RECOMMENDED READINGThe Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durell
Another Country, James Baldwin
Behind The Scenes At The Museum, Kate Atkinson
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2007
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, Elizabeth Smart
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
The Catcher In The Rye, J.D. Salinger
Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, Leo Tolstoy
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Culture of Complaint, Robert Hughes
The Death of the Liberal Class, Chris Hedges
The Discovery of the Unconscious, Henri Ellenberger
Down and Out In Paris and London, George Orwell
Dracula, Bram Stoker
The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, Leonard Mlodinow
Edie: An American Biography, Jean Stein
Explaining Hitler, Ron Rosenbaum
A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada, John Ralston Saul
The Fatal Shore, Robert Hughes
Fifth Business, Robertson Davies
Film As A Subversive Art, Amos Vogel
The Four Quartets, Lawrence Durrell
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
Freud: A Life For Our Times, Peter Gay
The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles
Fury On Earth: A Biography of Wilhelm Reich, Myron Sharaf
The Good War, Studs Terkel
Goodbye To All That, Robert Graves
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Green Flag, Vols.1-3, Robert Kee
Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Herzog, Saul Bellow
Hons and Rebels, Jessica Mitford
Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde
In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
In The Realm of the Hungry Ghosts, Gabor Mate
The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud
James Joyce, Richard Ellmann
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
Kabloona, Gontran de Poncins
Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored, Adam Phillips
Letter To My Father, Franz Kafka
Life Against Death, Norman O. Brown
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
Love's Body, Norman O. Brown
The Magus, John Fowles
The Making of The English Working Class, E.P. Thompson
Moby Dick, Herman Melville
Money and the Soul's Desires: A Meditation, Stephen Jenkinson
The Murder of Christ, Wilhelm Reich
The Needs of Strangers, Michael Ignatieff
New Self, New World, Philip Shepherd
1984, George Orwell
The Odyssey, Homer
On Photography, Susan Sontag
Out of Sheer Rage, Geoff Dyer
The Outsider, Albert Camus
The Painted Bird, Jerzy Kosinski
The Painted Word, Tom Wolfe
Parallel Lives, Phyllis Rose
The Performing Self, Richard Poirier
Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man, James Joyce
Prisoners of Childhood, Alice Miller
Reader’s Block, David Markson
The Red and the Black, Stendahl
Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates
The Revolutionist's Handbook, Robert Lindner
The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe
The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich, William Shirer
Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life, Kenneth J. Gergen
Schizoid Phenomena, Object Relations and the Self, Harry Guntrip
Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E. Lawrence
Sexual Personae, Camille Paglia
A Short History of Progress, Ronald Wright
Shot In The Heart, Mikal Gilmore
Side Effects, Adam Phillips
Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
Social Amnesia, Russell Jacoby
The Sot Weed Factor, John Barth
Speak, Memory, Vladimir Nabokov
Stop-Time, Frank Conroy
The Tao of Physics, Fritjof Capra
That Line of Darkness: The Shadow of Dracula and the Great War, Robert S. Douglas
Thy Neighbour's Wife, Gay Talese
Tom Jones, Henry Fielding
2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke
Ulysses, James Joyce
Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan
Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self-Deception, Daniel Goleman
Waiting For Godot, Samuel Beckett
The White Hotel, D.M. Thomas
Women In Love, D.H. Lawrence
Working, Studs Terkel
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
Books on the 1960sThe Age of Great Dreams: America in the 1960s, David Farber, 1994
America 1968: The Fire This Time, Max Hastings, 1969
Armies of the Night, Norman Mailer, 1968
Blown Away: The Rolling Stones and the Death of the Sixties, A.E. Hotchner, 1990
Chronicles, Volume One, Bob Dylan, 2004
The Doors, Greil Marcus, 2011
The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex, Drugs and Rock n' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood, Peter Biskind, 1998
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe, 1968
Eros and Civilization, Herbert Marcuse, 1955
A Fiction of the Past: The Sixties in American History, Dominick Cavallo, 1999
The Gates of Eden: American Culture in the Sixties, Morris Dickstein, 1977
Growing Up Absurd, Paul Goodman, 1960
July, July, Tim O'Brien, 2002
Life, Keith Richards, 2010
Magic Circles: The Beatles In Dream and History, Devin McKinney, 2003
The Making of a Counterculture, Theodore Roszak, 1969
Making Peace With the Sixties, David Burner, 1996
Making the Scene: Yorkville and Hip Toronto in the 1960s, Stuart Henderson, 2011
1968, Michael Kaufman, 2009
1968 And After: Inside the Revolution, Tariq Ali, 1978
1968 In America, Charles Kaiser, 1988
1968: The Year That Rocked The World, Mark Kurlansky, 2004
On The Road, Jack Kerouac, 1957
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey, 1962
The Politics of Ecstasy, Timothy Leary, 1968
The Politics of Experience, R.D. Laing, 1967
Read The Beatles: Classic and New Writings on the Beatles, Their Legacy, and Why They Still Matter, June Skinner Sawyers, Editor, 2006
The Sixties: Recollections of the Decade From Harper's Magazine, 2011
The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage, Todd Gitlin, 1987
The Sixties Unplugged: A Kaleidoscopic History of A Disorderly Decade, Gerard DeGroot, 2008
Stories Done: Writings on the 1960s and Its Discontents, Mikal Gilmore, 2008
Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream, Jay Stevens, 1987
Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein, 1961
Street Fighting Years, Tariq Ali, 1987
The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon, 1961
Books on Anti-Psychiatry:Anatomy of An Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, Robert Whitaker
Asylum. Erving Goffman
Coercion As Cure: A Critical History of Psychiatry, Thomas Szasz
Doctoring the Mind: Why Psychiatric Treatments Fail, Robert Bentall
Doctors of Deception: What They Don’t Want You To Know About Shock Treatment, Linda Andre
Great and Desperate Cures: The Rise and Decline of Psychosurgery and Other Radical Treatments For Mental Illness, Elliot Valenstein
In the Sleep Room: The Story of the CIA Brainwashing Experiments In Canada, Anne Collins
The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness, Jack El-Hai
Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow Into Depressive Disorder, Jerome Wakefield
Mad In America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill, Robert Whitaker
Madhouse: A Tragic Tale of Megalomania and Modern Medicine, Andrew Scull
Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease, Gary Greenberg
The Powers of Psychiatry, Jonas Robitscher
Prescriptions For the Mind: A Critical View of Contemporary Psychiatry, Joel Paris
Toxic Psychiatry: Why Therapy, Empathy and Love Must Replace the Drugs, Electroshock and Biochemical Theories of The New Psychiatry, Peter Breggin
Try To Remember: Psychiatry’s Clash Over Meaning, Memory and Mind, Paul McHugh
Unhinged: The Trouble With Psychiatry, Daniel Carlat
Books on Schizophrenia:Angel At My Table, Janet Frame
Autobiography of a Schizophrenic, Marguerite Sechehave
A Beautiful Mind, Sylvia Nasar
The Centre Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Schizophrenia, Elyn Saks
Divided Minds: Twin Sisters and Their Journey Through Schizophrenia, Carolyn Spiro & Pamela Spiro Wagner
Eden Express: A Memoir of Schizophrenia, Mark Vonnegut (son of Kurt)
Memoirs of A Schizophrenic, P.D. Owen
Out Of It: An Autobiography of the Experience of Schizophrenia, Anonymous
Schizophrenia: When I Thought I Was God, Robin Jackson
Welcome Silence: My Triumph Over Schizophrenia, Dr. Carol North
Books On Reading & WritingThe Books In My Life, Henry Miller
Catching the Big Fish, David Lynch
Ensouling Language: On the Art of Non-Fiction and the Writer's Life, Stephen Harrod Buhner
On Writing, Stephen King
The Seven Basic Plots, Christopher Booker
Why Read?, Mark Edmundson
Writers and Psychoanalysis, Edmund Bergler
Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews
Writers Dreaming: Twenty Six Writers Talk About Their Dreams and the Creative Process, Naomi Epel
The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers, Christopher Vogler
Recommended Websiteswww.ted.com
Margaux Wiliamson is a brilliant painter, film critic and filmmaker; I also approve of the links on her own website:
For my money, the best brand of psychodynamic therapy available in Toronto, a humanistic alternative to the depersonalized, drug-and-shock approach of the medical-psychiatric model:
Dr. Gabor Mate's 2008 book, "The Realm of the Hungry Ghosts", is the best I've ever read on addiction, bar none, pun intended:
James FitzGerald
Journalist and Author
Toronto, Canada
