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| The Outsider The paperback edition of THE OUTSIDER is now available at bookstores and online. The following is the publisher's press release for the paperback edition of THE OUTSIDER. Please feel free to post and/or forward to interested parties. Thank you for your time. Sincerely, Recipient
of NAMI-NYC's The Kenneth Johnson Memorial Research Library Book Award Winner of the 2000 Bell of Hope Award, Presented annually by the Mental Health Association of Southern Pennsylvania (Philadelphia) THE OUTSIDER: A JOURNEY INTO MY FATHER'S STRUGGLE WITH MADNESS By Nathaniel Lachenmeyer "A gripping and unusual story. It throws into sharp relief the suffering inflicted on a brilliant and gentle man by mental illness. Written with understanding, compassion and love, this is an extraordinarily moving book that has made a deep impression on me. It should be compulsory reading for high school students as well as the adult population." --Jane Goodall "Extraordinary...A rare gift: a memoir that helps enlighten readers that homeless, mentally ill people have lives beyond what we might ever hope to see." --Newsday "The Outsider is a truly wonderful book--a haunting, poignant story of a son's life with, and without, his father. A rare and moving portrait of one of life's major struggles--the devastation created by severe mental illness." --John Oldham, M.D., Director of New York Psychiatric Institute A devastating mental illness with no known cure, schizophrenia strikes people in the prime of their lives. For Charles Lachenmeyer, its onset was a life-altering event. In 1978, Charles was a happily married professor of sociology who lived in the New York suburbs with his wife and his nine-year-old son, Nathaniel. He seemed to have everything: a promising career, a loving family, and a comfortable home. But underneath his sociable exterior, Charles's world was falling apart. Within a few short years, schizophrenia would cost him everything: his sanity, his career, his family, even the roof over his head. In 1981, Charles and his wife divorced. Haunted by the belief that she and the CIA were co-conspirators in a plot to control his thoughts and steal his sociological research, Charles left New York, seeking refuge in cities throughout the Northeast. Over the years, he traveled from city to city, passing in and out of psychiatric hospitals, all the while trying unsuccessfully to return to academia. He continued to correspond with his son, but as Charles' symptoms became more severe, what had once been a close father/son relationship changed dramatically. In 1989, overwhelmed and emotionally drained by his father's erratic behavior and bizarre beliefs, Nathaniel finally broke off all contact, writing: "I can't live in your world, and you can't live in mine." Four years later, Charles was living on the streets. THE OUTSIDER: A Journey into My Father's Struggle with Madness (Broadway Books; August 14, 2001; $14.00; Trade paperback reprint) is the result of the author's painstaking efforts, upon learning of his father's death in 1995, to retrace Charles Lachenmeyer's movements in the years after he left the family, and to find a way into the alien world in which he lived. As Nathaniel gradually weaves together the scattered pieces of his father's life, what emerges is the powerful and compelling story of a son struggling to understand what happened to his father, and to know the man he became--one who had a surprising impact on the people he met in the communities he passed through. Throughout Nathaniel's quest, he kept one goal in mind: his father's story could illuminate many of the mysteries that cloak the lives of people with schizophrenia. Statistics show that approximately one percent of the population worldwide suffers from schizophrenia--an estimated 2.5 million people in the United States alone. More than 100,000 new cases are reported here each year. Symptoms of the disorder include delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior, and flattening of affect. Approximately one third of people with schizophrenia, Nathaniel's father included, suffer from the paranoid subtype, which is distinguished by prominent delusions, hallucinations, or both, that usually involve a single, coherent theme (as in the CIA conspiracy). Schizophrenia is often, and incorrectly, characterized as multiple personality disorder. In reconstructing his father's life, Nathaniel came to a greater appreciation of the father he never knew and of the heroism and bravery required of people with schizophrenia. "Nothing--my father's transformation into the transient, his subsequent return to the role of patient, the disappointment he felt after his discharge--nothing had killed his desire to make sense of his world or to again try to communicate his ideas to an audience that had long since forgotten him. He refused to believe that his future was and always would be his past, replayed over and over and over again." THE OUTSIDER is an unsentimental yet profoundly moving story of one family's experience with mental illness. Rich in imagery and poignant symbolism, and framed by the author's highly personal dialogue with the reader, THE OUTSIDER moves beyond more straightforward portraits of mental illness to create a suspenseful and moving account of a son's search for the truth behind his father's haunted, solitary existence. It is a beautifully written memoir of a father's struggle to survive with dignity, and a son's struggle to know the father he lost to schizophrenia long before he finally lost him to death. THE OUTSIDER A Journey Into My Father's Struggle With Madness By Nathaniel Lachenmeyer About the Author: A frequent lecturer on mental health and homeless issues, Nathaniel Lachenmeyer lives in Washington, DC with his wife. |
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Opinions expressed in this web site do not necessarily reflect the views of NAMI Santa Cruz County, NAMI California or any affiliated organizations. We attempt to present a balanced perspective on issues by presenting multiple viewpoints. Copyright 2005 National Alliance for the Mentally Ill Santa Cruz County, All Rights Reserved. FAIR USE NOTICE: This may contain copyrighted (©) material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available to advance understanding of ecological, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. It is believed that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. |
