This book has taken literally a lifetime to emerge. I tend to be a person of fast action, but some essential ventures don’t come to fruition quickly—like understanding one’s family, finding an authentic voice to recount difficult life experiences, and working to reduce the shame and stigma regarding such weighty topics as mental illness.
In college, I became increasingly invested in the field of psychology, spurred by my father’s initial, revelatory talk with me during my first spring break back in the Midwest. Over time I began to believe that his story, and my own, might be of value not just to my family or those in my inner circle but to a wider audience as well. This work is my attempt to convey such remembrances and accounts to the best of my memory. I’ve tried to create dialogue and narrative that adhere as closely as possible to what transpired when I was a boy, a teen, a young man, and beyond.
The inspiration for the book’s title comes from a quote from James Baldwin, in one of his masterpieces, Giovanni’s Room: “People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget.” [emphasis added]
I cannot, of course, claim to comprehend Baldwin’s experiences, but his words are inspirational. Regarding the present narrative, as I try to make clear in the pages that follow, stigma itself is “another kind of madness,” a form with consequences that are far worse than those linked to mental illness itself. More broadly, stigma fosters a denial of human potential. The silence and shame must be transformed into open dialogue. Unless we make progress toward this goal, we will never realize what we can become as a species.
I have altered the names of some individuals outside our family to protect their privacy, an unfortunate but still necessary action. Progress in the fight against stigma is a marathon, not a sprint.
In the end, I hope that the material herein provides solace, inspiration, and courage to all individuals affected by mental illness either in themselves or in those close to them—in other words, to everyone.