Includes bibliographical references.

"Following a psychiatrist's prediction that it was only a question of time before she committed suicide, something inside Carol Hebald clicked. Thirteen years later, the forty-four-year-old former actress threw her medication into the ocean, an act that would have panicked the dozens of doctors and friends who had witnessed her mental problems over three decades. Symbolic of her rupture with therapy, that act may have saved her life." "This memoir tells of Hebald's spiral into mental illness from the late 1930s through the 1970s and the role hospitals and therapists played in that descent. She describes the frightening blur between reality and fantasy that fueled her childhood imagination, and recounts episodes of sexual and emotional abuse. By adolescence, acting had become both her life's ambition and a defense mechanism to create emotions she otherwise could not feel."--Jacket.

SACFinal081324