This year is the 30th anniversary of the publication of Women and Madness, Phyllis Chesler's feminist classic on female psychology and pathology; Chesler has sold 2.5 million copies. Her thesis that a sexist society literally makes women crazy was revolutionary in its day (1972) and continues to strike a responsive cord with women around the world.

Now retired as a professor of psychology and women's studies from City University of New York, Chesler continues to practice "liberation psychology" from her home in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and acts as an expert witness against psychiatric institutions accused of abusing female patients. She is currently finishing her 12th book (on anti-Semitism). In the 25th-anniversary edition of Women and Madness, Phyllis Chesler asked, "What has really changed since I wrote this book? The answer is too little-and quite a lot." (p. 5) The gains made by white, middle-class feminists have been "too little"; men still rule the world. However, the struggle to liberate women around the world has expanded "quite a lot.

" The "too little" also means that there has been a backlash against feminism both among women and men. This backlash is most apparent in fundamentalist religion. But Chesler sees it as a legal consultant when women on juries don't believe women have been raped or mothers in custody battles are penalized for seeking psychiatric help. In her own mental health profession, women practitioners have fought a long and often losing battle to gain legitimacy for the psychological needs of women.

From social discrimination to mental pathology How does social discrimination translate into mental pathology? It is clear that domestic violence, rape, incest, sexual mutilation and slavery can cause post traumatic stress disorder and other acute psychological reactions. Rather than declare these acts crimes, many countries treat women's advocates as if they were mentally ill. And who would deny that poverty and racial discrimination contribute to mental disease as they do to substance abuse and criminal behavior? But what about the garden variety neuroses and psychoses from which women suffer?

In Women and Madness, Chesler was one of the first writers to popularize data showing more women than men in psychiatric treatment. According to Chesler, this had less to do with any biological differences and more to do with women, as the "weaker sex," being relegated to the back of the psychological bus, so to speak. In addition, Chesler noted sexual differences in symptoms: "Most women display 'female' psychiatric symptoms, such as depression, frigidity, paranoia, psychoneurosis, suicide attempts, and anxiety. Men display 'male' diseases such as alcoholism, drug addiction, personality disorders, and brain diseases." (p. 79). In the original edition of Women and Madness, Chesler concluded that society encourages some women to make a career of being psychiatric patients. She based her findings on historical studies and in-depth interviews with 60 women in treatment. Among those who qualified for this career were patients forced into sex with their therapists and/or locked up in mental institutions. Lesbians, third world women, and feminists were stigmatized for acting like men. Chesler still believes there is a double standard. She says "Men are taught to think of women as naturally crazy. Men are given a wider berth. They can write poetry, drink, or become criminals without being seen as crazy. Thousands of studies show these differences. If a man gets into trouble, his mother or wife won't sweat it. But women always have to watch themselves; they can't let their slips show." Bad Brains and Bad People Cause Mental Illness In 1972, Chesler wrote that few women in mental institutions suffered from psychosis; their mental illness was a social role. Now she admits, "Alas psychosis exists and people with it should not be wrongly imprisoned. There has been a small revolution in biological psychiatry. Some dysfunctions seem to respond to medication. Patients also need therapy, kindness, and radical social change. But you can't be politically correct with people's suffering." As the birth control pill did for women's sexual behavior, so anti-depressants have done for women's mental activity. In both cases, doctors have shown that anatomy need not be destiny. Yet, some critics would declare that these events prove that mental illness exists in the brain not the body politic. Such criticism does not deter Phyllis Chesler. She cites a figure from the 1960s, the radical Algerian psychiatrist, Franz Fanon, who found that oppressed peoples internalized their oppression. "The historical connection [between political oppression and mental illness] is real. It distorts and disfigures. It limits hopes and futures. You can't be fully functioning after a rape. Even if you aren't psychologically crippled, you might grow up and marry a wife abuser. We need this grasp of material reality." It is Chesler's work with rape victims here and abroad (for exampe, Bosnia) that gives her a tool for helping the many women who have been traumatized by physical and psychological abuse. In the introduction to the 25th-anniverary edition of Women and Madness, she writes, "We now understand more about what trauma is, and what it does. We understand that chronic, hidden family/domestic violence is actually more, not less, traumatic than sudden violence at the hands of a stranger, or of an enemy during war."

She reminds us that feminists not clinicians first brought these conditions to the public's attention. Yet, she admits that feminist therapists have their hands full with abuse victims who may require years to heal.

Time and again in the history of psychiatry, the trauma and the abuse have not stopped at the hospital or doctor's door, but followed patients inside. Added Chesler, "People in need of help shouldn't come to harm. Whatever we consider quality care, let's say it's the rich person's remedy, every person should have some choices. Nowadays no one can afford the best therapy. We need to witness each other's sorrow, then allow for self-healing. I've seen all economic classes in therapy and in lawsuits. I come from poor circumstances myself. I've spent my whole life obtaining the tools to honor the wretched of the earth." Beyond Brain Cells and Prison Cells You would think that the last place to find Freud and Greek mythology is in a rape crisis center. But both shaped Women and Madness because the Oedipus Complex and the first Greek goddesses demonstrated that family actions can have tragic reactions, similar to those that play out in today's emergency rooms.

Being "psychoanalytically and literary-oriented" makes Chesler a minority among her colleagues, whether they are psycho-pharmacologists or radical feminists. At the end of Women and Madness' 25th edition, Chesler produced a long list of answers to Freud's "infamous query," What do women want? Her responses range from the personal to the political, from the abstract to the concrete.

In spite of the pain she was witnessed (her most poignant plea is for "compassionate support durring chronic or life-threatening illness and at the time of death"), Chesler continues to dream of a better life for women and the men that care about them. Mental health consumers know a great deal about pain. Phyllis Chesler can help us put the Pieves of our lives in a new order.