Towards therapy. Female patients in the latest women's prose

Abstract

The main aim of the article is to interpret four contemporary prose works written by women, touching on the issues of therapy and staying in a psychiatric hospital. The text contains observations based on women’s historical situations: hysteria, practices of disciplining, and insinuating madness. The article's author looks at texts written by Aleksandra Zielińska, Olga Hund, Agnieszka Jelonek, and Justyna Wicenty, asking about the reconstruction of the figure of female madness. She draws attention not only to the thematics of crises and mental illnesses but also to the narrative and stylistic strategies of writing about them. The considerations focus on the images of a psychiatric hospital and relationships between patients and therapists/psychiatrists. The hospital space is treated mainly ironically - it is not a place of healing but of oppression. The situation is different in the case of descriptions of therapy: interpretations reveal the abandonment of distance in favor of active participation in psychotherapy sessions.