My Book Reviews

Human nature is extremely complex.   We run the risk of much misunderstanding, if not considerable trouble, if we simplify that reality too much in every field from the microcosmic to the macrocosmic, from interpersonal to international relationships.   Interpersonal relationships, and indeed the relationship of individuals with their own self, that is, their self-identity, are often critical, if not very tortured ones. This we have seen in my last three posts on mental disturbances, especially psychotic disorders, as represented mostly in schizophrenia .   In general, apart altogether from such disorders, quite often the behaviours of so-called normal individuals within their own families and communities are often hard enough to understand, and when we magnify such interactions to a global one between nations, we cannot be too surprised that disagreements can escalate quite unreasonably and very quickly into war.   It would seem that we have depraved depths within u...

Reviewing Schizophrenia 3: The Divided Self : R.D. Laing How far does our family of origin shape our personality, mental state and behaviour?  How far do our genetics form those same realities?  It is that age-old , often-repeated question about the  nature-versus-nurture  debate .  A balanced approach answers that they both do.  Before I discuss R.D. Laing’s contribution to psychiatry and psychotherapy, let me begin with an exceptionally cynical poem by Philip Larkin (1922 – 1985), which presents the misanthropic and fatalistic view that parents ruin their children, passing on misery that deepens "like a coastal shelf," advising that one should avoid having children to stop the cycle of abuse.  I think it provides a fitting epigraph for the life and times as well as the thoughts and teachings of the exceptional and eccentric psychiatrist, Ronald Laing: This Be The Verse (1971) They fuck you up, your mum and dad.     ...

Today, most experts advocate a holistic approach to the treatment of mental illness or mental disorders.   As I have emphasised in my last post, psychopharmacology or treatment by medication alone is one avenue to the assuagement of mental suffering, and, thankfully, psychotherapy in its many manifestations is generally used in conjunction with administering prescription drugs.   Medical intervention may, more often than not, be necessary, but very seldom is it used alone and to the exclusion of more holistic, therapeutic and creative approaches.   The key concern today is BALANCE, and the approach is always open-ended and positive, never closed and negative.   An understanding of the history of psychiatry that led to such a balanced approach is interesting to study, as it shows that such is the outcome of no little suffering on the part of patients and many intellectual challenges to the authoritarian, and often patriarchal, approaches of traditional medicine and ...

Reviewing Schizophrenia 1 An old friend of mine, and furthermore a wise old man, now long dead, often used to advise us to read widely, and he often repeated for us one of his favourite quotations: “I fear the man of a single book.” (“Hominem unius libri timeo”).  Apparently, that statement comes from St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), one of the greatest theologians and philosophers of the medieval period.  In like manner, I have always felt that we should fear those who rely on any one source for their theories, or on one theory to the exclusion of all others.  From having lived 68 years on this planet, life, with all the problems and mysteries it throws our way, is far more complex than we might at first naively believe.  As regards mental health, and the problem of psychosis in particular, mainly in its incarnation of what’s called schizophrenia , is what I would like to discuss in this post and the next several. Indeed, it can certainly not be reduced to any sin...

Writing has always entranced me. There is something magical in seeing words order themselves into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, paragraphs into chapters and chapters into books.  It is an imaginative and virtual Lego, with marvellous and wondrous worlds, if not universes, conjured therefrom. Then, to be able to communicate ideas clearly or compose stories, frightening or sustaining, but always riveting, would be a marvellous and added pleasure.  This brings me to one of my favourite contemporary philosophers, Professor A.C. Grayling (b. 1949), who is a master in such virtual Lego building. He is the author of more than thirty books that are wide-ranging within the field of philosophy and indeed outside that specialist field.  He also must have written thousands of articles in newspapers on a multitude of topics.   I first came across him through reading "The Last Word" column in The Guardian.  He wrote that column for several years (1999–2002) and was a...