This dissertation analyzes literature written about mental illness by mentally ill authors in the 1960s to demonstrate how they converge with and diverge from the antipsychiatry ideas of Erving Goffman, Thomas Szasz, R. D. Laing, and Michel Foucault. I highlight fiction’s capacity to resist rigid definitions of mental illness, challenge binary perspectives, and ultimately provide a healing space for readers. Chapter One extends Goffman’s notion of the “self-story” in Asylums (1961) to Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar (1963) to establish the power of fiction as a medium for portraying personal experiences with mental illness. Chapter Two investigates how Szasz’s concept of the “language of illness” in The Myth of Mental Illness (1961) operates in Joanne Greenberg’s I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (1964) to reveal that mental illness cannot be translated into ordinary language and, as such, is more appropriately described in literature. Chapter Three applies Laing’s theory of “metanoia” in The Politics of Experience (1967) to Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) to argue that literature has healing potential through the narrative journey of mental illness. Chapter Four discusses the parallels between Foucault’s arguments on madness and literature in Madness and Civilization (1964) and Janet Frame’s Faces in the Water (1961) before using Foucault’s theory of the author-function in “What is an Author?” (1969) to analyze how Frame’s identity as a mentally ill author has perpetuated and, in turn, challenges binary understandings of mental illness. This dissertation ultimately argues that literature is a vital, underexplored realm for depicting mental illness, encouraging an expansive understanding of mental illness that transcends confining categories.