The Last Asylum: A Memoir of Madness in our Times Paperback – March 5, 2015

Professor Barbara Taylor should be praised for her admirable honesty in constructing and telling her past out of enormous difficulties and with so much strength.Parts of her past may well be what people feel most reluctant to expose. For this reason alone, she deserves a medal of enormous courage.Most people would think that life of a patient like Professor Taylor is divided between her days of sanity and those of insanity, standing in the middle is a great wall. However the wall that is believed to exist is merely a mental construct. For Taylor as well as for everyone of us, there is only one world and It is liquid and fragmented. The sane and the insane parts of our inner world can never be devided. The boundary--if it really exists at all--that is supposed to differentiate sanity from insanity is at best blurred and constantly shifting. The People, no matter how mentally badly ill they are, can still remember and recollect their suffering long after the episode of their emotional eruption went away.Professor Taylor is a particularly gifted writer. What is more amazing is the strength of her will which made her never succumb to the devastating demonic forces . Aided by her training in historical studies she was able to take notes of her daily misery and recorded her conversation with her medical helpers and fellow patients. The most weird part of her narrative is her relationship with her psychotherapist. They two seem to have developed a co-dependency relationship which was surprisingly tolerated by her medical team. I would say that Professor Taylor was lucky enough to have a medical team which was both understanding and sympathetic.Taylor at her worst time still lived with a clear goal to write and sum up her experience possibly some day in the remote future. That is why we have this brilliant book to read today.Professor Taylor is more reserved in her views about the institution of asylum. Nonetheless, she gives a brief but fair history of the institution in Britain. The institution of Asylums was not an evil. It was created at the time when rapid industrialisation was fragmenting the British society with such an irresistible power. Ordinary people were made to endure endless dislocation, relocation and ill-adaptation. It is thus never difficult to imagine how much people suffered psychologically in this great transformation. Professor Taylor, at the end of her book, looks back at the asylum, from a distance and in poignant way, without penning much. In my view, that is a success.I highly recommend this book to those who are seriously interested in psychiatry, personal history of patients of mental illness and the history of a medical institution of a bygone age.

I thought this book raised some very vital questions in the area of mental health. The author was able to raise these difficult questions in two dimensions, one as an experienced historical commentator and one as a former consumer. As a consumer, naturally her own experiences influenced her opinions to an extent but she was able to delineate these areas and this influence.

I found The Last Asylum via a reference to it in an article in a Jungian journal. I am always intrigued by patient accounts of psychoanalysis so I immediately got the book. And it certainly did not disappoint. Both her account of her analysis and her discussion of the place of the asylum and the consequences of its loss are very well written and engaging. I recommend this book to anyone interest in analysis or the mental health system.

Loved her story and was amazed by the longevity of her psychoanalysis. The parts when she writes about the history of the asylum system in London got a bit boring for me. I wanted to know more about the actual reasons that got her crazy. She hints some issues with her father and mother but does not go into details.

An amazing memoir of mental illness and life in one of the last asylums. A compelling read and terribly relevant for our time.

Excellent

I bought this book because of a review in the NY Times. I found it impossible to relate to her accounts of her psychoanalysis and her depression, and yet I had no problem doing this with Kay Jamison. I had absolutely no empathy for the author, yet I often read books about mental illness and appreciate them.

Very interesting autobiography and history of mental illness treatment.

I found this book deeply interesting. I have gained so much insight about what it feels like to struggle with severe mental illness.I think Barbara Taylor is a woman of great courage in allowing us, the reader to witness her struggle to overcome her illness.A great book that will stay with me for some time to come.

Mon métier est la psychanalyseCe livre est excellent très bien écrit (du vrai British), avec humour finesse et profondeur, sur l'expérience (et la guérison) de la maladie mentale, de la vie asilaire et de la psychanalyse par une intellectuelle.

Really interesting read as I grew up in this area and know the hospital well.

An extraordinary book shedding much light on psychoanalysis.

Still working through it, had situation in my life, some of what Barb says relives and promotes change. Thank you.