Let Me Not Be Mad by AK Benjamin review – a physician’s descent into mania

A clinical neuropsychologist charts his own disturbing thoughts in this original, provocative study

Have you ever embarked on a relationship with someone you instantly found attractive, knowing from the start it would end badly? The same exhilarating but doomed sentiment is evoked on encountering the authorial voice of Let Me Not Be Mad, a debut non-fiction work by clinical neuropsychologist AK Benjamin (not his real name). He is erudite, funny and quite possibly (but not definitely) crazy. That is Benjamin’s own assessment and fear, hence his title.

Much of the book takes the form of a handful of neurological case studies, a form now reassuringly familiar thanks to books by writer-medics from Oliver Sacks to Suzanne O’Sullivan. “Michael” is the survivor of a skydiving accident that sliced “two cubed inches” off the front of his brain, as a result of which the “super normal, unimaginative” financier became “a compulsive surrealist”. “Jane” pleads for surgery to remove the offending part of the brain from where her epileptic seizures arise. A smiling child walks into Benjamin’s clinic, her “steps uneven, leaning to her right side, gait too wide”. Her mental capacity has become diminished after a huge TV slipped its wall mounting and crashed down on her head.

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from Books | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2ULIr7v

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