Look Back in Sadness

This book is an autobiography of a guy who suffered episodes of mental illness, variously diagnosed as depression, anxiety, manic depression, hypoglycemia and borderline personality disorder. If you or a loved one is in psychotherapy, this book can help you avoid the pitfalls into which the writer fell. For the diagnosis he received he had his religion attacked, was told to think black empty thoughts, had a dreadful experience with electric shock therapy, received so many medications he had to be hospitalized to "dry out," was asked for an affair, and had both himself and his wife diagnosed as having borderline personalities. The writer was the first man to file a sexual ethics complaint against a woman psychiatrist in the central region of the American Psychiatric Association in New York State (Syracuse). The writer describes the evasion and "treatment" he received from psychiatrists after the complaint. The first half of the book describes the experience of growing up in a poor Catholic family in Lancashire, England. The second half deals with the problems he encountered when he tried to talk to psychiatrists after the abuse. After the request to have an affair, the therapy degenerated into verbal fighting, which resulted into the worst "downer" ever.