Description

By Kenneth Edwards

ISBN: 978-1-84747-192-5
Published: 2007
Pages: 223
Key Themes: philosophy, psychosis, psychiatry, schizo-effective disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)

Description

When my psychiatrist suggested to me that I compile my experiences in a book, I thought, This is flattering, but I cannot do it. What to him is clinically interesting, to me is so painful I cannot possibly get it down on paper. But now I have done it. However, the doctor did not anticipate two things which define the book.

First, it seems to me that it was not something transitory that caused my long psychotic episode. Instead, the circumstances of my entire life conspired to make me ill. So the story of my sickness is necessarily an autobiography of my whole life. The doctor did not realize the extent of the autobiography he was asking for.

Second, he did not fully appreciate what makes a philosophy Ph.D. tick. It was impossible for me to write an autobiography without being intellectual. So I utilised my own psychosis as a paradigm example and from it developed a complete theory of psychosis itself. The physicians at the hospital cured me all right, but that does not mean they know everything and I cannot make my own addition to mans understanding of psychosis. On the contrary, I have a resource that mental health professionals and other philosophers of psychiatry do not have: personal experience of psychosis. Kenneth Edwards

About the Author

American philosopher Kenneth Edwards received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Georgia. Born in Tennessee and now residing in Virginia, he was for five years a runaway homeless psychotic in Jackson, Mississippi, thinking he was the Messiah, the Buddha, the Mahdi and Quetzalcoatl. All those years he evaded his family and psychiatric help, living by his wits and without government aid. He was finally committed or sectioned in 2002. Now recovered, his book chronicles that experience and culminates in the development of a new theory of psychosis and a new treatment for the illness.