The Necessity of Madness: Explaining How Psychiatry is a Clinical Construct and Madness is a Metaphor - Softcover

Breeding, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0954221877 ISBN 13: 9780954221874

Publisher: Chipmunkapublishing, 2003

Synopsis

The Necessity of Madness John Breeding's Necessity of Madness is a work of genius. He has a unique understanding of the damage that psychiatry causes society. Foucault would have been proud. Breeding's argument is so well researched, thought out and articulate that it would be difficult for anyone not to be convinced by him. Like any great work of literature what Breeding says is controversial. The publication of his book... Full description

About this title

Review:

'Jason Pegler's A Can Of Madness is a moving and intelligent approach to a subject that is so little understood and too often ignored. -- John Calder - World Famous Publisher

A Can of Madness provides a strong point of solidarity for those of us from the Chemical Generation for whom things got a little out of hand. -- Chas de Swiet reviews A Can of Madness by Jason Pegler.

Mr Pegler wants to encourage those with mental illness to write as a form of therapy, as he has done. -- The Daily Telegraph, Jan 18 2003

Pegler catches the wild energy of the illness but also the terrifying and hideous aspects of it. He writes a good story, vividly and movingly. -- Openmind 2002

The prose is refrshingly raw, it is fluent, and it flows, jumping energetically off the page of the reader -- Southwark Mind Newsletter - Robert Dellar

From the Author:

Preface
What follows is intended to help people understand the condition of manic depression and similar mental illnesses. And I hope that sufferers, their families and friends – a significant 80% of them black – will gain strength from reading it. My own experience is that it’s possible to emerge at the other end of adversity and live a decent life. Admittedly, you may have to make changes in your life and behaviour but that’s a small sacrifice compared with the alternatives.
The first step is to accept that you’ve got a problem, or rather, that there is a problem – the exact cause(s) of which, more often than not, will forever remain unknown. The second is to deal with it – and the sooner the better.
When writing this book, I often thought back to how long it took me to accept my own illness. I now know I can help at least one person cope with their illness better than I did. This alone makes the pain of writing it worthwhile.

About this edition

• Publisher: Chipmunkapublishing
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0954221877
• ISBN 13: 9780954221874
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 460