Bøger udgivet af Jorvik Press

A delightful peek into the mental health underworld! Michael Szilagyi mixes dark humor with an endearing compassion for humanity in his breakout publication. A must-read for clinicians, students, and anyone seeking to understand the inner workings of the mental health field. -- Dr. Jennifer M. Durham, D. Min., LPCC-S, CTT, CTS While psychotherapy is not recognized as a particularly amusing career choice, Therapist in the Wry delivers a hilarious blow-by-blow account of daily life as a counselor in a community mental health facility in Middle America. After surviving his colorful half-Hungarian family and facing personal tragedies, gross injustices and many minor mishaps, Michael Szilagyi discovered he suffered from attention deficit disorder and other assorted ailments. But his most serious life-long affliction is dark humor syndrome, activated by almost any therapeutic incident, family occasion or domestic ordeal. Pigeonholed as an underachiever through school, he proceeded to ace college and qualify as a licensed clinical counselor. Not being entirely normal, he had an intuitive feel for what his clients must be experiencing. From behind his nom de plume Szilagyi takes a fond swipe at everything - vacuous team leaders, incompetent administrators, eccentric co-workers, exotic family members, even his pet cats. The people he identifies most readily with are usually his patients - the isolated and lonely, the weird and the lovable, sometimes the violent and felonious. By turns deadly serious and gently mocking, at times totally outraged, often laughing uncontrollably, the author brings home the absurd reality of working on the front line of America's crisis-ridden mental health system. Anyone who has worked in non-profit mental health will love this book. The descriptions are vivid and at times wrenching. Szilagyi's words paint images that I, as a therapist, have seen over and over. Those who have worked with the downtrodden or hope-lacking will find affirmation and hope throughout these pages. The end point - at which one arrives via light humor, gallows humor, Szilagyi's vulnerability, and notes on the history of a profession - is a poignant reminder that all helpers are there to help those who come seeking help and that such connections are sacred and meaning-making for all involved. -- Yvette R. Tolbert, MFA, MA, PCC-S, ATR-BC, NCC As a mental health professional, I found reading Therapist in the Wry thoroughly affirming. Szilagyi's writing communicates the experience of honoring those we serve while working in a challenging mental health system. Humor lightens the read as Szilagyi relays his own family stories, historical pieces of the profession, and aspects of this career choice, including education, research and funding concerns. His humanity is present as he describes the suffering and joy his clients experience in their healing process. I recommend this book for therapists, interns and anyone interested in the mental health field. It is both a realistic and hopeful read. -- Heidi Larew, PCC-S, LICDC-CS, ACS, NCC, ATCS Szilagy's sardonic portrayal of a flailing community mental health agency is sure to ring true for those who have ever been on the payroll of non-profit organizations. Szilagy uses a pleasant mix of dark humor and insightful observations in an attempt to make sense of the absurdities that are part of his everyday life as a counselor. But through all of the frustrations and downright scary stories, Szilagy is able to bring to light the real reason anyone would choose to work in the mental health field - and that this is a belief that we can be a positive influence on people who need it the most. -- Michelle Culley, LPC

AsEverWas, along with Ed Sanders' Tales of Beatnik Glory are the two most important tomes I've seen recounting those decades of the twentieth century. -- Larry Sawyer, Editor, Milk Magazine Hammond takes you places you want to linger and others that cause you to shudder with fears you might not know you had. It was the sixties, but you haven't read this story before. -- Comment on Amazon.com from a reader in Sioux Falls, South Dakota Hammond's book may be one of the quintessential freak histories. -- Michael Simmons, LA Weekly columnist It brought back memories I've never had! -- Gary Fulkerson, singer/songwriter When the counterculture was busy being born in Los Angeles and San Francisco in the mid-1960s, Hammond Guthrie found himself in the midst of hipster heaven, somewhere between late Beat and early Hippie. A budding painter and writer, he quickly made friends with many of the musicians, poets, performance artists and street people who were blazing trails into new lifestyles. Realizing that life was meant to be a total trip, a non-stop adventure, he left the West Coast with his wife for England and immersed himself in the alternative scene in London - the world of International Times, the UFO Club, Arts Lab, inner-city squats - with a writing gig at Time Out magazine. Moving on to Amsterdam, he befriended Provos and free-living bohemians, while building a promising career in the art world - the Stedelijk Museum even bought his paintings for their collection. But in the early 1970s the trip took a surreal turn. His wife started taking free love far too literally, and her amorous escapade with a drug dealer entangled them both in a nerve-racking intrigue in the twilight zone of Tangier. Hammond's Moroccan mission was to spring five Americans, including his wife's lover, from 60-year prison sentences for wholesale hashish smuggling. Here he tells it all in his playful style, with a keen eye for absurd detail and an unflagging sense of humor. Among the hundreds of famous and not-so-famous personalities he encountered along the way were the Buffalo Springfield, Del Close, Max Crosley, Richie Havens, Nico, Carmen McCrea, Allen Ginsberg, John "Hoppy" Hopkins, William Burroughs, Simon Vinkenoog, Kenneth Alsop, Pete Townshend, and Emmet Grogan. I laughed, I cried. It's a marvelous book written in intriguing conversational style, bringing back wonderful memories from a wonderful time. -- Herb Gold, Beat journalist AsEverWas captures the story of countless others who lived on the fringes during an era when the country was at an important crossroads. Anyone who was alive during these turbulent times and who gives a damn about just how we got here should read this book -- John Aiello, poet and journalist Helps you see, feel and understand the moods, people and places that shaped an extraordinary decade. For its style and its lessons, Hammond Guthrie's memoir is a rare and important achievement. -- Stew Albert, co-founder of the Yippies I'm blown away by the stories - [he] really [has] seen and done it all. Just fascinating and, unlike so many of the other accounts I've seen, [Hammond] actually does remember. -- Jeff Tamarkin, author of Got a Revolution 'What a marvelous surprise lurking beneath the cover of this one.' -- Jack Magazine

Terry Atkinson's study presents a fresh and startling theory about the true origin of one of our most enduring legends - the quest for the Holy Grail. Many authorities agree that the core theme of this seductive story, through all its metaphoric mutations over the centuries, is humanity's unrelenting desire for spiritual transcendence - for a state of heightened consciousness. Our modern concept of the Grail dates from the 15th Century story of the chalice from Christ's Last Supper, brought to the British Isles and then buried or somehow lost, and the subsequent holy mission of King Arthur's knights to retrieve the icon. But in traditional cultures of past millennia, where the legend originates, the goal of this sacred quest was a religious encounter of a different order. Our ancestors sought to reveal the presence of the divine being within through a mind-expanding experience rooted in nature. Every version of the Grail legend features near-impenetrable coded references to its entheogenic origins - the ritual use of naturally occurring psychedelics to reach transcendence. Approaching the subject like a detective solving an ancient mystery, the author employs textual forensics to explain for the first time the meaning behind several aspects of the story that have puzzled scholars for centuries. Unlike such works as Holy Blood, Holy Grail (whose theory was used as the basis of The Da Vinci Code), Atkinson's book delves deeply into Grail literature from the 12th Century, particularly the very earliest written work, Chrétien de Troyes' Parsifal. Launching a detailed investigation of the legend's intriguing fish symbolism and examining the key role of shamanism in Celtic and other ancient cultures, the author also uses clues drawn from Grail scholar Jessie Weston's From Ritual to Romance, the classic study that inspired T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. The Grail is more real than most recent explicators and fabricators imagine, but in a very different way from that assumed by the old-school searchers. The author's astonishing conclusion is that the hallucinogenic mushroom Amanita muscaria is the long-lost secret origin of the legend.

An unintended event. This was the bland phrase used to describe Luise's sudden death in the psychiatric ward at Amager Hospital in Copenhagen, Denmark. She was 32. Dear Luise is a mother's deeply personal account of her struggle to ensure her daughter's survival through 20 years of treatment in the Danish mental health system. It is an alarming - and thoroughly documented - exposé of the abject failure of the medication-based treatment regimen routinely imposed on vulnerable psychiatric patients. This book is also a poignant tale of love and hope, brimming with tender memories of the creativity, originality and wry humor of a very capable, intelligent young woman. Behind Luise's ultimate fate we see the smug certainty of mental health professionals, both doctors and caregivers, and the concomitant dehumanization of their patients through indifference, harassment, coercion and the use of force. In this tragic case, the mother's investigation also reveals a shocking trail of incompetence and dishonesty - repeated misdiagnosis, professional collusion, "missing" official records, falsified hospital charts, victim-blaming, and a complete lack of accountability. Her mother's ill-fated trust in Denmark's healthcare system led an 11-year-old girl with misunderstood adjustment problems into a doctor-mandated drug hell. First she was wrongly diagnosed and dosed with powerful anti-epilepsy medicine. Then the severe side-effects were treated with antipsychotics that caused even more serious adverse reactions, both mental and physical. Complaints from mother and daughter ran into a stone wall, and all meaningful dialogue was cut short. The system had only one response - increase the medication. Luise's tragedy is far from unique in Denmark - or indeed any other advanced industrialized country. Towards the end of her life she knew what was happening to her. Luise told her mother: On my gravestone I want it to say that it was the medicine that killed me.

Marion Dapsance''s new biography of Alexandra David-Néel delves into her subject''s prolific writings to discover the true origins of her philosophy, casting new light on the myth that has grown up around the French exploratrice extraordinaire for almost a century. Though little known outside Western Europe, Alexandra David-Néel (1868-1969) is celebrated in her native France as a major spiritual figure of the 20th century. She is remembered as a fearless adventurer, the first Westerner to enter Tibet''s forbidden city of Lhasa, the bringer of Buddhism to the West, an erudite chronicler and author of over 40 books. But far from adopting Buddhism, she is revealed in this work as a staunch materialist, hostile to all forms of religion. We follow her journey from Catholic convert to Protestantism, to her obsession with late 19th-century esotericism and finally to nihilism and anarchism, before she invents her own belief system after decades in the Far East, which she calls Buddhist Modernism. This book shows how her free-thinking independence is the true source of the myth of the intrepid journalist-orientalist, the "lamp of wisdom," the "woman with soles of wind."

This book is the story of how a penniless Tibetan refugee with fierce ambition managed to establish himself in the West as a renowned Buddhist lama and hoodwink thousands of people, including show business luminaries, tycoons and politicians, for more than 30 years.Sogyal Lakar left his birthplace in eastern Tibet aged eight when his family fled the Chinese invasion to seek refuge in India. Arriving in England in the early 1970s, he brought with him traditional ideas and attitudes rooted in a culture whose spiritual sophisticated was coupled with near-feudal social norms.His transition was spectacularly successful. Sogyal Rinpoche, as he became known, was a charismatic multi-millionaire, credited as the author of a best-selling book. He starred in a Hollywood movie and his Rigpa Fellowship attracted followers across the globe. At the peak of his fame he was the most powerful and best-known Tibetan holy man after the Dalai Lama.But, as revealed here, it turns out that Sogyal was a charlatan who was never trained as a lama. He stands accused of financial and sexual misconduct, physical violence and fabricated credentials. Now seriously ill, he is a fugitive rumoured to be in Thailand beyond the reach of police and civil investigations.This book does not sensationalise the perverse behaviour that caused profound suffering to scores of devotees. Based on interviews with victims and eyewitnesses, together with detailed research and first-hand experience, it echoes the feminist perspective highlighted by the Me Too and Times Up movements. It is also a story about the culture clash that occurs when the misogyny of old Tibet is greeted with naïve acceptance and adulation by spiritual seekers in the West.

The making of Night Moves is the story of the collaboration of two artists of starkly different sensibilities – Alan Sharp the hopeless fatalist, Arthur Penn the agitating progressive. Each was just beginning to descend from his peak of cultural relevance. Sharp and Penn came together in 1973 to make a dark film about an America bereft of answers. Everything seemed in place for a triumph. Finally, in careers plagued by compromise, there was both an adequate budget and artistic freedom. Gene Hackman’s performance would expertly particularise an archetype fracturing before our eyes – the knightly private detective unable to solve his case, the macho American male desperate for certainty but lost at sea.But neither Penn nor Sharp was satisfied with the resulting movie and disagreed over its final form. After a long delay, Warner Brothers cut its losses and dumped Night Moves into cinemas with a half-hearted publicity campaign. The movie’s reviews were mixed and it failed to make a profit in the summer of 1975. That season was dominated by Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, which provided Hollywood with a new and super-profitable model of film production.And yet Night Moves has gone on to be recognised as one of the defining films of the 1970s, both as a profound human drama and as an enduring evocation of the zeitgeist. This Technicolor neo-noir, along with Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973) and Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974), reinvented and redeemed the private detective movie. A reactionary, nostalgia-crazed culture industry had tried to neuter the genre, reduce it to a repertoire of clichéd gestures. This trio of pictures re-asserted film noir as an ideal cinematic language to explore the darkness at the heart of America.

It’s the mid-1950s, and the post-war American dream has come into full focus in Southern California. Suburbia, freeways, fast food, television and nuclear paranoia. James Stone, a career cop in LA, is along for the ride – until he becomes enmeshed in an LAPD scandal that costs him his job, his wife, and his home.He finds himself exiled to Bakersfield, California, the only place he can still find work as a cop. It’s a mean little town. Hot, flat and dry. Dominated by agribusiness and oil and little else. But it ‘s also brewing the flip side of the American dream, with wild honky-tonks playing the first electric music, motorcycle gangs, the Ku Klux Klan, and test pilots from nearby Edwards air base slumming on the weekends. Stone works homicide and his first case is a murdered young girl found floating face down in the Kern River. It puts him in touch with Christine Harmon, who contracts as the county’s forensic pathologist and runs a small clinic on the side. At the time, woman doctors are almost non-existent, and Stone finds Harmon’s spirited independence fascinating. His investigation takes him deep into the local bar scene, where young players like Buck Owens and Merle Haggard are just getting their start. But then a second homicide pops up, a very sticky one for this ultra-conservative, bible-thumping community. A wealthy businessman is found murdered in his home, apparently the victim of a vicious young drifter living at a seedy motel bar on the edge of town.With the aid of Dr. Harmon, Stone follows a trail of depravity and corruption that reaches into the highest levels of the local business and legal community. And once again he finds himself caught up in a scandal that threatens to ruin him – and this time maybe even kill him. 

I had forgotten that I, too, grew up existentially, until I read Ron Manheimer's absorbing new book about life, aging, identity, and consciousness. Moving effortlessly between personal memoir and philosophical meditation, Manheimer takes us back and forth in time to raise timeless questions. The journey is intellectually exciting, for sure, as we encounter deep insights into the human condition - but it is also surprisingly and profoundly emotional. With a light touch, Manheimer stirs the soul.-- Dan P. McAdams, Henry Wade Rogers Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University.Philosophers, novelists and playwrights of the existentialist tradition continue to be reprinted, discussed and performed across the world, a testimony to their enduring relevance. Embracing the vitality of these engaging and provocative thinkers and writers, History of Consciousness philosopher Ronald Manheimer takes both newcomers and devotees on a personal search for meaning while addressing twelve key ideas that capture the essence of the existential outlook.Exploring situations from everyday life, the author reflects on the most abstract existential terms, such as nothingness, temporality and absurdism. And since existentialism's leading lights - Kierkegaard, Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Camus - lived out their ideas in both private and public spheres, Manheimer delves into their biographies to provide a window into scenes of love and loss, war and political upheaval, friendship and betrayal.Manheimer offers readers a personal view of how historical consciousness was transformed in Europe just as its reverberations reached American shores in the mid-twentieth century. While other philosophical movements such as structuralism, deconstructionism and post-modernism eclipsed the popularity of existentialism, the author shows how its thought currents have inspired the liberation movements of the 20th and 21st centuries - feminism, anti-colonialism, Black Power, and even the age revolution.

The author gives an unsentimental yet heartbreaking account of her brother's life, from his strict upbringing by a fundamentalist father, through ordination as an Anglican priest, then gay liberation, to his diagnosis with AIDS. While slowly succumbing, he still holds services in his church, while parishioners care for him through his final months

As a teenager Debbie Greenberg was spending far too much time at the Cavern Club in her hometown of Liverpool, England. It was already the most famous music club in the world, where she had been dazzled by the Beatles’ debut performance and had witnessed their rise to stardom for two years before watching the local heroes leave home.Then in 1966, after the previous owner declared bankruptcy, her father asked her out of the blue if she thought it would be a good idea to take over the club. It was an offer she couldn’t refuse. She’d been a Cavern fanatic since it was a jazz club, hardly missing a lunchtime or evening rock session until its closure a few weeks before – amid mass protests by Liverpool youth.Now she was suddenly part of a new family business, faced with the task of helping to breathe new life into a dilapidated rock ’n’ roll shrine and build on the legacy of the legendary Mersey Beat.This first-hand account of her ten years frequenting and eventually helping to run the original Cavern Club is the authentic inside story of the Beatles launch pad, full of triumphs and failures – and surprise celebrity encounters.Richly illustrated with dozens of photos, posters and press clips.