Summary of two chapters in Gordon's book written by Peter Chadwick. Peter writes of male stereotyping and stigma, also alienation, the social construct of reality, statistics and the cost of mental illness. He also writes on psychotic episodes.

1. Gordon McManus & Jerome Carson:
From Communism to Schizophrenia and Beyond:
One Man’s Long March to Recovery
Peter Chadwick.
Chapter 8: From teddy boy to teddy bear, from barbells to bar-belle:
On growth via psychosis, sin and love. (Peter Chadwick).
Peter was brought up in the North of England in a tough family
environment. This association with mind-wrecking people continued
until his breakdown at age 33. Two things: he ‘wrote himself well’
and also he challenges the notion of being ‘proud to be mad.’ He is
uncomfortable with a society where everything is a dimension of
competition. Peter is prepared to make an example of himself as a
member of a marginalised and stigmatised group. He feels his illness
may have been ‘all politics.’ The politics of a weightlifting boxer
being a transvestite. He is now, age 65, happily married. However
his first 20 years were like a training for the army, and he learned
that nothing was lower than a poof. The conflict was between the
army-style upbringing and the feminine. His psychotic episode was in
1979 at age 33. He suffered persecutory delusions from 1974 to
1979 after being outed as a trans. He had learned from the Nazi-style
bullies in the 6th form that they really would go out of their
way to attack pansies. He had become a ‘bar-belle’ going out with
men. Sex and gender fascists meant: If you’re not like us we will
destroy you. His overactive imagination led him to think they were
out to get him: We didn’t beat Hitler with poofs like him. His
psychotic episode was a single event, with no relapses. His wife
thinks transvestism is ‘just a laugh’. He was able to indulge his
femininity through his academia. He says you have to reconstruct a
personal narrative. ‘Man as flower and shaman’ was acceptable in

2. the academic world. After the psychotic episode, he advocates for
JAM (Job, Accommodation and Money) (cf Rachel Perkins?). He
met his wife and medication did not turn him into something he
wasn’t, it removed the barriers to him becoming himself. He can talk
about anything with his wife and close friends. In short story writing
he gets back at the Gestapo-like teddy boys at 6th form, portraying
them as shady characters. He has a good relationship with his
medics. He uses a variable drug dose (haloperidol) and takes only
infrequent drug holidays. He is wary of confirmation bias, where
research is done mainly to confirm thoughts and beliefs. Also there
is JTC bias – jumping to conclusions. He wants to get away from
research on deficits and dysfunctions. However in the early stages
of recovery he needed to relearn social skills. This was in a
psychiatric aftercare hostel. He was lucky to have the chance to
get back into work gradually, from a few hours on to full time. He
eventually worked many hours and this may have a long lasting effect
on his health. He avoided like the plague, street drugs, hard drugs,
and binging on alcohol. He avoided competitiveness and sought self
realisation and he wrote himself well. It’s good to have a handle on
creativity, spirituality etc, and if you are proud to be mad you will
never get out of it. If you have friends and family, you need to think
what your ‘marvellous manic madness’ is really doing. He finds that
most of the psychologists he has read are materialist atheists and
concentrate on brain, disavowing mind. This is like ‘intellectual
machismo’ like the teddy boys bullying at school. No soft thinking for
us! His growth has been facilitated by his hatred for them, and he
finds places where bullies do not stay. This elaborates his own
identity. He listens to the voice within and says ‘It’s your recovery,
not anyone else’s, it’s your action, not anyone else’s.’ This threatens
the men on the building site, football terraces, and in the
forces. Recovery is something to work at. Peter lists R D Laign’s

3. comment that psychiatry is a ‘vocabulary of denigration’ and Gergen’s
‘discourse of deficit.’ Peter says it’s necessary to avoid coarse,
boorish, blunt people. Artists can bring alive what crass people may
have scorned and suppressed. It took Peter two years from
breakdown to get to part-time work and five years to get to full
time. He had to refind himself in the mundane everyday world of
work. Not everyone is suited to cognitive procedures, some
therapists now include person-centred approaches in this.
Fluctuations in fortune are with us everywhere on this Earth, this we
need to be prepared for. Peter describes his journey as decadent
and that breakdown might be expected. Peter has now a heart
condition that may shorten his life...If Peter goes to an afterlife, he
is looking forward to speaking with his father.
Chapter 9: Does a psychotic episode ever do anybody any good?
(Peter K Chadwick).
Peter looks at the economic costs of schizophrenia and asks about
any gains from a psychotic episode. We need helpful discourses, not
to demoralise people. Mad Pride – what about the effects on those
close to sufferers? Medication plays a part for Peter personally.
Stats: There are at least 24 million people worldwide with
schizophrenia, WHO says it’s #2 in the burden of global disease,
treatment cost in USA in 2001 was $34 billion or 1/3 of healthcare
spending, life expectancy is reduced by 10 years, many attempt
suicide at least once in their lifetime, 10-12 % die from suicide.
Unemployment is rife for sufferers as it is for carers. 2004 drug
expenditure in US was $20 billion. Parents give much support to
schizophrenic children, twice as much financially as to other
children. Crises can give self-knowledge to sufferers, some mention
a profound creative and spiritual experience. Strengthening and
positive discourses are appearing in service user narratives. The

4. focus on positive aspects of psychosis can be empowering and hope-giving.
Some sufferers are demeaned by psychosis and cannot let go
of the experience. Shingler writes of the ‘1 in 100’ and says
episodes may enhance creativity, and that sufferers are receptive
to paranormal. This involves the amplification of the uncanny and the
meaningfulness of synchronicity. This can be dismissed by
professionals as ‘hippy 1960’s talk.’ Shingler writes of the growth
experience of his 13 episodes and that psychiatry is damaging to
enlightenment. He is extra sensitive to coincidences and sees
universal or cosmic meaning in Milky Way bars and Wisdom
toothbrushes. He turns these perceptions into art. Art out of
psychosis. Scientific psychiatry puts a realist view on the world as
‘truth’ but Peter mentions **social constructionist scenarios which
point to many other possible interpretations of reality, including
Shingler’s. Other ways of influencing policy and practice are possible
from a social construct point of view, rather than saying everything
is ‘objective’ and to be measured. Mad Pride sees positivity in
psychosis. So feelings of wonder and terror (cf Anthony Scally) can
even outstrip the alienation of daily life – and should not be
dismissed as delusion by a psychiatrist. Alienation comes about in a
success-striving society. There is a claim that madness has to be
reclaimed from scientists as the new rock and roll. As a civil
liberties movement, Mad Pride needs to recognise responsibilities.
Being high can lead to supreme creativity but also to outbursts. Also
the high can be followed by a deep low which can be made worse by
medication. One patient says she was elated by psychosis and yet
knew she was kidding herself. Can psychosis have a long lasting
adventure quality? Certainly after psychosis there can be creativity
such as poetry and art-making. These can be conduits from patient
to the public. Laing claimed that a completed psychotic journey can
mean being better than before. In non-Western societies

5. schizophrenic people are looked on as healers and shamen. Some
patients get well and then get weller. Peter mentions the benefits of
medication to him. Psychosis can lead to the making of a discourse to
fit people’s situations.

6. schizophrenic people are looked on as healers and shamen. Some
patients get well and then get weller. Peter mentions the benefits of
medication to him. Psychosis can lead to the making of a discourse to
fit people’s situations.