Bonnie Burstow

Bonnie Burstow
Born
Bonnie Judith Grower

(1945-03-06)March 6, 1945
Winnipeg, Manitoba[1]
DiedJanuary 4, 2020(2020-01-04) (aged 74)
Toronto General Hospital,
Toronto, Ontario[2]
Resting placePardes Chaim Cemetery, Toronto[2]
NationalityCanadian
EducationUniversity of Manitoba
University of Toronto
Known forAnti-psychiatry
Spouse
John Arthur Burstow
​
​
(m. 1966; div. 1972)​
[3]
Scientific career
FieldsEducation
InstitutionsOntario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto
Thesis Authentic human existence—its nature, its opposite, its meaning for therapy: a rendering of and a response to the position of Jean-Paul Sartre  (1982)

Bonnie Burstow (March 6, 1945 – January 4, 2020) was a Canadian psychotherapist, author, and anti-psychiatry scholar. She was a professor in the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto.

Burstow argued that conditions that the medical profession described as mental illnesses are in fact rational reactions to social, economic and political conditions and that psychiatry is rooted in patriarchy with a tendency to view troubled women as “hysterical” and to overdiagnose their conditions and overmedicate them. Burstow said that in psychiatry's view: “Women are disordered if they acted like women; women are disordered if they didn’t act like women."[3]

  1. ^ Burstow, Bonnie (2009-02-02). "Interview with Bonnie Burstow" (PDF) (Interview). Interviewed by Alexandra Rutherford. Psychology's Feminist Voices. Retrieved 2019-08-03.
  2. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference obit was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Times was invoked but never defined (see the help page).