Summary

In “I Haven’t Been Nearly Mad Enough,” Diski discusses Barbara Taylor’s book, The Last Asylum. Diski says that her review is not impartial, as she has spent time in some of the institutions that Taylor did, and she read the book with an eye towards comparison. Diski says that she felt like Taylor described how she feels everyday, but Taylor received many more resources than Diski did including five day a week analysis for decades. Diski says, “I’ve been cheated out of proper madness” (363). Diski then discusses how mentally ill people feel about their illness, saying that they often feel they are not quite “properly mad” compared to others who are “genuinely mad” (364). She says that sometimes people feel like they are only pretending to be mentally ill while others actually are...