The best books on the struggle to be yourself in a crazy world that thinks it’s sane

The Divided Self kick-started my search for the truth of the human condition. It taught me that I didn't have to follow the life laid out for me and that I was expected to follow. Through it I discovered that I was not the only person trapped in a world and struggling to make sense of the bizarre and contradictory reality around me, that lied and lied about existence continually. Further books by him reinforced this awareness of the illogic of it all, including The Politics of Experience, The Self and Others, and Knots. I was Brer Rabbit, caught in the honey trap of the tar baby and this book showed me that.

Art Janov's book, The Primal Scream and its follow-up Primal Therapy, provided a means of breaking down the walls of this mental prison, by expressing the sheer sense of helplessness you feel when the world is presented to you as a screaming baby. In my case this was the stunned silence that I later learned was autism and the little professor syndrome, which meant keeping your eyes open and your mouth shut, in order to understand the strange interplay I saw expressed before me. Meaningless shouting and screaming at the frustration of what I faced was a new experience for me.

Stanislav Grof co-authored The Stormy Search For The Self with his then-wife Christina. It was a follow-up to his earlier work, Spiritual Emergency, which emphasised that this was a global transformation in the understanding of mental illness and included contributions from other professionals in the field. It also indicated that more primitive societies viewed this situation with more sympathy than Western medicine did at the time. It was also the start of inclusion about how other phenomena related to this subject, including drug-induced states and UFOs. Current thought in recent years has also brought into the near-death experience and understanding has linked them all under the umbrella of consciousness studies.

Goleman's book added a new dimension to this by bringing in brain anatomy, especially the function of the amygdala. This is the most primitive part of this organ and it is often referred to as the reptilian brain. Once again it made me aware of the turbulent, reactive part of our emotional setup, acting impulsively and shattering my stability at every turn, in the form of male/female relationships. Like Dabrowski's theory of positive disintegration, it made me look at the world anew.

An Anthropologist On Mars taught me that I was not alone in being different. The world was full of other odd characters like me, including those who were autistic, a term I had never come across before. Temple Grandin, who was featured in the book, also wrote Thinking in Pictures, which I could fully sympathise with and recognise because I too thought in images and not words. In the same way that Simon Baron Cohen's book Zero Degrees of Empathy told me that I wasn't psychotic or dangerous to other people, just that I lacked an emotional relationship with them. I was the little professor observing everything but not getting involved in the lives of others, Mr. Spock-wise.