My Book Reviews

R.D. Laing – A Wounded Healer   Dr Ronnie Laing R.D. Laing’s pioneering attempt to understand   schizophrenia   called   The Divided Self   (Penguin, 1960) is always worth reading if you are in any way interested in mental health.  While   Laing only very   occasionally refers to such persons as being insane, the experts point out that this latter term has been so brutalised and so abused that it is no longer used in mainline psychiatric medicine. It is, today, thankfully, used only in   forensic psychiatry   and in legal circles as in what’s called the   “insanity defence”   in murder cases. However, for clarity, I wish here to distinguish between a   psychosis (psychotic disorder)   and neurosis (neurotic disorder).   The defining characteristic of the former is   “gross impairment in reality testing”   ( The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology , 1985, p. 598). In other words the person fin...

Questioning National Identity: A Novel compared with a Film Sebastian Barry, The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty London: Penguin Books, 1998. The Wind That Shakes The Barley, 2006 Irish war drama film directed by Ken Loach. I suppose if I were asked the question as to who I am I might reply with my name and/or my occupation.  Then again I might answer in a theological or a religious way, something like, “I am a child of God” if I were religious or a philosophical way, “I don’t know really, but I have many deep questions which I am asking myself continually.  Or again I might say that I have a life project and goals which are getting clearer as time goes on, or in a psychological way that I am engaged in getting to know myself through counselling and self-help books and complementary therapies and I believe that I am in the process of actualising my real self.   Or further, I might reply along these lines, “I am a complex being made up of a bank ...

The Shadow of the Wind Carlos Ruiz Zafón, New York: Penguin, 2004, Translated by Lucia Graves. Another novel I read some ten years ago is called   The Shadow of the Wind  by a Spanish writer by the name of Carlos Ruiz Zafón.  The blurb on this tome – and it is a big book which runs to over 400 pages – reads like a sustained eulogy, singing praise after praise for this author and his   magnum opus .  A reader will readily agree with these accurate assessments very soon after beginning this book. Firstly, let’s have some information about the author, though this is in no way necessary for the reader to know.  After finishing this   tour de force  of a novel, shot through with the energy and passion of such Gothic classics as   Frankenstein  by Mary Shelley or say, Wuthering Heights  by Emily Bronte, I was driven by inquisitiveness to find out some information on Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Well briefly then, he was bo...

In this post, I would like to briefly review another book on the subject of growing up through the adolescent years. The novel in question is   Portofino   by the American author and filmmaker   Frank Schaeffer . Above all, this is a hilariously funny book, but like all good books, it has a serious message. It is a story which recounts a boy’s struggle to grow in a repressive family atmosphere. This boy’s name is   Calvin Becker , 11 years old, and he is the son of an embarrassingly over-zealous American missionary couple who are strong evangelicals. The Becker family holidays every year on the Italian Riviera in the small resort of Portofino. Calvin’s father, even on holidays, seems to be always in a bad mood, and his mother is forever attempting to convert the “pagans” she meets on the beach. Needless to say, both these facts drive the young boy crazy. His sister Janet is far too similar to her mother, and she keeps a ski sweater and a miniature bible in her ...