

Gittler Award from the American Psychological Foundation for "the most scholarly contribution to the philosophical foundations of psychological knowledge.Louis A. Sass is a past president of the divisions for psychology and the arts and also for philosophy and psychology of the American Psychological Association. In addition to Madness and Modernism, he is the author of The Paradoxes of Delusion: Wittgenstein, Schreber, and the Schizophrenic Mind, and of many articles on schizophrenia, phenomenological psychopathology, hermeneutics, psychoanalysis, modernism/postmodernism, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger. Louis Sass is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Clinical Psychology, Rutgers University (New Jersey, U.S.A.) - where he is also associated with the Program in Comparative Literature and the Center for Cognitive Science. Should revolutionize our thinking about the workings of the human mind." -Iain McGilchrist, author of The Master and His Emissary, London Review of Books A landmark contribution to the understanding of psychosis." -Sidney Blatt, Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology, Yale University the best overview of the field to have appeared in a long time." -Times Literary Supplement (TLS) restores complexity, intentionality and humanity to the schizophrenic mind. "A monumental, exciting, and troubling book, a new landmark in the study of the modern era." -Kenneth Baker, San Francisco Chronicle An inspired documentation of the interrelationships of modernism, schizophrenia, and our current cultural life." -Richard Restak, M.D., Washington Post Book World Laing's deservedly classic The Divided Self. provides the richest description of the schizophrenic's inner world since R. arrives at some highly original and profoundly disquieting insights." -Brigitte Berger, New York Times Book Review Displaying an impressive command of philosophical, literary and clinical literature on subjects of enormous complexity. Sass sets out in largely uncharted directions. A startling look at the strange connections between the most private workings of our minds and the most public." -Clifford Geertz, author of The Interpretation of Cultures

Here is a highly original portrait of the world of insanity, along with a provocative commentary on modernist and postmodernist culture.

In this revised edition of a now classic work, Louis Sass, a clinical psychologist, offers a radically new vision of schizophrenia, comparing it with the works of such artists and writers as Kafka, Beckett, and Duchamp, and considering the ideas of philosophers including Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida. The similarities between madness and modernism are striking: defiance of convention, nihilism, extreme relativism, distortions of time, strange transformations of self, and much more.
