Mental Traveler

A Father, a Son, and a Journey Through Schizophrenia

W J T Mitchell (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

192 Seiten

2020
University of Chicago Press (Verlag)
978-0-226-69593-8 (ISBN)

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How does a parent make sense of a child's severe mental illness? How does a father meet the daily challenges of caring for his gifted but delusional son, while seeking to overcome the stigma of madness and the limits of psychiatry? W. J. T. Mitchell's memoir tells the story--at once representative and unique--of one family's encounter with mental illness, and bears witness to the life of the talented young man who was his son.

Gabriel Mitchell was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of twenty-one and died by suicide eighteen years later. He left behind a remarkable archive of creative work and a father determined to honor his son's attempts to conquer his own illness. Before his death, Gabe had been working on a film that would show madness from inside and out, as media stereotype and spectacle, symptom and stigma, malady and minority status, disability and gateway to insight. He was convinced that madness is an extreme form of subjective experience that we all endure at some point in our lives, whether in moments of ecstasy or melancholy or in the enduring trauma of a broken heart. Gabe's declared ambition was to transform schizophrenia from a death sentence to a learning experience, and madness from a curse to a critical perspective.

Through vignettes and memories, by turns difficult, unsettling, and humorous, Mental Traveler shows how Mitchell was drawn into Gabe's quest for enlightenment within madness. Shot through with love and pain, this memoir holds many lessons for anyone struggling to cope with mental illness, and especially for parents and caregivers of those caught in its grasp.

W. J. T. Mitchell teaches English and art history at the University of Chicago. His books include Image Science, Cloning Terror, and What Do Pictures Want?, all also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Preface
1          “I Need to Become Homeless”
2          A MAD Tour
3          The Therapeutic Landscape
4          “There’s Something in My Head”
5          From Desolation to Da Jewels
6          Flying and Falling
7          Diagnoses and Detours
8          “He Killed the Future”
9          He Was Too Strong for His Own Good
10        Gabe’s Back Pages
11        Philmworx
12        The Immoral Career of the Caregiver
13        On the Case of Gabriel Mitchell
Postscript        Poems by Janice Misurell-Mitchell
Gabriel’s Email to the Family, on Grammy’s Death
Acknowledgments
Further Reading and Viewing

Erscheinungsdatum	24.03.2020
Sprache	englisch
Maße	140 x 216 mm
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Krankheiten / Heilverfahren
	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Natur / Technik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie
ISBN-10	0-226-69593-X / 022669593X
ISBN-13	978-0-226-69593-8 / 9780226695938
Zustand	Neuware