Host of Montreal's top-rated English radio talk show, Neil McKenty appeared rational, balanced and a calming influence in any crisis. Would anyone have believed that this sparkling public figure was very different behind closed doors? They met on the dance floor: he, a former Jesuit priest, she, grand-daughter of a two-time mayor of Toronto. Raised by her single mother, Catharine left the staid life of tea-parties for reconciliation work in post-war Europe. As a journalist for Pace, a magazine for adventurous youth of the 1960s, she conquered Los Angeles from the wheel of a pink Jaguar, unearthing a scoop that resulted in a best-selling book and Hollywood movie. Friends applauded that Catharine had found her intellectual equal. When her new husband's outbursts began, she attributed it to the stresses of married life. People knew little about mental illness in those days. It was far too uncomfortable to talk about. The word bipolar was virtually unknown. Together the McKentys wrote two best-selling books, rubbed shoulders with prime ministers, and worked closely with spiritual elites. Sandwiched between the couple's many accomplishments were Neil's suicidal depression and Catharine's desperate attempts to cope. Catharine examines the influences that helped her to maintain her sanity and the sanctity of marriage with a talented and troubled husband. She aims to empower others who care deeply about someone affected with bipolar disorder.

Human beings are primates, and primates are political animals. Our brains, therefore, are designed not just to hunt and gather, but also to help us get ahead socially, often via deception and self-deception. But while we may be self-interested schemers, we benefit by pretending otherwise. The less we know about our own ugly motives, the better - and thus we don't like to talk or even think about the extent of our selfishness. This is the elephant in the brain. Such an introspective taboo makes it hard for us to think clearly about our nature and the explanations for our behavior. The aim of this book, then, is to confront our hidden motives directly - to track down the darker, unexamined corners of our psyches and blast them with floodlights. Then, once everything is clearly visible, we can work to better understand ourselves: Why do we laugh? Why are artists sexy? Why do we brag about travel? Why do we prefer to speak rather than listen? Our unconscious motives drive more than just our private behavior; they also infect our venerated social institutions such as Art, School, Charity, Medicine, Politics, and Religion. In fact, these institutions are in many ways designed to accommodate our hidden motives, to serve covert agendas alongside their official ones. The existence of big hidden motives can upend the usual political debates, leading one to question the legitimacy of these social institutions, and of standard policies designed to favor or discourage them. You won't see yourself - or the world - the same after confronting the elephant in the brain.

"Glorious...one of the best memoirs I've read in years...a tragicomic gem about family, class, race, justice, and the spectacular weirdness of Wichita. [McDermott] can move from barely controlled hilarity to the brink of rage to aching tenderness in a single breath." -- Marya Hornbacher, New York Times Book Review Zack McDermott, a 26-year-old Brooklyn public defender, woke up one morning convinced he was being filmed, Truman Show-style, as part of an audition for a TV pilot. Every passerby was an actor; every car would magically stop for him; everything he saw was a cue from "The Producer" to help inspire the performance of a lifetime. After a manic spree around Manhattan, Zack, who is bipolar, was arrested on a subway platform and admitted to Bellevue Hospital. So begins the story of Zack's freefall into psychosis and his desperate, poignant, often hilarious struggle to claw his way back to sanity. It's a journey that will take him from New York City back to his Kansas roots and to the one person who might be able to save him, his tough, big-hearted Midwestern mother, nicknamed the Bird, whose fierce and steadfast love is the light in Zack's dark world. Before his odyssey is over, Zack will be tackled by guards in mental wards, run naked through cornfields, receive secret messages from the TV, befriend a former Navy Seal and his talking stuffed monkey, and see the Virgin Mary in the whorls of his own back hair. But with the Bird's help, he just might have a shot at pulling through, starting over, and maybe even meeting a partner who can love him back, bipolar and all. Introducing an electrifying new voice, Gorilla and the Bird is a raw and unforgettable account of a young man's unraveling and the relationship that saves him.

Mark and Giulia's life together began as a storybook romance. They fell in love at eighteen, married at twenty-four, and were living their dream life in San Francisco. When Giulia was twenty-seven, she suffered a terrifying and unexpected psychotic break that landed her in the psych ward for nearly a month. One day she was vibrant and well-adjusted; the next she was delusional and suicidal, convinced that she was the devil and that her loved ones were not safe. All she wanted was to die. Eventually, Giulia fully recovered, and the couple had a son. But, soon after Jonas was born, Giulia had another breakdown, and then a third a few years after that. pushed to the edge of the abyss, everything the couple had once taken for granted was upended. A story of the fragility of the mind, and the tenacity of the human spirit, My Lovely Wife is, above all, a love story that raises profound questions: How do we care for the people we love? What and who do we live for? Breathtaking in its candor, radiant with compassion, and written with dazzling lyricism, Lukach's is an intensely personal odyssey through the harrowing years of his wife's mental illness, anchored by an abiding devotion to family that will affirm readers' faith in the power of love.

'I Had a Black Dog says with wit, insight, economy and complete understanding what other books take 300 pages to say. Brilliant and indispensable.' - Stephen Fry 'Finally, a book about depression that isn't a prescriptive self-help manual. Johnston's deftly expresses how lonely and isolating depression can be for sufferers. Poignant and humorous in equal measure.' Sunday Times There are many different breeds of Black Dog affecting millions of people from all walks of life. The Black Dog is an equal opportunity mongrel. It was Winston Churchill who popularized the phrase Black Dog to describe the bouts of depression he experienced for much of his life. Matthew Johnstone, a sufferer himself, has written and illustrated this moving and uplifting insight into what it is like to have a Black Dog as a companion and how he learned to tame it and bring it to heel.

Abandoned by his mother in an Acadia National Park campground, Jack tries to make his way back to Boston before anyone figures out what is going on, with only a small toy elephant for company.

Psychopaths aren't capable of love. Find out what happens when they target someone who is, in this insightful and practical book by a woman who was a victim. When we're imagining falling in love none of us thinks that we might fall for a psychopath. We don't even know it's a possibility. Most victims say they believed they had met their soul mate. But as the psychopath gains power and control, what seemed like heaven becomes an ever-worsening emotional hell. Don't let it happen to you. If it already has, don't let it happen again. This book -- which contains the best material from the author's popular blog PsychopathsandLove.com -- will help you gain a clearer understanding of these harmful pathological relationships. Learn what a psychopath is and how to possibly spot one if you're being pursued. Find out what makes you vulnerable. Learn how to tell if you're being manipulated. Finally, get ideas about healing afterward and for preventing it from happening again -- or for the first time. "I wish I could have read this half year ago. Thanks a million." Liu "I cannot tell you how much this has helped me today. I cannot get anything done because I can't stop reading! My whole life has been a mess because of these men. My eyes are finally opened - maybe a bit late, but still opened." SuckerNoMore "Thank you for making me feel sane again." Tom "I wish I had read this years ago; it would have saved me money, heartbreak and pain. I met a one eight years ago and I believed I was with the man of my dreams. It's been a nightmare. I often wondered how I got caught up in this crap but reading about it has open my eyes." Michelle "I truly believe this info saved my life! I thank God I found it and I thank God you are eloquent enough to cut right thru to all the things I have been experiencing with this monster but was never able to verbalize! it felt like you were speaking directly to me! Thank you again for all the incredibly insightful info." Duped "I have no words but thank you so very much!" Anthony "After countless sessions with a therapist this makes more simplistic sense of what I had been going through in marriage. Very insightful and I wish the readers acknowledged. Wellness." Eric "I just want you to know what a valuable service you've provided by creating this site. I stumbled upon it the other day while doing some research on psychopathy in an attempt to understand how the individual I was involved with could do all the things he did. It was such a relief to realize, after reading several of your posts, that this monster who had me believing he was one in a million is actually just one OF a million... psychopaths. He's no more than a common, predictable set of symptoms and patterns. He fits the mold perfectly. I understand better than ever now that none of this was my fault; that he targeted me; and that the mental anguish he put me through was something I could not have resisted if I tried... because I could never be someone who thinks the way he does. Your information helped me realize that fully and take that last step of discarding any last little attempt to "reconcile" the unthinkable." L.B. "Thank you for a brilliant and concise definition of a psychopath. This information is the best I have seen on this topic...I now know I am not crazy. Thank you.