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Dante's Cure: A Journey Out of Madness

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Dante's Cure: A Journey Out Of Madness by Daniel Dorman (Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, School of Medicine University of California at Los Angeles) traces the history of Catherine, a woman suffering from severe schizophrenia in the 1970s and was admitting at a UCLA hospital as an adolescent anorexic who was suicidal and heard murderous voices in her head. Dr. Dorman describe's Catherine's condition, her background, and moments of interpretative breakthroughs, and his work with her in resistance to collegial pressures to medicate Catherine. Dr. Dorman set up in private practice and continued his sessions with Catherine. Gradually she was able to begin a recovery, live in an apartment, attend college, and eventually qualified as a psychiatric nurse. Of special interest is Dr. Dorman's epilogue setting out his rationale in opposition to the dominant psychiatric view of schizophrenia as a "brain disorder" requiring medication. He persuasively advocates a humanist, patient-doctor collaborationist approach as illustrated by his years of work with Catherine. Dante's Cure is a welcome and valued contribution to psychiatric medicine and a recommended addition to personal, professional, and Mental Health Studies library collections.

THis is a brilliant book. Dr. Daniel Dorman has done something few doctors have the patience to do or care. He cured someone over 7 years with severe schizophinia without any drugs - just a belief in himself and her recovery.
The last chapter is worth the price of the book. He is a compassionate, caring man who believes minds are not broken.
He his a real healer.

Dorman's book illuminates the inner world of a young girl with schizophrenia. Although there are no cut and dry explanations given for how she ended up the way she did, the book illustrates how life experiences can detour someone from the norm when they have never been exposed to a different social dynamic.

The final chapter alone is worth the purchase. Dorman grapples with the knowledge that modern medicine defies its own conviction in scientific methodology by putting the scraps of information about neurobiology into effect through the use of psychiartic medication, while completely ignoring the recovery of all schizophrenics who haven't used medication.

Dante's cure is a good read over all. It doesn't contain all of the answers one may be looking for but what it does contain will hopefully be common knowledge in the near future.

This book is an awe-inspiring account of a psychiatrist's refusal to do anything less than cure his patient. He did this without the use of drugs, in itself an amazing thing. It was not an easy road to a drugged recovery but a thorough, life-affirming process which allows his patient to live life as it is meant to be lived.

I highly recommend this book. Catherine Penney's inspirational story offers hope to all who suffer from so-called mental illness. Don't believe the drug company propaganda that people who struggle with mental problems need drugs for life.

THis is a brilliant book. Dr. Daniel Dorman has done something few doctors have the patience to do or care. He cured someone over 7 years with severe schizophenia without any drugs - just a belief in himself and her recovery.
The last chapter is worth the price of the book. He is a compassionate, caring doctor who believes minds are not broken.That people can be cured without drugs, by going deep within themselves they can change - drastically.
He is a real healer.

I highly recommend this book. Catherine Penney's inspirational story offers hope to all who suffer from so-called mental illness. Don't believer the drug company propaganda that people who struggle with mental problems need drugs for life.

This was the second book an american (ISPS) psychiatrist reccomanded me to read after my own recovery from 'schizophrenia' (actuated in North-Italy in the past years).

I have found it very well written (like a romance) and, as an ex-schizophrenic person, also recognizable for all the symptoms Dorman describes for Catherine.

The less stronger fact is that the book is written by the psychiatrist and not by Catherine herself.

First person accounts can give you more details (and maybe more credibility too?), I believe.

In a final review of this book as a matter of fact someone writes about the lower credibility for him because it seems there are no other recovery stories available of this kind...

Stories are coming up however. Already another semi-autobiographi book of recovery from this mental disease is the book 'I never promised you a rose garden' of Joanne Greenberg, recovery that goes back in time for decades. Recovery inside the Chestnut Lodge structure in Usa.

There are also other european stories of recovery that have not been translated, like the story of the norvegian Arnhild Lauveng.

Now also the english version of my own autobiographic story is available on Amazon.com.

What I personally found lacking in this book is all the theory behind the origin of this disease, from different points of view (psychoanalysis, theory of attachment)..., but probably it was not Dormann's intent to write about this.

An interesting story, and a revelation to me, that schizophrenia could ever be treated successfully with psychotherapy alone. What's missing from this book is a substantial account of that psychotherapy. We're given a lot of dialogue, mostly illustrating Catherine's social evolution, but I kept waiting for something meatier about the actual therapy. Near the end of the book, there are revealing views from both the patient (Catherine) and the doctor (Daniel Dorman, the author) about the nature of Catherine's emergence from the stranglehold of schizophrenia, but it's too little and too late.

Also, the title of the book is very misleading. Cure implies causation or methodology, but Dorman uses Dante only for description. Each chapter begins with a quoting of Dante (from his Divine Comedy) as a description of Catherine's state of mind and recovery at that point. There are no other connections to Dante or his works.

Based on the title and the subject (a journey out of madness!), I was expecting something gritty and amazing -- something I could sink my teeth into. I was disappointed on that score, but I'm not sorry I finished the book. It was an easy read that has opened my eyes to an unusual and interesting option in the treatment of schizophrenia.

Dr. Dorman, with the help and consent of the patient whose story it is, has made a remarkable contribution to our collective hope for a more holistic understanding of why some of our brains take a holiday, so to speak. The courage of Dr. Dorman to refuse to administer psychiatric drugs to this patient, Catherine, seemed so daring and so risky to his own personal future in psychiatry that at times I had to stop reading and go back to make sure that the good Doctor actually did this. I became convinced that he refused to use meds because he believed with such certainty that each of us has a story that needs to be told and in order to tell it someone has to listen, really listen and observe the teller, no matter how long it takes. It seemed to me that both doctor and patient made important sacrifices of self in order for healing to take place. It is such a sweet story of compassion and recovery. This book would be interesting reading for anyone but especially interesting for those of us who were administered drugs over a long period. Many of us were not able to concentrate enough to read newspaper captions. This inability to concentrate brought new adventures in learning how support one's self! So that now, being able to read Dante's Cure we can legitimately wonder: "What if....??" but then immediately rejoice that no matter what answer pops up...we survived!! Just as Catherine did and Dr. Dorman too! Life is so full of surprises, it's hard to fathom.