Bücher von Gordon Claridge

What determines the form of mental illness from which particular people suffer? Professor Claridge's central theme is that "psychiatric" disorders--even in their most severe forms--are abnormal manifestations of temperamental and personality characteristics we all possess to a greater or lesser degree. Examining the major forms of abnormality from this point of view, the author puts particular emphasis on the continuity between schizophrenia and normal behavior.From the PrefaceThe exact origins of this book are, I must confess, lost to me, though I do recall that in its present form it began to take shape in the waiting-room of a car body repair shop just north of Oxford. If that seems too casual a beginning, I should explain that my melancholic visit to that establishment eventually led to a more sanguine encounter with Philip Carpenter of Blackwell's. After seeing an early version of the manuscript he suggested to me that, with some revision, it might make a publishable book. Among other things I am grateful to him for articulating what was wrong with the original version and for focusing my mind on the laborious task of reshaping it. The book now conveys as well as it can, I believe, the ideas I meant to impart, at least to the audience for whom it was intended: students of psychology, psychiatry, and allied disciplines, inquisitive professionals in other specialties, and even those members of the general public interested in what an academic (alias clinical) psychologist has to say about mental illness.

This groundbreaking work is a unique collaboration between an Oxford psychologist and two literary critics. It was first published in 1990 and reprinted by Malor Books in 1998. The book explores the lives and works of ten authors, among them Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath, who embody both serious mental illness and great originality of thought. The book draws upon personal diaries, historical archives, clinical records and literary productions, and examines modes of thinking such as divergent thought, over-inclusiveness, and autism, which psychosis and creativity might have in common. Using genetics, experimental abnormal and clinical psychology, personality research, descriptive psychiatry and literary analysis, the authors Gordon Claridge, Ruth Pryor and Gwen Watkins present the revolutionary idea that normality and psychosis are continuous with each other. Healthy varieties and styles of thought and perception substantially overlap with the inclination to psychotic breakdown and indeed might at times be identical.It’s not simple: neither a strict social interpretation nor a biological view of psychosis as a neurological disease can entirely explain the psychotic experience. As the authors eloquently put this, “The conjunction of the excellent and the awful is never found inany genuine neurological disease.” Psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, therapists and general readers will gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between madness and creativity from this book. By offering exceptionally rich discussion, the authors leave room for readers to view their own divergent thinking not as “crazy,” but as potentially useful and creative.

Aims to integrate evidence and ideas from healthy personality and temperament on the one hand and psychological disorders on the other. This is a second level textbook for undergraduate students of psychology, but is also recommended for health professionals and their trainees, psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and nurses.