A thoughtful and curious man, Alberto Fragomeni tells his story as a "psychiatric patient," presenting with a light, often irreverent touch the places, times, and objects that fill the daily life of someone who, like him, carries the weight of mental illness.
The book's narrative unfolds through events and reflections that reveal a difficult search for equilibrium. His relationship with faith is complicated: he embraces it at first with euphoric intensity, hoping it will explain his suffering, but then turns to more intellectual forms of meaning-making. Fragomeni writes extensively about his passion for Eastern philosophy, modern philosophy, and psychoanalysis — always searching for some personal consolation, some sense to make of his own existence.
What strikes most forcefully in the book is the cold, clear-eyed description of confronting a devastating truth: psychiatric illness as a permanent limit. Again and again, the author captures the anguish of what he perceives as an irreversible sentence, a stripping of human dignity, a forced exile from ordinary social life.
Stefano Pescosolido, 2017
