Healing the Split: Madness or Transcendence : A New Understanding of the Crisis and Treatment of the Mentally Ill

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Summary: Healing the Split
Review: This is a wonderful book by an experienced psychiatrist who knows what to ask when a patient says God is telling him what to do. According to Dr. Nelson, sometimes anti-psychotic medications are needed, other times more transpersonal approaches work better. In his Foreword, Ken Wilber calls the book "enormously impressive and profound" and laments that it isn't required reading for psychiatry residents. The book is divided in four parts, dealing in turn with madness and consciousness, the brain, the spirit, and ending with the part on healing. The book is beautifully written with many insights into the non-rational world. My favorite is the explanation of the futility of trying to invalidate a paranoid delusion-logic's razor's edge is no match for the granite of necessity. The book is full of insights into all forms of altered states of consciousness, creativity, and genius, and how they compare to madness. It should forever debunk the myth that creativity and insanity inevitably go hand in hand.