The author has been diagnosed as schizophrenic, and part of the book is his own story, written in the form of a spellbinding novelette similar to I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. But more than that, the author also utilizes the ideas of Harry Stack Sullivan, Theodore Lidz, Gregory Bateson, R.D. Scott and P.L. Ashworth, W. Ronald D. Fairbairn, Anton Boisen and others—as well as his own experiences—to construct a solid theory which explains how and why he and many other people enter a state of mind called “schizophrenic.” Finally, Modrow tackles the entire medical model with its genetic and biochemical theories, its drugs, and various brain scan studies purporting to prove that schizophrenia is a brain disease, explaining why this is such a popular explanation for emotional distress, but why the theory is very likely false.