Imagination and Its Pathologies
James Phillips, James Morley
The MIT Press
From John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding to the most recent                  edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, madness has                  been viewed as a faulty mix of ideas by a deranged and violent imagination. This                  book shows that the relation of the imagination to pathological phenomena is as                  diverse and complex as the human condition itself. The imagination has the power not                  only to react to the world but to recreate it. And that power is double-edged: it is                  as destructive as it is creative.Recent advances in genetics and neuroscience have                  reinforced the empiricist approach in psychiatry, to the neglect of subjective                  aspects of the pathological experience. This book argues that the study of the                  imagination and pathology is long overdue, and that such an integration will be both                  theoretically and clinically fruitful. Because imagination can be creatively                  integrative as well as pathological, the book emphasizes the holistic, therapeutic                  dimension of imagination as well as its destructive effects. The areas discussed                  include philosophical perspectives on pathological imagination; pathological                  imagination and the psychodynamic tradition; and specific cases of pathological                  imagination in schizophrenia, juvenile pathology, artistic creativity (Vaslav                  Nijinsky), and religious expression (St. Anthony).