A Pattern of Madness

Rating:
Summary: An Original Contribution
Review: One can't claim theoretical coherence here, nor can one pretend that a very rigid moral perspective isn't being laid out here under the guise of psychological truth. But Symington is convincing and his metaphors, which at first seem ludicrous, gradually acquire genuine power. One wishes Symington would think through his ideas more thoroughly so as to expose them to critique, but at the same time one must recognize that a good deal of explanatory power would be lost in the process. A vexing and quite thrilling book.

Rating:
Summary: important contribution to Psychiatry and Clinical Psychology
Review: This book is a very important contribution to Psychiatry and Clinical Psychology. Symington has been developing his concepts since"Narcissism: A New Theory ",but this book is by far better. I have read the old masters theorizing on narcissism. These have traditionally included Freud,Kohut Kernberg and Jim Cooler(1961). Elements like Grandiosity, envy, paranoia, inferiority and dependency/merging have been described before but in fragmented and meaningless ways. Symington connects them all together in his model. In this sense he is like Galileo looking at the same elements but in a new startling perspective. Symington draws from Wilfred Bion and John Macmurray but develops his own original concept that describes the essence of madness and its narcissistic core. It had profound impact in understanding personality disorders and other severe psychopathology. The test of the theory is that it holds in clinical practice. I have tested the validity of the Madness model in my daily clinical practice of psychiatry. The Model has deeply changed my vantage point of the meaning of what I see and hear from patients. All seems to make new sense. I am very grateful for this book. I suspect it will take a while till the importance of this contribution is appreciated by the Mental Health community. The main reason being the difficulty of unlearning of old useless theories, as well as our own blindness to our own narcissism.Symington recommends reading his book twice knowing how difficult it is to go through the unlearning process.In addition, I have been rereading the book daily spending 20 minutes a day on a regular basis. I recommend this approach to the serious reader.