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Psychosis in the Family: The Journey of a Transpersonal Psychotherapist and Mother

Author(s) : Janet C. Love

Reviews and Endorsements

This groundbreaking book is the first guide for families and mental health professionals to include both a personal and professional psychotherapeutic narrative which acknowledges the deep psychological trauma of loving someone in psychosis. The story presents psychosis as being unlike other illnesses. The main presenting symptoms of psychotic behaviour are not the paranoid delusions, however bizarre they might be. The most dangerous belief of all is that the person does not have the insight to realise they are ill and present themselves as healthy. The family or primary carers who carry the awareness of the illness for them are therefore of crucial relevance in any home treatment plan - a fact not yet universally acknowledged.
This book does not just focus on practical information but offers psycho-spiritual therapeutic insights into the complex emotional responses of loving someone in an altered state of consciousness. It also provides, in accessible terms, an investigation into how the unconscious forces of the mind affect us all, as a way of understanding the illness, our loved ones and ourselves. It also includes current research into holistic treatments for mental health - an area often completely overlooked in psychiatry.
It is a compelling and provocative weave of story and theory. It has the direct aim of lifting the curtain of shame surrounding the greatest taboo in society, psychosis, through reminding us all that psychosis is simply one aspect of being human.

"I recommend this book as a moving account of a woman's struggle to get help for a son suffering from psychosis. It vividly portrays the problems faced as families try to cope with mental illness, against a background of confusion and sometimes indifference amongst mental health professionals."
Professor Richard Bentall, author of Madness Explained

'Janet Love's book Psychosis in the Family stands with such extraordinary works as Milner's The Hands of the Living God, and Dorman's Dante's Cure in evoking the experience of psychosis. But this time it is seen from within the family of the sufferer, particularly from the mother's point of view, herself a psychotherapist, yet as a mother exposed as totally as anyone could be to the disintegrating impact of psychosis, yet also paradoxically healing and regenerative. This amazingly vivid account grips the attention from start to finish, evoking poignantly what so many have experienced: the sheer excruciating, unfathomable, ungraspability of the experience and nature of psychosis on any single model. The devastation wrought by the inadequacies and bureaucratic closedness of our mental care systems is painfully articulated, yet it is not anti-psychiatric, and one of the heroes is a psychiatrist. Familial, and intergenerational, fault lines are agonisingly evoked, yet without going down the 'schizophrenogenic family' model. This is a book full of pain, full of madness, yet full of sanity. Psychotherapy is affirmed, but does not get off scot-free either! It is both a clarion call about the failures of our services, yet an awesome message of hope and overcoming!'
- Heward Wilkinson, UKCP Fellow, Chair of UKCP Humanistic and Integrative Psychotherapy Section, Integrative Psychotherapist, Psychiatric Nurse, and author of The Muse as Therapist: a New Poetic Paradigm for Psychotherapy

The 21st century has seen a significant shift amongst us to take more responsibility for our illnesses through being able to access unlimited information on diagnoses and treatments through the Internet. To date, severe mental illness has been a particularly closed book, with only psychiatrists and mental health professionals professing to know its secrets and mysteries. In particular, psychosis has been a subject which for centuries has lain behind the locked doors of the experts just as the severely mentally ill have been hidden away from the public eye in locked wards.

'Psychosis in the Family is a courageous book which tells us about the reality of living with psychosis.'
- Tony O'Brien, Metapsychology Online Review

Contents
Chapter One: Drawing the Line
Chapter Two: Living in the Shadows
Chapter Three: Disorder, Disorder
Chapter Four: Finding Kindred Spirits
Chapter Five: Surrendering
Chapter Six: The Wounded Storyteller
Chapter Seven: The Power of the Multigenerational Psyche
Chapter Eight: War and Peace