SUMMER READING: researching MUNCHAUSEN
NONFICTION WORKS:
Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood by Julie Gregory
Personal memoir from the perspective of a girl who suffered as a victim of her mother’s Munchausen by Proxy
A Mother’s Trial by Nancy Wright
A factual account of Priscilla Phillips’s struggle with MBP, her arrest and trial for murdering her baby
The Bad Mother by Margaret Talbot
A New Yorker article including various recorded accounts of patients with MBP
FICTION WORKS:
- Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
- A reporter covers the murder of two teen girls whose deaths were a result of their mother’s MBP
- White Oleander by Janet Fitch
- A novel about a complex relationship between mother and daughter, described as dark, poetic fictive prose
- Includes potential similarities in structure with regards to shifting perspective
- The Blue Room by Hanne Ørstavik
- A novel about a chilling complex mother-daughter relationship
- Contextually similar in that the daughter is in her twenties
- A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
- A novel that formally shifts between multiple points of view and structurally is split between 13 different sections
MEDICAL JOURNALS:
- Playing Sick?: Untangling the Web of Munchausen Syndrome, Munchausen by Proxy, Malingering, and Factitious Disorder by Marc Feldman, M.D.
- Includes cases of real patients, chronicles the impact of fictitious disorders and Munchausen syndrome on patients and caregivers alike
- Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy Reconsidered by Eric G. Mart
- Eric G. Mart, a forensic psychologist and internationally-known expert on Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy, examines prevalent investigative and diagnostic techniques, as well as the literature and research on the disorder, according to the standards of empirical science
Additional Media:
Safe (Todd Haynes, 1995)
The story is a character study of a suburban California housewife (Julianne Moore) who suffers from Munchausen syndrome and whose life deteriorates under the stress of “environmental illnesses” as she seeks hope from “New Age” practitioners with whom she becomes involved.
Mommy Dead and Dearest (Erin Lee Car, 2017)
An HBO documentary film about the murder of Dee Dee Blanchard, for which her daughter, Gypsy Rose Blanchard, was accused of after being a victim of her mother’s Munchausen syndrome by proxy her entire life.