Review
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
Product Description
'Psychosis in the Family'; is a book written not just by a professional trans personal psychotherapist but by someone who has walked the heart rending path and experienced the psychological trauma of loving someone in psychosis; psychosis which still remains the 'greatest taboo' in society today, together with its implicit diagnosis of a 'lifelong sentence of medication' and 'no cure.' 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.This book is in the main a personal and moving narrative of a mother looking to help her son avoid a lifelong sentence of medication whilst trying to research holistic resources and alternative approaches for treatment whilst negotiating the vagaries of the current mental health system. It is often a tale of despair and frustration, yet also gives a compassionate voice Trans personal and trans generational psychotherapeutic insights back up the personal narrative. It includes an accessible inquiry into how unconscious forces influence our mind, our bodies and the entire family system. Its hypothesis is that if we cannot understand our own unconscious responses how can we understand those of our loved ones in psychotic episodes? This is a highly readable provocative weave of story and theory, one of the great untold stories of our time.
About the Author
Janet C Love is a Transpersonal Psychotherapist, a member of theUKCP and MBACP, Autogenic Therapist, dip AT, Life Coach, AMAC and Systemic Constellation Therapist. For many years a self-employed Interior Designer, Janet changed career in mid-life and became anInterior Designer of a different kind. She came to London to train asa Transpersonal Psychotherapist at the Centre for Counselling andPsychotherapy Education in West London and is now an experiencedTranspersonal Psychotherapist After her training in the 'talking cure' with a spiritual bias, she wanted to address some of the stress she was still experiencing in her life. It seemed a natural progression to train in Autogenic Therapy. She then turned to the work of Bert Hellinger and Trans-Generational Healing. She has trained in Systemic Constellations work with Dr. Albrecht Mahr, Professor Franz Ruppert, and Vivian Broughton and studied with Bert Hellinger.
