Books to Read

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White

Topics explored in this book include: the "feminism" of Edward Titchener, the clinical method, Hippocrates' vivisection, behavior therapy, and operant behavior.

After a failed attempt to escape and arranged marriage, Silas is diagnosed with Veil sickness-a mysterious disease sending violet-eyed women into madness-and shipped away to Braxton's Sanitorium and Finishing School. The facility is cold, the instructors merciless, and the students either bloom into eligible wives or disappear. So when ghosts of missing students start begging Silas for help, he decides to reach into Braxton's innards and expose its rotten guts to the world-as long as the school doesn't break him first.

Content Warning: graphic violence, sexual assault, medical gore, transphobia, ableism, medical/psychiatric abuse, and discussions around miscarriage and forced pregnancy.

A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay

Topics explored in this book include: premodernism, supernatural model of mental illness, psychological model of mental illness, and psychotherapy

The lives of the Barretts, a normal suburban New England family, are torn apart when their daughter Marjorie begins to display signs of schizophrenia. As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they reluctantly turn to a local Catholic priest who believes the vulnerable teenager is the victim of demonic possession. He also contacts a production company that is eager to document the Barretts' plight. With John, Marjorie's father, out of work for more than a year and the medical bills looming, the family agrees to be filmed, and soon find themselves the unwitting stars of The Possession, a hit reality television show. When events in the Barrett household explode in tragedy, the show and the shocking incidents it captures become the stuff of urban legend.

Content Warning: child abuse, child exploitation, violence, and religious trauma

The Lost Village by Camila Sten

Topics explored in this book include: eugenics, mental age, determinism, and mystery religions

Documentary filmmaker Alice Lindstedt has been obsessed with the vanishing residents of an old mining town, dubbed "The Lost Village", since she was a little girl. In 1959, her grandmother's entire family disappeared in this mysterious tragedy, and ever since, the unanswered questions surrounding the only two people who were left-a woman stoned to death in the town center and an abandoned newborn-have plagued her. She's gathered a small crew of friends in the remote village to make a film about what really happened.

Content Warning: sexual assault, religious fanaticism, ablism, and sexism.