|
Butterfly Man |
|
Madness, Degradation and Redemption |
|
Joseph H. Berke |
| The first chapter of Butterfly Man is called, simply and truly 'Madness is Not Fun'. Nor are the traditional weapons of psychiatry - drugs, ECT and psychosurgery. Dr Berke's new book is a devastating and definitive indictment of those weapons, and a first reaching out, with hope and compassion, towards a human psychiatry the shared journey of the helped and helpers through the degradation of being out of mind to the redemption of health restored. |
| John, the Butterfly Man of the title, literally saw himself as a caterpillar who needed a cocoon in which to become a butterfly. In metaphor, the butterfly personifies the human move from dependence to autonomy, from impotence to potency, from death to rebirth. In that movement, the chrysalis enfolds the moment of morphosis. It is the sacred cave, the sanctuary, the retreat, more prosaically the crisis centre where a person can reach his self in mind, in body and in spirit. |
| Hutchinson 1977 | £4.95 net IN UK ONLY |
