Mental Traveler

"W. J. T. Mitchell's son Gabriel was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of nineteen and died by suicide at the age of 38, leaping from his apartment high in Chicago's Marina City towers. Gabe left behind a remarkable archive of creative work and a father determined to learn from, and bear witness to, Gabe's journey. What is a father to do when caught between his skepticism about psychiatry and the reality of a son suffering from mental illness? How to see madness clearly from within the daily challenges of loving his gifted but delusional child? Gabe's story holds many lessons-for parents and caregivers of the mentally ill, for those interested in mental illness as a social and political identity, for those interested in the question of the outsider artist. Gabe himself had a larger, "macrocosmic" ambition beyond the story of his own condition. He wanted to make a film that would show madness from inside and out, as media stereotype and spectacle, as minority status and stigma, as a form of disability that is an extreme form of a subjective experience we all endure at some point. He would explore all possible images of madness, from the monster to the magician, the clown to the kook and crank, the mad scientist to the mad sovereign. His ambition was to "transform schizophrenia from a death sentence to a learning experience." This book challenges us to learn from Gabe's attempt to find redemption inside his madness. It is also a moving story of a father's love and a family's resilience"--