1988. Penguin-Arkana, Lao Tse Press 2009. ( New York, London, Portland Or.)

A first book defining “extreme” states including psychotic experiences and how to deal with them with and without the use of medication.

From the back cover:
“The city shadows are the repressed and unrealized aspects of us all., lived openly by the so called €˜mentally ill.’ In this compassionate book, the Swiss analyst Arnold Mindell, … presents mental-health professionals of all kinds with new and exciting challenges in their work. Process-oriented therapy does not see patients, a priori, as sick, but as people experiencing, extremely, states with which we are all familiar to some degree; and they are best helped by connecting and working with the language of their bodies and interior worlds.”

October 2008: Arny’s Rethinking Extreme States

The medical paradigm has relieved much human suffering. But the allopathic medical basis, still makes people feel “sick,” and may contribute to isolating us from one another. One of Jung’s gifts to the world was his understanding, for example, that dreams are meaningful. He called them teleological, that is meaningful, not pathological or only problems.

We need a more teleological view of unusual mental states as well. That is why I called statistically unusual forms of consciousness “extreme states” instead of “illnesses.” The medical paradigm and approach are important, but the larger view, that all human experiences belong to the total picture of who we are as a human race, is important at well. Someone with unusual mental experiences, someone in an extreme state, is not just ill, but a “city shadow,” a part of our larger collective, a voice that is usually marginalized.

My book, City Shadows, written twenty years ago, was meant to initiate and outline methods for understanding, working with, and integrating people suffering from unusual states of consciousness instead of only isolating them from the rest of the world. May the future pick up this initial direction and move forwards in appreciating the vast diversity in our human nature.

Available from Amazon Books