Well my experience has informed my opinion that three kinds of people come out of PhD programs. The 50% who finish ABD (higher in many programs than that), who turn into bitter barestas who teach a 'creative writing' class at the local alternative 'free' university, then there are the two kinds who get out. There are the ones who in finishing the process were left so shell shocked that they never really get over it (and who's focus is so narrow that pretty much they are the only people in the world who understand it and are going to spend the rest of their life walking around talking to themselves - and really, sit at some major university like Cal Berkeley and watch, and you'll see there are more people talking to themselves then I have down in the Tenderloin where we know those people are crazy). Then there are the ones who come out, find a way to reengage with reality (takes about two years, more or less) and actually use those skills in some way. Because the practical skills you can pick up can be wielded pretty effectively in the real world if doing the dissertation didn't completely ruin all your social skills, which it's pretty much designed to do.
Then there is the writing deal. Any sane rational person who loves language and reading, and words and all of that, will choose to read the ingredients on the side of the package rather than pick up anything done in the academic 'style'. And, there is no way to get the D thing trough the process and passed if its not written in that terminally dry, humorless, turgid, dense, thick, and sluggish prose that at its best totally lacks anything even resembling personality.
However, with a lot of rehab it is possible to overcome it, and there are a lot of people who went through it, and then rehabbed, and came out the other side being able to really write strongly and clearly - like a dagger to the heart. Because, in the end, good writing is most often about taking complex ideas and delivering them in such a way that someone who graduated from an American public high school (which is little more than an attendance award) can understand what you are saying.
Most certainly if you finish it right, and on time, no matter what your field of study is, you're going to have a PhD in time management too, and that's a tremendous skill to possess. I've come to understand that's its almost a real world comic book style super-hero power when it seems that lots of people seem to have a rough time planning out the next five minutes of their life. And you'll also have the ability to think about more than one thing at a time in a world where most of the people around you are having a hard time thinking of even one thing.
And most of that stuff is truly trans-gender, in that it goes beyond and supercedes gender in a lot of ways - in most ways really. The Academy (to the degree it even exists anymore) at the highest levels is pretty much gender neutral. You're often being judged by the words on the page, not what's in your pants. And "Doctor" is not male or female, it's just Doctor.
And there is a level of confidence too for most. It's kind of like the old joke where if you get up first thing in the morning and eat a live toad you can be pretty much assured that you're already past the worst thing that's going to happen that day. Other than being a parent, it's the hardest thing I've ever done, and everything I've done since then seems like child's play in comparison. If you can make it through that without becoming too neurotic or self-absorbed, or lost - then you can make it through anything.
And, it's not like being crazy is a liability either, at least it will help you understand your major professor.
