Dante's Cure: A Journey Out of Madness - Hardcover

Dorman, Daniel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1590511018 ISBN 13: 9781590511015

Publisher: Other Press, 2004

Synopsis

Catherine, nineteen years old and suffering from severe schizophrenia, sat in a mental hospital—mute, catatonic, and hearing voices. Her psychiatrist, Dr. Daniel Dorman, was convinced that his patient's psychotic behavior was not merely rooted in chemical imbalances but rather in the dramatic circumstances of her family history. He was therefore determined to avoid the mind-numbing medications that had been so detrimental to Catherine's well being. Dorman fought adamant opposition and criticism from his peers and superiors for a chance to guide Catherine out of madness. Dante's Cure is the riveting true story of a woman's triumph over her schizophrenia without medication, written by the psychiatrist who helped her.

About this title

About the Author

Daniel Dorman, M.D., is Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine. He has a background in family medicine, psychoanalysis and research in neurophysiology. Dr. Dorman has practiced and taught psychotherapy for over thirty years.

Reviews

Dorman, a professor of clinical psychiatry, traces his patient Catherine's inspirational life journey from severe schizophrenia to health. When Catherine first came under Dorman's care in the 1970s at a UCLA hospital, she was an adolescent anorexic hearing suicidal and murderous voices. After fully investigating her family dynamic and diagnosing schizophrenia, Dorman began therapy sessions, but rejected the use of standard medications. Dorman describes his patient's various states during her years of crisis as a hospital inmate: her infantilism, physical deterioration, self-loathing and anger. He also describes her key dreams and the moments of interpretive breakthrough he and she made together, emphasizing the substance of their discussions and Catherine's humanity. Having successfully resisted pressure to medicate Catherine, Dorman set up private practice and continued sessions with her. This coincided with her gradual, albeit at first fragile, recovery. Living in an apartment, attending college and qualifying as a psychiatric nurse, Catherine grew in life experience, miraculously surviving professional and relationship pressures without further breakdown or recourse to medication. In her career, Catherine, like Dorman, opposed forcing drugs on her patients, becoming a mental health activist. Dorman and Catherine came to enjoy a relationship of mutual respect and shared philosophies. Dorman's epilogue sets out a readable and reasonable opposition to the now dominant view of schizophrenia as primarily a "brain disorder" that requires medication. His advocacy of a humanist approach that emphasizes patient-doctor collaboration and the growth of soul will be welcomed by all those who value the psychotherapeutic tradition.
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Psychiatry professor Dorman compassionately chronicles the remarkable life, from the onset of illness through recovery, of one of his patients without stinting graphic descriptions of her struggles with madness. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, 19-year-old Catherine Penney was dangerously thin, tormented by self-destructive voices, all but completely withdrawn. By the time she was admitted to the UCLA Hospital psychiatric ward, where Dorman was a young resident, she had already been taking antipsychotic drugs for several years to no apparent avail. Certain that her illness was treatable with psychotherapy and not a believer in pharmaceutical intervention, Dorman initiated his relationship with Catherine by interviewing her and her family. What he learned about her background reconfirmed his faith in therapy, and so the pair embarked upon a seven-year-long, six-day-a-week trek toward wellness. The upshot reads almost like fiction: 36 years later, Catherine has become a nurse and a patient advocate. Her story bodies forth a convincing affirmation that, with enough determination and the unflagging tenacity of a committed psychotherapist, anything is possible. Donna Chavez
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Other Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1590511018
• ISBN 13: 9781590511015
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 280