The most recommended books about psychosis

Who picked these books? Meet our 42 experts.

42 authors created a book list connected to psychosis, and here are their favorite psychosis books.
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Book cover of Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Eastern Thought

Colm O'Shea Author Of James Joyce's Mandala

From my list on rationally investigating mystical and psychotic experience.

Why am I passionate about this?

My research into the overlap between mysticism and schizophrenia has garnered one academic monograph on James Joyce, with another on Charlie Kaufmanā€™s films and fiction due out in 2025 (both from Routledge). For 15 years, Iā€™ve been a writing professor at New York University, and the two things I want to impart to my students are: 1) the courage to pursue a singular question or unique viewpoint and (2) the compassion to write clearly for the reader! All five books on my list donā€™t shy away from profound questions of what it is to be a complex spiritual being, but they always remain lucid and engaging for a general audience. 

Colm's book list on rationally investigating mystical and psychotic experience

Colm O'Shea Why did Colm love this book?

John Suler is a prodigious writer of academic books, but thatā€™s not what impresses me. Instead, what I love is to read prose that can take dense subject matter and make it accessible to the general reader.

When I was trying to reconcile my own research into Eastern mysticism with Western-oriented approaches to psychology, I found Sulerā€™s work to be the Rosetta Stone I urgently needed to make sense of the impasse.

Itā€™s like having a knowledgeable but personable mentor teaching you how to translate from one ā€œlanguageā€ about consciousness into another.   

By John R. Suler,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Eastern Thought as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This book explores the convergence of psychoanalysis and Asian thought. It explores key theoretical issues. What role does paradox play in psychological transformations? How can the oriental emphasis on attaining "no-self" be reconciled with the western emphasis on achieving an integrated self? The book also inquires into pragmatic questions concerning the nature of psychological change and the practice of psychotherapy. The Taoist I Ching is explored as a framework for understanding the therapeutic process. Principles from martial arts philosophy and strategy are applied to clinical work.

Combining theoretical analyses, case studies, empirical data, literary references, and anecdotes, this book isā€¦


Book cover of The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions

Gayleen Froese Author Of Lightning Strike Blues

From Gayleen's 3 favorite reads in 2023.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Communications officer Singer-songwriter Fan of all animals Role-playing geek Nature photographer

Gayleen's 3 favorite reads in 2023

Gayleen Froese Why did Gayleen love this book?

As a person who lives with mental illness, and who sees friends, family, and neighbours struggle with their own, I hear a lot of talk about it, but itā€™s mostly surface. Memes and platitudes.

Rosenā€™s best friend went from promise to illness to a faƧade of recovery and finally tragedy, and Rosen has real things to say about itā€”considered, complicated, and with context both personal and historical. This is the conversation about mental illness Iā€™ve wanted and needed that comes to the topic with compassion but doesnā€™t stint on honesty or look away from disappointment. I donā€™t get to look away, either, and I appreciate that Rosen is there with me.

By Jonathan Rosen,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Best Minds as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVOURITE BOOKS OF 2023

ONE OF THE GUARDIAN AND PROSPECT'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES, ATLANTIC, AND WALL STREET JOURNAL'S TOP TEN BOOKS OF THE YEAR

'Extraordinary... Magisterial... A remarkable meditation on friendship, success, madness and violence that refuses to oversimplify' Guardian (Book of the Day)

'The darkest of literary triumphs, and the most gripping of unbearable reads' Telegraph (5 stars)

A novelist's gripping investigation of the forces that led his childhood best friend from academic stardom to the psychiatric hospital where he has lived since killing the woman heā€¦


Book cover of The Rag and Bone Shop: How We Make Memories and Memories Make Us

David J. Nutt Author Of Nutt Uncut

From my list on the brain and mind.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been a doctor, psychiatrist, and brain researcher for nearly 50 years. I have treated thousands of patients, written over a thousand scientific articles, and given a similar number of lectures to medical and neuroscience students and to the general public. I have held many leadership positions in this field for academic groups both in UK and Europe and in 2009 I set up the charity Drug Science, to tell the truth about drugs and addiction.

David's book list on the brain and mind

David J. Nutt Why did David love this book?

Veronica is a professor of psychiatry with a special interest in psychosis such as schizophrenia and especially those that are seen in women after childbirth. These states of altered consciousness and the memories they produce give us insights into the nature of mental illness and the making of memories. The book develops as a series of case studies that are gently described in relation to the different brain regions that are involved in the experiences with a simple-to-understand diagram. Bringing together her clinical insights with beautiful perspectives from prose and poetry as well as from philosophers especially Henri Bergson, she makes a compelling case for memories being the core of what we as humans are.

By Veronica O'Keane,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Rag and Bone Shop as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

THE SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR

'Vivid, unforgettable . . . a fascinating, instructive, wise and compassionate book' John Banville

A leading psychiatrist shows how the mysteries of the brain are illuminated at the extremes of human experience

A twinge of sadness, a rush of love, a knot of loss, a whiff of regret. Memories have the power to move us, often when we least expect it, a sign of the complex neural process that continues in the background of our everyday lives. A process that shapes us: filtering the world around us, informing our behaviour and feeding ourā€¦


Book cover of Insomnia

Nichole Giles Author Of Water So Deep

From my list on YA fantasy you should have read ten years ago.

Why am I passionate about this?

Iā€™m an author of Young Adult Fantasy fiction. When my oldest was six, I started reading Harry Potter to him. It was such a bonding experience that we both cherish. We still talk about the stories, even though he's all grown up and lives away from me most of the time. The thing about fantasy is that stories set in worlds or with people that donā€™t actually exist make it easier for us to swallow deep meanings, storylines with which we can identify, and that crawl deep down into our souls and nest there. Itā€™s not just about escaping into a fantasy world, but about finding human experience in otherworldly situations and characters. 

Nichole's book list on YA fantasy you should have read ten years ago

Nichole Giles Why did Nichole love this book?

Every once in a while, when Iā€™m under a lot of stress or experiencing emotional turmoil, I struggle to sleep. At one point a few years back. I went more than a week where I was only able to sleep around an hour or two per night. Needless to say, I was not myself. I love how this story explores the importance of sleep, the long-term effects of not getting a solid amount of it, and what itā€™s like to lose large chunks of time that you canā€™t account for. Plus, stalking. Thereā€™s a lot of fascinating psychology in this story, along with a best friend whose sense of humor brings valuable comic relief to the situation. Yeah. Another must-read!

By J.R. Johansson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Insomnia as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 13, 14, 15, and 16.

What is this book about?

Instead of sleeping, Parker Chipp spends each night trapped in the dream of the last person heā€™s made eye contact with. Every night he is crushed by other peopleā€™s fear and pain, by their disturbing secretsā€”and Parker can never have dreams of his own. The severe exhaustion from his brain never truly sleeping is crippling him. If nothing changes, Parker could soon be facing the real life nightmares of psychosis and even death.

Then he meets Mia. Her dreams, calm and beautifully uncomplicated, allow him blissful rest that is utterly addictive. There is no denying how badly Parker needs it.ā€¦


Book cover of Notes Made While Falling

Emma Darwin Author Of This is Not a Book About Charles Darwin: a writerā€™s journey through my family

From my list on failing to write a book.

Why am I passionate about this?

Alongside writing, Iā€™ve been running workshops, teaching and mentoring writers for nearly twenty years, helping people get unstuck and keep going. So I spend most of my working life thinking about creativity and writingā€”then suddenly I, too, couldnā€™t write the book I needed to write. Every book in this list is about not-writing for different reasons, in different circumstances, but between them they tell us so much about how we write, why we write, how we get writing to happenā€”and whatā€™s happening when we canā€™t. These very different stories resonate with each other, and I hope some of them resonate with you.

Emma's book list on failing to write a book

Emma Darwin Why did Emma love this book?

ā€œWhatā€™s wrong with fiction, my best, most precious thing? Whatā€™s wrong with me?ā€ asks novelist Jenn Ashworth. She set out on writing her fifth novel, then abruptly, excruciatingly, extendedly, found she couldnā€™t. Instead, in a broken and braided narrative which I found un-putdownable, she digs into the nightmares and strange waking states that PTSD and psychosis left her in, the stuffs and dreams of reading, writing and watching movies, and the painfully live legacies of a childhood caught between a violent father and an embattled religion. Writing is my best, most precious thing too: this is a disturbing, often bleakly comic and heartbreaking account of how illness and madness can be both the ruin and the making of art and an artist.

By Jenn Ashworth,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Notes Made While Falling as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A genre-bending meditation on sickness, spirituality, creativity, and the redemptive powers of writing.

Notes Made While Falling is both a genre-bending memoir and a cultural study of traumatized and sickened selves in fiction and film. It offers a fresh, visceral, and idiosyncratic perspective on creativity, spirituality, illness, and the limits of fiction itself. At its heart is a story of a disastrously traumatic childbirth, its long aftermath, and the out-of-time roots of both trauma and creativity in an extraordinary childhood.

Moving from fairgrounds to Agatha Christie, from literary festivals to neuroscience and the Bible, from Chernobyl to King Lear, Ashworthā€¦


Book cover of The Need

Chin-Sun Lee Author Of Upcountry

From my list on distressed women.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a child, I listened to scary Korean folklore and then devoured all of Grimmā€™s fairy tales with their themes of good versus evil, disguise and betrayal, sacrifice, and magic. Itā€™s not surprising that as I grew older, my reading tastes skewed toward darkness, mystery, madness, and the uncanny. Thereā€™s a penitential aspect to gothic stories, with their superstitious moralism, often with elements of the supernatural manifesting not as monsters but restless spiritsā€”the repressed ghosts of a locationā€™s history. Iā€™ve always been intrigued by the idea of a place absorbing and regurgitating the histories and sins of its occupants, whether it be a town, a house, or both.

Chin-Sun's book list on distressed women

Chin-Sun Lee Why did Chin-Sun love this book?

One of my favorite hair-raising tropes is the hostile doppelgƤnger, and this one really delivers! After sensing an intruder in the house, Molly, a young mother, encounters a menacing double who calls herself ā€œMollā€ and claims to be her from an alternate reality, one where she has no childrenā€”which prompts her to claim Mollyā€™s.

What makes this book so tense and creepy is Mollyā€™s unreliable POV as she wrestles with her anxiety, exhaustion, and protectiveness over her two young children. Is Moll the manifestation of a psychotic breakdown? Does Molly want to vanquish her or trade places? The prose is potent and spare, with short chapters alternating between past and present action, twisting the suspense all the way to its ambiguousā€”but for me, satisfyingā€”conclusion. 

By Helen Phillips,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Need as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

***LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION***
Named one of Time Magazineā€™s 100 Best Mystery and Thriller Books of All Time

ā€œAn extraordinary and dazzlingly original work from one of our most gifted and interesting writersā€ (Emily St. John Mandel, author of The Glass Hotel). The Need, which finds a mother of two young children grappling with the dualities of motherhood after confronting a masked intruder in her home, is ā€œlike nothing youā€™ve ever read beforeā€¦in a good wayā€ (People).

When Molly, home alone with her two young children, hears footsteps in the living room, she tries to convinceā€¦


Book cover of The Yellow Wallpaper

Jennifer Cody Epstein Author Of The Madwomen of Paris

From my list on badass madwomen.

Why am I passionate about this?

Iā€™ve always been fascinated by books that explore the slow, painful unraveling of the human psyche. In part, I think because itā€™s something so many more of us either fear or experience (at least to some degree) than anyone really wants to admitā€”but itā€™s also just such rich material for literary unpacking. I also love books with strong, angry female protagonists who fight back against oppression in all of its forms, so books about pissed-off madwomen are a natural go-to for me. Extra points if they teach me something I didnā€™t know before-which is almost always the case with historical novels in this genre. 

Jennifer's book list on badass madwomen

Jennifer Cody Epstein Why did Jennifer love this book?

I love this book first and foremost because it is essentially the OG of madwomen narratives. Written in 1892, it is a super-creepy, sensory, trippy exploration of one womanā€™s sanity slowly being shredded by male medical ā€œexpertiseā€ā€”in this case, a doctorā€™s prescription for postpartum depression: utter isolation in a bedroom with no intellectual stimulation... in order to alleviate postpartum depression (?!). Unsurprisingly, rather than ā€œrecovering,ā€ the heroine drags readers down a terrifying rabbit hole of hallucination, self-destruction, andā€”ultimatelyā€”murder.

Itā€™s a masterful, Hitchcockian deep dive into psychosis written over a half-century before Psycho. But itā€™s also an extremely satisfying example of feminist revenge-writing; Perkins not only drew on her own experience after suffering this ā€œtreatmentā€ but sent a copy directly to her practitioner after its publication. Pow!

By Charlotte Perkins Gilman,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked The Yellow Wallpaper as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Yellow Wallpaper (original title: "The Yellow Wall-paper. A Story") is a 6,000-word short story by the American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, first published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine. It is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature, illustrating attitudes in the 19th century toward women's health, both physical and mental.


Presented in the first person, the story is a collection of journal entries written by a woman whose physician husband (John) has rented an old mansion for the summer. Forgoing other rooms in the house, the couple moves into the upstairs nursery. Asā€¦


Book cover of Mindplayers

Freddie A. Clark Author Of The Harbinger of Freedom: The Falling Feathers Series, Act I

From my list on cyberpunk hackers, cyborgs, and dystopian societies.

Why am I passionate about this?

Although I write Fantasy, Iā€™m a Cyberpunk enthusiast who mentally lives in the high-tech effed-up future authors and artists imagined in the ā€˜80s. My imagination has been so influenced by Cyberpunk since I watched (and eventually read) Akira as a kid that I ended up creating a Fantasy world with a retro-futuristic, low-life/high-tech vibe, and a lot of motorcycles. An awful lot. Iā€™m also a rebel by heart and a queer person, hence my stories always feature a fight against society and LGBTQ+ characters. I like reading about dystopias, morally grey characters, and dark content. This is what I read, and this is what I write about.

Freddie's book list on cyberpunk hackers, cyborgs, and dystopian societies

Freddie A. Clark Why did Freddie love this book?

Pat Cadigan is one of my favourite authors. Mindplayers is a short book, bizarre and strange but fascinating as per Cadiganā€™s style. The main setting here is the human mind. The protagonist is forced to become a Mindplayer, a sort of state-controlled psychologist who jacks into peopleā€™s minds in order to cure them. This book makes you wonder how vast the world inside your head is, and if your thoughts and memories really belong to you once a government takes control of them. Thereā€™s even Brain Police involved, what can be more dystopian than this?

By Pat Cadigan,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Mindplayers as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Allie Haas only did it for a dare - the kind of dare you know is a mistake but you do it anyway because it's Mistake Yime. But putting on the madcap that Jerry Wirerammer has 'borrowed' was a very big mistake. The psychosis itself was quite conventional, a few paranoid delusions, but it didn't go away when she took the madcap off. Jerry did the decent thing and left her at an emergency room for dry-cleaning but then the Brain Police took over. Straightened out by a professional mindplayer, Allie thinks she's left mind games behind for good butā€¦


Book cover of Madness Explained: Psychosis and Human Nature

Ben Alderson-Day Author Of Presence: The Strange Science and True Stories of the Unseen Other

From my list on understanding the uncanny feeling of felt presence.

Why am I passionate about this?

Iā€™ve been either studying, researching, or teaching psychology since I was 16 ā€“ but before that, I was a reader. I have always been drawn to books that pose fundamental questions about the mind, and to this day I still go back to fiction and non-fiction that can generate ideas and hypotheses for new experiments. Iā€™ve even used fictional stories in brain-scanning experiments to explore how the mind represents voices and characters: our findings show that we are experts at automatically simulating both the sound and the intention of other people when they talk in a story (even when the stories are very simple ones). 

Ben's book list on understanding the uncanny feeling of felt presence

Ben Alderson-Day Why did Ben love this book?

My book starts with a series of conversations with people who have psychosis and hear voices. Some people described to me a particularly unusual experience: the feeling of a voice being there, even when it wasnā€™t speaking.

As an undergraduate student one of the books that first got me thinking about these topics was Richard Bentallā€™s Madness Explained. It really opened my eyes to the possibilities of the mind and how we can think about experiences like hallucinations without necessarily pathologizing them.

This book was my gateway to then learning about things like the International Hearing Voices moment, which argues against an overly medicalized understanding of unusual experiences like voice-hearing. My book is quite wide-ranging, but Iā€™ve tried to retain some of the ethos of Madness Explained in how Iā€™ve approached the world of uncanny presences. 

By Richard P Bentall,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Madness Explained as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

THIS BOOK WILL EXPLAIN WHAT MADNESS IS, TO SHOW THAT IT CAN BE UNDERSTOOD IN PSYCHOLOGICAL TERMS, AND THAT BY STUDYING IT WE CAN LEARN IMPORTANT INSIGHTS ABOUT THE NORMAL MIND. THE BOOK WILL ARGUE THAT TRADITIONAL APPROACHES TO MADNESS MUST BE ABANDONED IN FAVOUR OF A NEW APPROACH WHICH IS MORE CONSISTENT WITH THAT WE NOW KNOW ABOUT THE HUMAN MIND. OVER THE LAST CENTURY OR SO IT HAS BECOME SO COMMONPLACE TO REGARD MADNESS SIMPLY AS A MEDICAL CONDITION THAT IT HAS BECOME DIFFICULT TO THINK OF IT IN ANY OTHER WAY. BENTALL ARGUES INSTEAD THAT DELUSIONS, HALLUCINATIONSā€¦


Book cover of Such Pretty Flowers

Marielle Thompson Author Of Where Ivy Dares to Grow

From my list on gothic that explore different types of grief.

Why am I passionate about this?

My debut novel, Where Ivy Dares to Grow, inherently explores many kinds of grief through the lens of a gothic novel; the grief of losing oneā€™s sense of self to mental illness, of family estrangement, of relationships that have run their course, of illness in loved ones, of beloved places no longer being the beautiful things we remember them as. While this was not something I did consciously while writing, the gothic genre simply seemed to be a natural fit to investigate mourning in so many untraditional senses, using a sentient home and timeslips as metaphors for the way that grief can seem to shift the world and swallow one whole.

Marielle's book list on gothic that explore different types of grief

Marielle Thompson Why did Marielle love this book?

This book explores grief tied together with a mysterious death. Holly received ominous, out-of-character messages from her brother before he suddenly took his own life, leaving her to try to figure out the truth of his violent death while working through her own grief.

She finds herself moving in with Daneā€™s girlfriend, Maura, in her gothic, haunting townhouse, hoping to get clues and to see her own grief reflected in the other womanā€™s. And while this grief does bring them together, the shallowness and violence of Mauraā€™s mourning makes it clear that she knows more about Daneā€™s death than sheā€™s sharing.

This is a story of how grief can become the haunted thing that lurks in gothic halls, and the extremes that it can drive people to, completely upending oneā€™s world.

By K.L. Cerra,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Such Pretty Flowers as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

RECOMMENDED BY GILLIAN FLYNN ON THE TODAY SHOW ā€¢ ā€œA lush, seductive Southern Gothic thatā€™s deliciously queer . . . K. L. Cerraā€™s gift for gorgeous, gruesome atmosphere had me spellbound.ā€ā€”Layne Fargo, author of They Never Learn
 
A woman investigating her brotherā€™s apparent suicide finds herself falling for her prime suspectā€”his darkly mysterious girlfriendā€”in this ā€œcreepy, compelling, and utterly originalā€ (Karen Dionne) thriller.

ā€œGet it out of me.ā€

It was the last message Holly received from her brother, Dane, before he was found cleaved open in the lavish Savannah townhouse of his girlfriend, Maura. Police ruled his death a suicideā€¦


Book cover of Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Eastern Thought
Book cover of The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions
Book cover of The Rag and Bone Shop: How We Make Memories and Memories Make Us

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