Impressions

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10-1

10.

For 30 years I have been a psychiatrist in public practice. Ever since my medical residency, my professional-passion has been to better understand, and to try to help those many fellow citizens who have been labeled as nearly incurable: those labeled as Schizophrenic, and those with so-called severe Borderline Personality Disorder, and/or those with severe PTSD.

Your comprehensive compendium of quotations is more than intelligent. Its Heart beats upon a universal Drum. I cannot thank you enough for your years of creative work which it required! Your references to political figures such as Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol-Pot, and many others seem, to me, to touch only one tip of our current cultural-iceberg.

With much respect,
—Name Withheld
An American physician, and psychiatrist

9.

My name is [name withheld]. I haven't read your book yet but the title and short description gave me a good idea of what it is about. At first I was outraged and then I had a good laugh and then... well... I haven't had a good cry yet but I'm sure it's coming.

I suffer from Paranoid Schizophrenia. Mr. Mahoney, I love men. I love their bodies and everything that goes along with them - good and bad. However, I have been tempted to be with women because it would be easier than being with a man...

Men have the ability to break my glass heart into a thousand shards. Women, on the other hand, I feel nothing for them other than someone to dominate and feel powerful around them. I have never slept with a woman but I have thought about it. I have resisted because I know it is all about power and I'm not comfortable doing that to someone.

I believe - One Hundred Percent - that this disease is because of generations of sin. (Not just my sins but the sins of my father and his father and so on.) I had become so morally dirty that I had opened myself up to spiritual deadness, moral decay, evil spirits. Ask me why I know this... because the voices came right out and told me! They kept saying "You died, [name withheld]... You died." I would say, "If I'm dead, where's my grave? Show me that I'm dead!" Finally one day they simply said softly, "You are spiritually dead, [name withheld]." And when I heard that little voice say that, I knew it was true.

For years now I have been trying to compile my story and everything that happened to me but I'm not a writer or a movie maker but if you heard my story you would be inspired to write it down.

Mr. Mahoney, I will buy your book and read it but I have the feeling that I've already lived the stories that are in it. It's much more than just bisexuality. It's about the systematic erosion of the soul. Free will gone wild.

I don't know how busy you are... do you read your own e-mail or do you have an assistant? Don't really know. I would like to be a part of your next book. "Spiritual Deadness"

I am looking forward to your response.

Thanks and regards...
—Name Withheld

8.

Easy to read, and a wonderful research tool.
—Mental-Health-Matters.com

Well, I would write more but I think I have bored you enough? but it must be interesting to hear from one of the family from a book you included in your bibliography. To repeat as I said, your book is written extremely well and is a tremendous contribution to the study of schizophrenia.

—Charles Antin
New York

7.

In Schizophrenia, - The Bearded Lady Disease, Mike Mahoney offers an outside the envelope approach to this regrettable staple of today's psychological problems. Mahoney's question, answer, and case study approach reflects serious thought, yielding a productive and fascinating read for any one interested in the mental illness that plagues today's society.

—Eugene R. Baker
New York

6.

I am a 21 year old schizophrenic male living in... I always suspected I was going to suffer from the illness until there was a break when I was 17 (prodrome) and my first psychotic break on valentines day age 20.

I´ve always supported the hypothesis of gender role confusion and agree with Freud, Schreber. I spend my time on the computer reading about the illness and have discovered lots of things myself before reading them on the internet. I have this hope that I might solve the riddle or get cured as I have some advantages which first is the illness itself, always been interested in psychology and studied it in university, and I am/or partially a highly intelligent individual in domains where the illness has not damaged. I am analytical as well.

This summer has changed my life. I had lots of stress and I spent some time living with my father. He used to take me for drinks to the bar under his home. This was the last times I felt like me. I used to drink beer and talk with everyone in the bar (males). I was totally charming, funny and intelligent and interesting to talk to. Everybody wanted to know about me as I was totally different and emotionally free. However the last days it became clear, so to say, I was not a man rather a kid or a feminine hermaphrodite psyche (what the hell, a bearded lady!). He was spirited. Comments of "lady" or homosexual were suggested although not in a hostile manner rather in a friendly way. Since then I haven't been the same and everyone in the bar sort of misses that special/eccentric wonder-kid. After those spirited beer drinking days I had a psychotic episode which was different to the ones I had before as I had it during day time and not at night when I lie down to sleep.

It lasted 3 days , no eating and no sleeping. After that I think I might have violently repressed those qualities/tendencies and I felt libido energy rising from the end of the back towards the brain (hallucination?). I feel I have forced myself into being a man, however since then I am unable to feel like I were myself and affect has also been blocked so I have problems with all the friends/family I had before that violent psychotic break.

I think it is pretty clear that your hypothesis applies to me perfectly and I would like to offer you my acquaintance to support your research. I am ready to devote my life to solving this riddle and i am sure I can help you in your research if you would like to start a dialogue thru email and I am sure as well you could help me.

Furthermore, I am son of a schizophrenic mother and a neurotic father. I have noted sexuality issues in all mentally disturbed people I know. Paranoia definitely is repressed homosexual libido and psychosis is discharge of the libido although in a toxic manner.

Pleading to God you might find my acquaintance valuable and worthwhile.

Perhaps we can complete the puzzle.

—Name Withheld

5.

Your book arrived yesterday...I have dipped into many parts of it and am intrigued by the scope and richness of the quotations...a most unorthodox format, to be sure, but I find it makes the text much more accessible than would a more traditional structure... other scholars in the field may give you a good deal of grief about your take on schizophrenia, but if you can find ways to get the book into the hands of lay readers with a personal interest in the topic, it may find a wide audience.

—Talton Ray, Publisher
The Francis Press, Washington, DC

4.

Thank you for the book you wrote on schizophrenia. I read it cover to cover and am amazed at how much history it contained. You have certainly reinforced your theory with multiple examples and analysis. I enjoyed it very much.

—Diana D. Parnell, M.D.
Northern California

3.

There may be an editor or an influential person who shares the thought that the field of mental health needs to be stirred up... there is much to be angry about. We still have many thousands of mentally ill wandering the streets much as they did centuries ago. So much has changed with so little real change.

—Vid Beldavs, Authors' Representative
Indiana

2.

You - sir - are the one whose passion for this work is so evident. How long have you been working on it? Amazing! I am sure there will be many in this field who will welcome and cherish your years of effort to provide this incontrovertible proof.

—Jane Robbins
Northern California

1.

All those whose attention has been caught by the strange contradictions inherent in sexuality will be delighted to read SCHIZOPHRENIA - THE BEARDED LADY DISEASE. The shock in print that the whole life of men and women, in all social conditions, turns about the junction of the sexes as a pivot is electrifying, and gives insights into personal, unconscious misunderstandings.

I can admit along with Proust that "our social personalities are created by the thoughts of other people." We differ in our powers to feel. The instinctive witness has felt "the keen desire and very urgent need", as Remy de Gormont calls it when discussing the sameness of sex throughout the animal kingdom, which "if unsatisfied produces an inquietude which may increase until a momentary madness takes hold of the animal and throws it blindly upon all sorts of illusions and hallucinations."

J. Michael Mahoney's documentary confirms Dr. Edward J. Kempf's hypothesis, "that in man every case of emotional neurosis or psychosis is the result of more or less conflict and confusion involving bisexual differentiation."

Mr. Mahoney's narrative divulges the rejected wisdom he discovered in his researches by uncovering dusty specimens of the largely neglected and rejected old psychiatry, which provides the cornerstone for understanding mental illness, presented in an album of selected writings and interviews with mental patients, doctors and artists, meshed with the author's insightful, informative commentary. This salubrious book adds to the dignity and significance of each life, and further provides the reader with an excellent bibliography.

Five out of five for this sensational book and many thanks to the author for writng it.

—John H. Perrill
Co-author, The Adventures of Talldorf and Small