Recommended Reading

I thought it would be helpful to initiate a topic related to recommended reading. I certainly found a number of books and articles to be helpful in understanding, interpreting and recovering from my own experience and I'm going to assume that others have as well, or will.

It is my hope that others will add to this thread according to the reading they have done that was most helpful to them.

<blockquote><font size=4>Trials of the Visionary Mind: Spiritual Emergency &amp; The Renewal Process</font>

John Weir Perry

<img align=right src=http://thefifthbody.homestead.com/files/53985_cov.jpg>Stress may cause highly activated mythic images to erupt from the psyche's deepest levels in the form of turbulent visionary experience. Depending on whether the interactions between the individual and the immediate surroundings lean toward affirmation or invalidation, comprehension of these visions can turn the visionary experience into a step in growth or into a disorder, as an acute psychosis. Based on his clinical and scholarly investigations, John Weir Perry has found and formulated a mental syndrome which, though customarily regarded as acute psychosis, is in actuality a more natural effort of the psyche to mend its imbalances. If the upset is received in the spirit of empathy and understanding, and allowed to run its course, an acute episode can be found to reveal a self-organizing process that has self-healing potential.

This book examines what the acute "psychotic" experience stirs up in the psyche and how to empathetically respond. Understanding the function of mythic themes is reached through the author's investigation into myth and ritual of antiquity and also the visionary experience undergone by prophets and social reformers in various ages and parts of the world.

John Weir Perry is Former Assistant Clinical Professor at the University of California, San Francisco. He is the author of The Heart of History: Individuality in Evolution, published by SUNY Press; The Self in Psychotic Process: Its Symbolization in Schizophrenia; Lord of the Four Quarters: Myths of the Royal Father; The Far Side of Madness; and Roots of Renewal in Myth and Madness.

Source: SUNY Press

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Related Resources:
[*] Treatment or Therapy?
[*] Visionary Experience in Myth &amp; Ritual
[*] Dr. John Weir Perry &amp; Diabasis
[*] Interview: Mental Breakdown as Healing
[*] The Far Side of Madness: Psychosis as Purposive
[*] Visionary Experience or Psychosis?
[*] Diabasis - Prague

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<font size=4>Soteria: From Madness to Deliverance</font>
Loren Mosher, Voyce Hendrix with Deborah C. Fort

<img align=left src=http://pic50.picturetrail.com/VOL438/8397669/15643275/238243500.jpg>This book is the story, told by Loren R. Mosher, M.D., Voyce Hendrix, LCSW, and Deborah C. Fort, Ph.D., of a special time, space, and place where young people diagnosed as "schizophrenic" found a social environment where they were related to, listened to, and understood during their altered states of consciousness. Rarely, and only with consent, did these distressed and distressing persons take "tranquilizers." They lived in a home in a California suburb with nonmedical caregivers whose goal was not to "do to" them but to "be with" them.

The place was called "Soteria" (Greek for deliverance), and there, for not much money, most recovered. Although Soteria's approach was swept away by conventional drug-oriented psychiatry, its humanistic orientation still has broad appeal to those who find the mental health mainstream limited in both theory and practice. This book recounts a noble experiment to alleviate oppression and suffering without destroying their victims.

The results of the Soteria Project sounded a thunderclap throughout the field in the 1970s. They completely and permanently changed my view of how to practice psychiatry. The passage of time has only increased the importance of these findings and endorsed their validity.

-- Dr. Richard Warner


Source: Soteria

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Related Resources
[*] Still Crazy After All These Years
[*] Mosher's Letter of Resignation from the American Psychiatric Association
[*] Guidelines for the Treatment of Psychosis
[*] Soteria - Bern [PDF File]

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<font size=4>The Stormy Search for the Self</font>
Christina Grof and Stanislav Grof

<img align=left src=http://pic50.picturetrail.com/VOL438/8397669/15643275/238249091.jpg>
Many people are undergoing a profound personal transformation associated with spiritual opening. Under favorable circumstances, this process results in emotional healing, a radical shift in values, and a profound awareness of the mystical dimension of existence. For some, these changes are gradual and relatively smooth, but for others they can be so rapid and dramatic that they interfere with effective everyday functioning, creating tremendous inner turmoil.

Unfortunately, many traditional health-care professionals do not recognize the positive potential of these crises; they often see them as manifestations of mental disease and repsond with stigmatizing labels, suppressive drugs, and even institutionalization.

In The Stormy Search for the Self, Christina and Stanislav Grof, the world's foremost authorities on the subject of spiritual emergence, draw on years of dramatic personal and professional experience with transformative states to explore these "spiritual emergencies," altered states so powerful they threaten to overwhelm the individual's oridinary reality. This book will provide insights, assurances, and practical suggestions for those who are experiencing or have experienced such a crisis, for their families and friends, and for mental-health professionals. It is also a valuable guide for anyone involved in personal transformation whose experiences, though generally untraumatic, may still at times be bewildering or disorienting.

Source: Penguin Books

See also: Spiritual Emergency

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Related Resources:
[*] Defining Spiritual Emergency
[*] Spiritual Emergency or Psychiatric Disorder?
[*] Assistance in Spiritual Emergency
[*] Guidelines for Family &amp; Friends
[*] The Homecoming

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<font size=4>Models of Madness</font>
John Read

<img align=right src=http://pic50.picturetrail.com/VOL438/8397669/15643275/238251734.jpg>

Essential reading for all those involved with the mental health system, this book is powerful, scholarly, up-to-date critique of biological approaches to madness and the role of the pharmaceutical industry, together with well presented and refreshing analyses of psychological and social approaches.

- Terence McLaughlin

This is a wonderful book. It's a scholarly academic text that is very well supported by the literature in the field, but remains easy to read and understand, which is no mean feat, given the complexity of the material it covers.

- Lynne Huddleston

This is mandatory reading for all psychiatrists. Read et al. have issued a serious challenge to psychiatry. Are we totally on the wrong track with both understanding and treating schizophrenia? Are we doing more to create mental disorder than to prevent it? Since we have shuffled off responsibility for almost everything except mental illness, this challenge to the medical model suggests that we may have sawn off the last branch on which we had any purchase.

- Carolyn Quadrio

Is schizophrenia an illness? Is madness preventable? This controversial, but carefully reseached, book argues that what psychiatrists call "schizophrenia" is not an illness. Models of Madness shows that hallucinations and delusions are understandable reactions to life events and circumstances rather than symptoms of a supposed genetic predisposition or biological disturbance. Featuring 23 contributors from six countries, the book represents a range of disciplines and discusses the history, economics, and politics of madness. Contributors critique the "medical model" of madness, document the role of drug companies and outline research-based alternatives to diagnoses and drugs.

Models of Madness promotes a more effective and humane approach to understanding and supporting severely distressed people that will prove essential reading for psychiatrists and clinical psychologists and be of great interest to all those who work in mental health service.

[b]Source: Amazon

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[b]Related Resources:
[*] Rethinking Schizophrenia[*] Think Again[*] The Talking Cure[*] Dr. John Read

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<font size=4>Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill</font>
Robert Whitaker

<img align=right src=http://pic50.picturetrail.com/VOL438/8397669/15643275/238257159.jpg>A riveting social and medical history of madness in America, from the seventeenth century to today.
In Mad in America, medical journalist Robert Whitaker reveals an astounding truth: Schizophrenics in the United States currently fare worse than patients in the world's poorest countries, and quite possibly worse than asylum patients did in the early nineteenth century. With a muckraker's passion, Whitaker argues that modern treatments for the severely mentally ill are just old medicine in new bottles, and that we as a society are deeply deluded about their efficacy. Tracing over three centuries of "cures" for madness, Whitaker shows how medical therapies have been used to silence patients and dull their minds. He tells of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century practices of "spinning" the insane, extracting their teeth, ovaries, and intestines, and submerging patients in freezing water. The "cures" in the 1920s and 1930s were no less barbaric as eugenic attitudes toward the mentally ill led to brain-damaging lobotomies and electroshock therapy. Perhaps Whitaker's most damning revelation, however, is his report of how drug companies in the 1980s and 1990s skewed their studies in an effort to prove the effectiveness of their products. Based on exhaustive research culled from old patient medical records, historical accounts, numerous interviews, and hundreds of government documents, Mad in America raises important questions about our obligations to the mad, what it means to be "insane," and what we value most about the human mind.

Author Biography: Robert Whitaker's articles on the mentally ill and the drug industry have won several awards, including the George Polk Award for Medical Writing and the National Association of Science Writers' award for best magazine article. A series he co-wrote for the Boston Globe was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1998. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

[b]Source: Barnes &amp; Noble

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[*] Reviews[*] The Rad Geek: Chapter Excerpt 1[*] The Rad Geek: Chapter Excerpt 2[*] Chemical Warfare on Humans

Thank you all ! For me I am not only starting to arm myself but am also gaining more insight into the choosing of my "professional" . I am interested in finding out if they are open to these concepts in thinking or just pill (shot) pushers. Thanks again.
I shall bow out for a few months for the ups man cometh!
PS... If I sound animated in these chat rooms you should see me in person. ha, ha, ha.
Peace of mind to all who read these posts!