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ISBN: HB: 9780226695938

University of Chicago Press

April 2020

192 pp.

21.5x13.9 cm

18 halftones

HB:
£18,00
QTY:

Mental Traveler

A Father, a Son, and a Journey through Schizophrenia

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 age 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.     Shot through with love and pain, "Mental Traveler" shows how Gabe drew his father into his quest for enlightenment within madness. It is a book that will touch anyone struggling to cope with mental illness, and especially for parents and caregivers of those caught in its grasp.  

About the Author

W. J. T. Mitchell is the Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature, the Department of Art History, and the College at the University of Chicago. He is the author, most recently, of "Cloning Terror: The War of Images, 9/11 to the Present", published by the University of Chicago Press. He is also co-editor of the journal "Critical Inquiry".