Two accounts of one life: Marya Hornbacher’s
Wasted and Madness in close-up
Katarzyna Szmigiero
University of Jan Kochanowski, Poland
szmigierko@hotmail.com
Attitude to illness as a criterion
of classification:
• Denial: 19th century asylum narratives, Kate
Millet’s The Loony-Bin Trip, Janet Frame’s An
Autobiography, Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted;
• Admitting to psychological problems, rejecting
psychiatric labelling and treatment offered: Ch. P.
Gillman The Yellow Wallpaper, Mary Barnes &
Joseph Berke’s Mary Barnes. Two Accounts of a
Journey Through Madness, Sylvia Plath’s The Bell
Jar, Norah Vincent’s Voluntary Madness. My Year
Lost and Found in the Loony-Bin;
Attitude to illness as a criterion
of classification:
• Acknowleding the reality of the illness and
the necessity of professional treatment:
Lori Shiller and Amanda Bennett’s The
Quiet Room. A Journey out of the Torment of
Madness, Elizabeth Wurtzel’s The Prozac
Nation, Elyn R. Sack’s The Center Cannot
Hold. My Journey Through Madness, Marya
Hornbacher’s Wasted. A Memoir of Anorexia
and Bulimia and Madness. A Bipolar Life.
Attitude to illness influences
narrative structure
• Denying illness – making use of antipsychiatric theories
• Accepting illness - employing psychological,
psychoanalytical theories, including
reconstructions of conversations during
therapy; attempting to render the
experience of illness into words (figurative
language, dream-like logic of inner
monologues)
Admitting to being mentally ill
makes the author
interpret her life story through a theoretical
(medical, cultural, psychological or
therapeutic) framework and construct her
testimony in accordance with it. Only those
aspects of her experience that are congruous
with her diagnosis are focused on while
others are marginalised or even ignored. It is
not conspicuous since most people author
one madness narrative presenting one illness
identity.
Marya Hornbacher (born 1974)
Wasted. A Memoir of
Anorexia and
Bulimia
(1998)
Madness. A Bipolar
Life (2008)
Hornbacher’s memoirs
• Facts from her life are
put in a thoroughly
researched theoretical
framework
• Medical facts,
psychological ideas,
cultural assumptions
• Lengthy bibliography
• Not just a biography
Wasted
• Disgust with her body
• Family dynamics: overemotional, indulgent
father, seemingly unattached and
unemotional mother, who diets a lot
• Culture of thinness
• Hornbacher ‘fits’ the anorectic profile as
described by various scholars (highly
achieving, competitive, yet insecure, lacks
positive feedback from carers)
Wasted
• No mentioning of being moody before the
onset of eating disorders
• When bulimic or anorectic she feels
‘volatile’, ‘manic’, ‘batty’, ‘intense’, has
‘racing thoughts’, has ‘freaked out’. ‘Mania
is easy when you’re not eating.’
Madness
• After recovery from anorexia still
serious problems with mental
stability: violent mood swings,
drinking, self-harm. New diagnosis.
• Theory: anorexia masked her manicdepression. Excessive dieting was ‘a
homemade replacement for what a
psychiatrist would prescribe for me if
he knew: a mood stabilizer’.
Self-inflicted starvation as a
method of stilling thoughts?
• Researchers state: ‘starvation has a
disorganising effect of psychological
reactions’ since ‘chronic malutrition is
accompanied by biochemical changes which
[...] influence thinking, feeling, and
beahaviour to an enormous degree’, lack of
concentration, restlessness, tension, angry
outbursts, irritation, anxiety
• Was Hornbacher’s biocemistry so different?
Could she psychologically benefit from not
eating?
Steven Levenkron’s 4 stages of
anorexia
• Stage 4, ‘the pseudo-identuty stage’.
Anorectic identity becomes the sole identity
the sufferers have. Recovery is difficult as it
robs the patients of their only identity,
leaving them blank and empty.
• Hornbacher feels a desperate need to
incorporate the familiar notions she has
had about herself into her new life and new
diagnosis.
New diagnosis leads to:
• discrepancies between the two
accounts
• the shift in focus
• attribution of different motivation
Explanation?
• The present modifies the
perception of the past in
order to provide us with a
sense of continuity and
integrity
• ‘in remembering the past,
we do not simply recall
events as they happened,
rather, we selectively recall,
narrating a story of the past
that makes sense to us
(Burr and Butt, p. 201).
• it may not be a ‘true’ past,
varifiable past but it makes
sense to us, is helpful to
structure our lives
Sources and bibliography:
•
Primary Sources:
•
Hornbacher, Marya. Wasted. A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia. London: Flamingo, 1998.
-------------- . Madness. A Bipolar Life. London: Harper Perennial, 2009.
•
Secondary Sources:
•
Appignanesi, Lisa. “Body Madness.” In: Mad, Bad and Sad. Women and the Mind Doctors. London:
W.W. Norton & Company, 2008, pp. 378-404.
•
Bruch, Hilde. The Golden Cage. The Enigma of Anorexia Nervosa. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
2001.
•
Brumberg, Joan Jacobs. Fasting Girls. The History of Anorexia Nervosa. Vintage: New York, 2000.
•
Burr, Vivien and Trevor Butt, “Psychological Distress and Postmodern Thought.” In Pathology and the
Postmodern. Mental Illness as Discourse and Experience. Ed. Dwight Fee. London: Sage Publications,
2000, pp. 186-206.
•
Fee, Dwight, “The Project of Pathology: Reflexitivity and Depression in Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Prozac
Nation.” In: Pathology and the Postmodern. Mental Illness as Discourse and Experience. Ed. Dwight Fee.
London: Sage Publications, 2000, pp. 74-99.
•
Hendricks, Jenny. Slim to None. A Journey Through the Wasteland of Anorexia Treatment. New York:
McGraw-Hill, 2003.
•
Levenkron, Stephen. Anatomy of Anorexia. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001.
•
Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth. London: Vintage Books, 1991.
• Ivonne Thein Thirty-two kilos
• www.maryahornbacher.com