The Abyss of Madness

"From the very beginning of his career, George Atwood has immersed himself in the world of madness, doing psychotherapy and psychoanalysis with the most difficult patients - those suffering from psychoses, deep depressions, suicidality, and multiple self-states. He has a unique gift for both understanding and working effectively with such individuals, and this book - primarily a series of case stories - brings them alive as individual personalities, as well as showing his special talents as a therapist. Written in jargon-free, poetic, and highly accessible style, one feels as though one is in a comfortable room, talking with George as psychological difficulties are unraveled, meaning revealed, and terrible and painful histories lived through. There is profound knowledge in this book." - Louis Breger, author of Freud: Darkness in the Midst of Vision

"At the heart of what is healing in psychotherapy lays a kind of humaneness, understanding, and compassion - one that dissolves the centuries-long barrier between madness and sanity and neutralizes the pathologizing effects of traditional diagnosis. In this volume, George Atwood masterfully recasts the workings of the so-called psychoses and the associated emotional suffering into an insightful and humane understanding of how we experience ourselves and the world in the face of trauma, deprivation, and personal annihilation. Grounded in phenomenological contextualism, his lifelong theorizing and moving clinical narratives clearly reflect his humanity, accessibility, and contemporary clinical sensibility. Understanding madness not as an aberration and diagnosable disease, separate and estranged from what is presumed to be "normal," his work underscores how emotional suffering and seemingly intractable delusions result from relational contexts centered on traumatic loss and the absence of understanding, responsiveness, and human connection. This volume is as clinically profound and insightful as it is personally accessible and emotionally engaging. It is a must-read for all contemporary clinicians concerned with deepening their understanding of therapeutic action, regardless of their patient population." - William J. Coburn, Editor of the International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology

"George Atwood explores with a clarity of vision and impassioned perspective the abiding and thorny arguments regarding the relative merit of medical and psychological perspectives on the etiology and treatment of extreme mental states. The real strength and contribution of [this book]are in Atwood's deep and far-reaching understanding and beautiful explication of the profound destructiveness inherent in the invalidation and discrediting of experience that can lead to the annihilation of a person's felt sense of being. The Abyss of Madness is successful at provoking and summoning the reader to clarify his or her own thinking regarding the use of diagnostic labeling, the use of medications, and the nature of so-called mental illness. Atwood's book is an important contribution in an age of biological psychiatry and waning interest in psychodynamic understanding and treatments. The Abyss of Madness is an engaging and thought-provoking book that will be of interest to advanced students, academics from many disciplines and clinicians." - Jennifer L. Stevens, PsycCRITIQUES