender-based etiology for mental disturbance corresponded, in some important respects, to differential expectations and treatments for men and women. It was these shadowy inhabitants of what Mortimer Granville dubbed Mazeland, Dazeland, and Driftland who now drew the attention of the most eminent mental specialists of the day—provided, of course, that their families possessed sufficient resources to pay for such expert attention. Showalter rightly notes the persistent blindness of even the most sympathetic male physicians to the connections between psychosomatic disorders and constricted and powerless lives, "women's intellectual frustration, lack of mobility, of needs for autonomy and control.
