Norah Mary Vincent was born in Detroit, and grew up both there and in London where her father was employed as a lawyer for the Ford Motor Company.
Vincent asserted that, since the experiment, she had more fully realized the benefits of being female and the disadvantages of being male, stating, "I really like being a woman.
"[8] She criticized doctors who she claimed were unapproachable, noting that too many relied on drugs as therapy, while others addressed only symptoms instead of their underlying causes.
[9] Vincent's book also addresses the question of pseudopatients and those who remained ill because of their lack of willingness to cooperate in their therapy.
[3] In an article for The Village Voice, she wrote: "[Transsexuality] signifies the death of the self, the soul, that good old-fashioned indubitable 'I' so beloved of Descartes, whose great adage 'I think, therefore I am' has become an ontological joke on the order of 'I tinker, and there I am.
'"[11] In Voluntary Madness, Vincent details her decade-long history with treatment-resistant depression, saying: "...my brain was never quite the same after I zapped it with that first course of SSRIs.
"[12] Due to her experience as a man during the making of Self-Made Man she ultimately had a depressive breakdown, leading Vincent to admit herself to a locked psychiatric facility, stating it was the high price she paid for "the burden of deception" of a separate identity and for trying to hold two gender identities in her mind.