Book Launch

Southampton book launch of
Madness, Mystery and the Survival of God
by Isabel Clarke

Published by O Books.

Tuesday 16th June 2009 6.30 – 8.00 p.m., at October Books. 243 Portswood Road, Southampton SO17 2NG Tel. 023 8058 1030

Introduction  by Louise Bloom
Advocacy Project Manager at Solent Mind, the Southampton based leading local mental health charity.

Brief talk about the book by Isabel
Wine, Juice and book signing.

To attend this event: email me or visit or phone October Books (details above.) to add your name to the list

(For audio files of the London Book Launch with the Spiritual Crisis Network, please visit their website)

This book offers a new way into the paradox.  The feared experience of madness becomes the key to the human ability to operate in two ways at once.  Science studies our individual side but is blind to our potential to participate in a reality beyond that which we can precisely know - the territory of religion.

Isabel Clarke is a psychological therapist, at home in her work with the experience of people diagnosed with psychosis and other severe mental health problems.  Familiarity with their experience, together with a knowledge of the spiritual literature and of research into the processing capacity of the brain, led to her central conclusion:that psychosis and spiritual experience both inhabit that other reality - a reality that is integral and vital for all humans.

This new perspective on faith and psychosis offers insight into the unshakable conviction of both delusion and religious fanaticism.  The survival of faith and superstition in a secular age is explained.  God is located within the scientific world view in a way that respects mystery and so enlarges rather than diminishes our vision.

Flier for the lauch (MS Word)

Flier for book (pdf)

More information (chapter list)