It might have been the kind of book that tried to tell us where we're going wrong in our treatment of patients with mental health problems; it might have prescribed a solution.
It might also – because the author Dennis O'Donnell is a student of English literature – have been the kind of book that tried to put right what novels have done to our view of insanity. It might have tried to banish the image of the first Mrs Rochester starting fires in Jane Eyre, or Renfield biting down on an insect in Dracula, or Patrick McMurphy staring into space after his lobotomy in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Those images are old ones. But they stick.
