Rating: 
Summary: a must read
Review: I first heard of this book when it was reviewed by The Boston Globe, and hearing the subject matter, I simply had to obtain a copy. 3 years later, and I have now read the book several times, as well as passed it along to friends, les/bi/gay/trans & straight friends. The fact that Daphne was not able to express herself as she wanted still blows my mind. Her "actions" were harmful to NO ONE and yet she was forced to try and adopt a state of "self" that wasn't her own. I urge all to read this, even if YOU don't have a gender issue, you probably know someone who does. This tale will only help you clearly see how IMPORTANT it is for us, as human beings, to just BE OURSELVES!
Rating: 
Summary: Although times have changed, still relevant
Review: i found this book excellent, and would recommend it to anyone. it's essential part for me was its criticism of the mental health field in this country, and i feel strongly that it still holds today. as i myself am a therapist and in the year 2000 worked as a social worker on an inpatient unit with some adolescents, i found her story to be wholly believable. those poor kids get shelved and pathologized because their parents are incompetent and the mental health field is too. what daphne needed was for someone to hear her story, listen to her as a person, a human being, not as a diagnosis, a pathology, a sick creature. in reality, it was obvious from the beginning that she was an intelligent, talented and very vulnerable girl. i found her an extremely likeable character.as for criticisms: i felt some of the gender stuff was played up to make the book more marketable, and while i don't doubt that daphne had/has true alternate-gender issues, i felt they weren't explored in as much depth and as succinctly as were other issues in the book (such as the cruelty and idiocy of so much of the mental health field). perhaps at the time of the book's writing daphne had not yet come to full emotional terms with her gender/gender identity/sexuality. i actually really can't blame her, considering how difficult, painful, and potentially rejecting it is in our society to be anything other than the gender norm. nevertheless, i still stand by my criticism. and one last little criticism: i found the book a little disjointed, always jumping back and forth between different time periods. it actually didn't actually fail as a technique, but it got annoying at times. this all said: this book remains WORTH READING!
Rating:
Summary: worth reading, powerful - but a few missing parts
Review: i found this book excellent, and would recommend it to anyone. it's essential part for me was its criticism of the mental health field in this country, and i feel strongly that it still holds today. as i myself am a therapist and in the year 2000 worked as a social worker on an inpatient unit with some adolescents, i found her story to be wholly believable. those poor kids get shelved and pathologized because their parents are incompetent and the mental health field is too. what daphne needed was for someone to hear her story, listen to her as a person, a human being, not as a diagnosis, a pathology, a sick creature. in reality, it was obvious from the beginning that she was an intelligent, talented and very vulnerable girl. i found her an extremely likeable character. as for criticisms: i felt some of the gender stuff was played up to make the book more marketable, and while i don't doubt that daphne had/has true alternate-gender issues, i felt they weren't explored in as much depth and as succinctly as were other issues in the book (such as the cruelty and idiocy of so much of the mental health field). perhaps at the time of the book's writing daphne had not yet come to full emotional terms with her gender/gender identity/sexuality. i actually really can't blame her, considering how difficult, painful, and potentially rejecting it is in our society to be anything other than the gender norm. nevertheless, i still stand by my criticism. and one last little criticism: i found the book a little disjointed, always jumping back and forth between different time periods. it actually didn't actually fail as a technique, but it got annoying at times. this all said: this book remains WORTH READING!
Rating:
Summary: A re-review
Review: I have shared this book with several friends, all of whom had the same reaction. 'Oh My God' is about the best summation of how this book effects readers. In an era where we are supposedly more compassionate, Daphne Scholinski shows us how the system fails our children. Genderqueer and young is a hell I wouldn't want to go through again, I've been through it and my basic fear was I would end up like Daphne did, in an institution somewhere.
Rating:
Summary: GRAPHIC
Review: I was appaled and intrigued at the same time by this book. I didn't put it down until I finished it. I am amazed at the strength of Daphne and all that she has been through. I have read this many times and I definetely recommend it to everyone! READ IT. You won't be sorry.
Rating:
Summary: Great Memoir
Review: I've often wanted to point out that the homosexuality diagnosis is still alive and well, despite reports of its demise over the past 30 years. Daphne Scholinski's excellent memoir of her three year commitment in psychiatric institutions, in part for "Gender Identity Disorder," is exactly what I had been looking for to make my point. I don't know why I had never heard of this book before I picked it up at a used shop recently, but I'm glad I've finally stumbled on it. No matter how one looks at the "Gender Identity Disorder" diagnosis, it is the diagnosis for homosexuality in a different guise and can help provide a convenient excuse for persecuting boys and girls who are either openly homosexual or suspected of being homosexual. Scholinski was a troubled Chicago area teen in the late '70s and early '80s with a separated father and mother who simply gave up on being parents to her. Scholinski was a tomboy with a masculine look that often confused people who saw her into believing she was a boy. She didn't dress like a girl and didn't want to cake make-up on her face. She joined a street gang, got into sex with manipulative adults and into all kinds of trouble at school. Her father had a fat insurance policy and one day in 1981, when Scholinski was 15, he dropped her off at a psychiatric institution. Three years Scholinski would spend trying her best to play the role of a girl by dressing the part and smearing make-up on her face. Scholinski's ticket out of institutionalization would be when her father's insurance ran out on her 18th birthday in the Summer of 1984. Scholinski's stay in psychiatric institutions might have been the most expensive finishing school in history at the time, as the bill her father's insurance paid out ended up costing the policy $1 million dollars. So much for all of this horse hooey about pharmacology reducing the costs of running psychiatric institutions. What I like most about memoirs like this is that they do more to strip psychiatry of its medical pretentions than any scholarly criticism could. Scholinski demonstrates in her book time and again that psychiatry not only serves a social function, but it is also a creation of the patient's often willing behavior as well. Scholinski makes it clear that part of the reason for her acting out was to get attention she wasn't receiving from her parents. During her stay at her first hospital, Michael Reese, Scholinski decides to run around the facility until she final got pounced on the guards and shot up with Thorazine by the nurse, knowing full well acting out in such a way would have such consequences. Scholinski describes how she and other Michael Reese patients would look up various diagnoses in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and try to behave in a manner in order to get the diagnosis. At an institution for teens in Minnesota Scholinski lied about the extent of her drug usage to get herself enrolled in the drug rehab program. Then she convinced the officials of the institution that she really didn't have a drug problem after she decided she didn't like the drug rehab program. After that focus of Scholinski's treatment plan become her gender identity and the suspicion of the institution's authorities that she might be harboring homosexual feelings. These suspicions were brought out the most near the end of Scholinski's commitment when she developed a crush and close friendship with a new and younger female patient. Economics would be the determining factor when it came time for Scholinski's 18th birthday and her father's insurance ran out on her. In one paragraph Scholinski describes the economics of insurance and how it creates and discharges a psychiatric patient: "Insurance money is the subtext of hospitalizations; it can make diagnoses come and go. Having a fat insurance policy can keep patients around for months, for observation. After my first six months at Michael Reese, my father's insurance company would have asked the doctors to justify keeping me. My mother thinks the doctors at Michael Reese didn't want to have their treatment plan scrutinized - particularly the Gender Identity Disorder part. I'm no so sure. I know how sneaky psychiatrists can be, how they can use words to make a person into whatever they want. Scrutiny does not intimidate them; they can finesse anything." In the end Scholinski would be a case of treatment failure who has gone on to make a living as an artist in the Bay Area. Yes, Scholinski would eventually have her first sexual relationship with a female after institutionalization so this is a story of treatment failure with a happy ending. If you strip the institution Scholinski went to in Minnesota of its doctors, nurses, counselors and all the other mental health professionals, then you would have a school. Perhaps if Scholinski had been born in 1986 rather than 1966, she would today be a troubled teen attending an alternative school, rather than an abusive psychiatric institution. In the end, what Scholinski needed more than anything was to be left alone about her gender identity and a space to learn a creative craft, as she eventually did with her art. Scholinski's treatment failure is the most endearing aspect of her wonderful memoir. It demonstrates the utter futility of the policy of meddlesome psychiatric interventionism in personal lives and the notion that medicalizing social problems will somehow solve them.
Rating:
Summary: It could have been me...
Review: It could have been my life Ms. Scholinski was writing about. I, too, was placed into an adolescent facility for being "different." I was astonished that someone else actually experienced the same ordeal I had, and ended up much in the same puddle of confusion with gender, appearance, and relationships with family. I applaud this book for its honesty, its beauty, and its raw message. Thank you Daphne for telling my story as well.
Rating:
Summary: An emotionally charged book
Review: It's interesting to note as I read other reviews that the reviewers really are commenting more on themselves than on the book.... and I'm not surprized. This is a raw, emotional, maddening book that is living testemony to the necessity of listening to Alice Miller's criticisms of child-rearing and the psychiatric system. It is well-written, preserving the author's voice, but edited for good pacing; never being too voyeristic, but getting the power of the experiences across.
Rating:
Summary: A Must-Read for those interested in Gender Issues & Youth
Review: Neither my partner or I could put this book down, positively frightening and compelling. Daphne Scholinski descended into a personal hell, simply because she was different. READ IT and find out how and why a lot of transgendered persons hide their transgendered issues.
Rating:
Summary: Intensely disturbing and moving
Review: Perhaps it's because of my own experiences in mental hospitals, or perhaps because I've lived my entire life in a rather liberal area, but I found this book to be one of the most disturbing and terrifying I've read in a long time. So I, naturally, had to read it again and pass it along. It's an important book and I'd recomend it to anyone.
|
