BY REASON OF INSANITY

by John Balt ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

John Balt is the pseudonymous name of a former thirty thousand a year television screen writer who stabbed his wife, she of the ""sunlit hair...gentle blue eyes,"" forty-nine times. The first part of the book consists of what preceded this acute schizophrenic reaction--he had been in analysis for a year, under a heavy drug regimen, and in the lax hands of a psychiatrist who both neglected him and rejected him--actually walked out on the case. It also records his turbid thoughts following the act; in jail he was victimized by all kinds of paranoid fantasies. Trial was deferred until he was institutionalized and the second half documents his analysis with a woman doctor which enabled him to return to society cleared not only ""by reason of insanity"" but calculably a more stable member of it than ever before. Mr. Balt believes that the public should know more about mental health which is presumably the justification of his book. Otherwise one might impute a certain self-indulgence in the self-exposure. It has a modified endorsement by Dr. Ralph Crowley, the President of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis as a ""psychological thriller,"" although as a member of a professional brotherhood Dr. Crowley strongly repudiates Balt's implications that this earlier psychiatrist was accountable for the ensuing tragedy.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: New American Library

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1966

Categories: NONFICTION