Gail A. Hornstein is Professor of Psychology at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts (USA). Her research spans the history of 20th-century psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis, and has been supported by the National Library of Medicine, the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The former chair of Mount Holyoke's Women's Studies Program, Hornstein was founding director of the interdisciplinary Five College Women's Studies Research Center for its first 10 years.
Her articles and op-ed pieces have appeared in many scholarly and popular publications, including Newsday, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Encyclopedia of Psychology, the American Psychologist, and the Journal of Personality. Her widely-reviewed biography, To Redeem One Person is to Redeem the World: The Life of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, tells the tale of a pioneering psychiatrist who dedicated her life to treating very disturbed patients.
Unlike most scholars who study mental illness, Hornstein has always been as interested in patients' experiences as in doctors' theories. She has compiled a Bibliography of First-Person Narratives of Madness in English (now in its 4th edition) listing more than 700 titles, and her new book, Agnes’s Jacket: A Psychologist’s Search for the Meanings of Madness, shows how the ideas of the psychiatric survivor movement – especially the Hearing Voices Network - can radically reconceive fundamental assumptions about madness and mental life. Hornstein organized and co-facilitates one of the first hearing voices support groups in the USA in Holyoke, Massachusetts. For a free copy of the Bibliography, a Resource List on Hearing Voices, and other information about her work, see www.gailhornstein.com.
