BRITNEY ADMITS: SHE IS BIPOLAR.
Britney Spears and therefore the problem of the “Irrational Woman.”
In the nineteenth century, distressed women were “hysterical.” Within the twentieth, rather than Freudian analysis, “distressed” women got the bulk of treatments like lobotomy and electroshock, or shock. (For the latter, they still do). Clinicians learned about women’s “penis envy” and “innate passivity” as late because the 1960s, consistent with psychiatric historian Phyllis Chesler. A woman running for office still invokes that deadly combination of female hormones and nuclear codes.
And then there is Britney Spears.
At a June hearing, Spears detailed the abuses that have accompanied her conservatorship. She told the court she is been forced to perform and packed off for refusing a dance move; she cannot remove her IUD; the cash she earns from those performances and dance moves pays those that control her.
The conservatorship started in 2008, managed by Spears’ father and a lawyer, Andrew Wallet. In 2007 Spears earned headlines like “Mad” and “Broken” when she shaved her head during a salon and used an umbrella to bash a photographer’s car. The following year Spears refused to show her two sons over to estranged husband Kevin Federline. Police came and after a standoff, she was loaded into an ambulance and placed on an involuntary hold. Sources reported that Spears was bipolar disorder.
I have been in Spears’ place, without the IUD and therefore the money. I had no conservatorship, but I have also had no control. In the early 1970s, dismay over shock therapy and it is coercive use and effects like amnesia led to nationwide hearings. In 1975 California finally, put strict legal controls on it is used. Still, I received it in 1972, at the developing-brain age of 15. In one hospitalization I had, a doctor discussed his concupiscence for a teenage patient in group psychotherapy. Shock therein hospital was used half for therapy, half as a threat.
I am also bipolar. But at the time, I used to be far less worried about my mood-swingy mind than about what might be done to my body.
It is unsurprising to me that these stories about Spears are so widely reported with so little discussion of their basic assumptions. Britney went mad. She “broke” with reality. But irrationality and emotionality are the provinces of girls. And normative behaviour is about by the dominant culture. Witness the case of “drapetomania,” Dr Samuel Cartwright’s 1851 “mental illness” that consisted of being a Black enslaved one that wished to be free.
What is rational? Lisa Bortolotti, a philosopher of psychiatry, argues that each one of human beliefs exists on a spectrum of rationality, with many if not most of them a minimum of somewhat irrational. She is far from alone in this re-visioning. Bortolotti gives the instance of a young man who feels persecuted, whose belief helps him add up to a lifetime of poor treatment. People could also be distressed, or not, by behaviour and thoughts, but checked out closely, they need context. Context can fix their place thereon wide spectrum of the rational and challenge how they are used against patients.
For women, our context is usually absent or interpreted with bias. It is hard to leap to potentially damaging treatments like shock and lobotomy if you think that your patient’s history is sensible of their choices. For years, many articles about Spears used “successful, functioning Britney” — her albums, her Las Vegas show — as samples of the success of her conservatorship. To use a relevant metaphor, this is often the proverbial trial of the witch: if she floats within the water, she is a witch. If she sinks, she is not—but she still drowns.
In the Spears documentary “Breaking Point,” hairstylist Esther Tognozzi reports that on the night of the head-shave, one of Spears’ bodyguards opened the blinds for the paparazzi. Britney told a tattoo artist she was uninterested in people touching her hair. Finding betrayal and unwanted touching disturbing makes sense.
As to the standoff, the escalation of distress when police answer calls like Spears’ is real and rightly coming to the fore. The psychological state Justice Act introduced into the House this year creates grants to permit such first responders to be psychological state teams. For a woman who had just lost custody, the arrival of police must are terrifying. I wonder where Spears would be if this law had been on the books in 2008.
I will tell you one final thing. I ran far away from the mental hospital where a lass was sexually targeted and that I had a shock. I begged on the road, senselessly, for cash to travel somewhere, though I knew I had nowhere else to travel. A kind-hearted nurse found me and drove me back with a minimum of attention.
This act of running was, without my preceding paragraphs, irrational. A mature person could easily take it as evidence they should have held me longer. But my action was meaningful. In some sense I freed myself. And it is time for Spears to try to do so, to prevent dancing to somebody else’s tune.
Susanne Paola Antonetta’s newest book is “The Terrible Unlikelihood of Our Being Here.” Awards for her writing include a replacement New York Times Notable Book, an American Book Award, a Library Journal Best Science book of the year, et al. . Her poems and essays have appeared within the Washington Post, The New York Times, The United kingdom Independent, The New Republic, Orion and lots of anthologies and featured on CNN.
Source
https://thehill.com/changing-america/opinion/565627-im-bipolar-i-know-what-it-is-to-be-britney-spears
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.independent.ie%2Fentertainment%2Fbritney-spears-opens-up-on-bipolar-disorder-i-turn-into-a-different-person-29861547.html&psig=AOvVaw1BmRhUIoKTfR4UNqVRV7Do&ust=1628447273085000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=2ahUKEwiFlqD7xJ_yAhWFen0KHWNWCHYQr4kDegQIARB1