INTRODUCTION

This manual presents an alternative to the western world's love affair with psychiatric diagnoses, their chemical cures, and the belief that the only valid explanation of unwanted and distressing behaviors, thoughts, and feelings lies in body neurochemistry. In a radical departure from the psychiatric disease-mongering and the wholesale drugging of family members, I will show that so-called mental illnesses from ADHD to schizophrenia are an outgrowth of triangulated family processes that in many cases have existed in families for two, three, or more generations.

This book was written especially for people who have been labeled mentally ill, but it is also for their families. Throughout this manual I will refer to the mentally ill as the black sheep of their families: people who, ever since childhood, have been unhappy, unfulfilled, the family underachievers, the people who didn't fit in, or those who had promise but who never fulfilled the family's expectations of them.

The family black sheep is the hurting soul: lost and alone, whom the world has passed by. He describes himself as needy, depressed, and unappreciated for his good qualities and his strengths. He might have one or two friends, but he cannot escape the feeling that they just tolerate him and see him as a source of frustration and someone deserving of pity instead of the warmth he craves.

One of the beliefs informing this book is that seeing one's world clearly is always a difficult task. But for the hurting soul who is overwhelmed and confused, it is close to impossible. To start with, then, this manual has been written in plain English. It is free of jargon, cant, junk science, and of the political ideology of either the left or the right. For example, the vague, overused, and frequently meaningless terms: enabling, dysfunctional, codependent, closure, self-esteem, communication, and stress appear nowhere in these pages.