Anatomy of a Psychotic Experience

"In an age in which truthtelling has been under siege, Richard Reichbart-scholar, teacher, author, President of a major psychoanalytic institute-tells a truth many would choose to hide. This memoir offers us his own personal experience with psychosis over a three year period when he was in his twenties. He graphically portrays both the feel and the logic of a psychotic episode foreshadowed by his separation from college and from law school and ultimately precipitated by the loss of his beloved grandfather. His search for his identity led him to the Navajo reservation which was 'ideal for the nurturance of my psychosis.' He gives testimony to the help he received from two outstanding psychoanalysts who worked with him to unpack and weave together the effects of childhood events and fantasies on his adult personality. A book for those at all levels of psychoanalysis, one that demonstrates the possibility of psychoanalyzing psychosis."

- JANICE LIEBERMAN, PHD



"In this brave and unflinchingly honest memoir, the eminent senior psychoanalyst Richard Reichbart takes us with him when as a young man he descended into madness and then recovered his sanity through psychoanalysis. A law school graduate in search of something or someone he had lost, he wanders into a years long abyss of hidden meanings and uncertain identity. Frightened and alone, he has the good fortune of finding the help he needs. This memoir of madness is unique in its multiple perspectives. Reichbart first wrote about how he understood his psychosis soon after recovery, and now many years later writes about it again with a much deeper and more nuanced understanding after a second analysis and with the wisdom of age and experience. Some readers find it uncomfortable to confront the fact that a healer of minds, a psychoanalyst, had once been so troubled. But I can assure those readers Dr. Reichbart is not alone, and his story is a powerful testament to the curative power of a psychoanalytic relationship."

-MICHAEL MOSKOWITZ, PHD