Paranoia And Contentment

the long version

"Paranoia and Contentment is an investigation into Western intellectual history. John Hampsey approaches paranoia not as a clinical term for an irrational sense of persecution but, from a uniquely positive perspective, as a cultural truth - a way of understanding the history of human thought and perhaps the best way to describe Being itself." "Hampsey traces an arc of paranoic moments in Western culture. Abraham, Jesus, Socrates, Hypatia, Joan of Arc, Goethe, Blake, Kierkegaard, Schreber - these are only a few among the many figures whom the author examines in order to isolate moments in Western intellectual history when paranoic vision temporarily breaks through the barriers of paranoidic fear. The book's analyses and inquiries are joined by anecdotal interludes in which Hampsey applies the conflicting concepts of paranoic and paranoidic to revealing moments in his own life."--Jacket.