“The Spiritual Gift of Madness is a work of extraordinary intellectual courage. Not since the death of psychiatrist R. D. Laing in 1989 has anyone written about mad people with such insight and respect. Like Laing, Farber will be accused of romanticizing ‘schizophrenia.’ But his interviews with six mental patients speak for themselves. In 1970 Laing, a countercultural icon, publicly repudiated his trademark brand of spiritual-political activism, expressed most profoundly in his 1967 campus bestseller The Politics of Experience. In a manner of speaking, The Spiritual Gift of Madness may be regarded as the sequel to The Politics of Experience—the book that Laing himself did not dare to write.”
RAY RUSS, PH.D.,
EDITOR OF THE JOURNAL OF MIND AND BEHAVIOR
“Seth Farber has dedicated his decades of professional life to not merely destigmatizing ‘mental illness’ but to giving us an all-inclusive, spiritual perspective on the evolution of consciousness that will, hopefully, end the iatrogenic suffering caused to so many in ‘the doctor’s efforts to heal.’ The existence of this book is, in itself, uplifting; its many cogent insights will surely inspire similarly dedicated readers to further this great humanitarian work.”
STUART SOVATSKY, PH.D,
AUTHOR OF WORDS FROM THE SOUL, YOUR PERFECT LIPS,
AND EROS, CONSCIOUSNESS, AND KUNDALINI
“Seth Farber makes a powerful case for the Mad Pride movement based on a challenge to the normative humanism of modernity. He draws on a number of thinkers, prominently the redemptive-messianic vision of Sri Aurobindo, who saw the human as a ‘transitional being’ and earth as the habitation for a divine life. This is a valuable addition to the expanding library of handbooks for charting a new passage to the future through what Michel Foucault has called ‘an insurrection of subjugated knowledges.’”
DEBASHISH BANERJI, RESEARCH FELLOW AT THE
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF INTEGRAL STUDIES,
SAN FRANCISCO, AND AUTHOR OF SEVEN QUARTETS OF
BECOMING: A TRANSFORMATIVE YOGA PSYCHOLOGY
BASED ON THE DIARIES OF SRI AUROBINDO
“Seth Farber is one of the most provocative and original thinkers in America. Like his mentor, R. D. Laing, Farber believes schizophrenics are prophets. They called Laing mad, as they will Farber. This is often the fate of those who are crazy for God or fools for Christ in a secular culture. Farber brings us to the threshold of the only questions that really matter: the demarcation lines between imagination and objective reality and between ‘madness’ and ‘sanity.’ The Spiritual Gift of Madness is an important book that could revolutionize the way progressive religious people regard what is called mental health.”
FRANK SCHAEFFER,
AUTHOR OF CRAZY FOR GOD: HOW I GREW UP AS
ONE OF THE ELECT, HELPED FOUND THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT,
AND LIVED TO TAKE ALL (OR ALMOST ALL) OF IT BACK