From the best-selling author of the classic book on ADD Driven to
Distraction, a memoir of the strange upbringing that shaped Dr. Edward
M. Hallowell's celebrated career.
When Edward M. Hallowell was 11, a voice out of nowhere told him he
should become a psychiatrist. A mental health professional of the time
would have called this psychosis. But young Edward (Ned) took it in
stride, despite not quite knowing what "psychiatrist" meant. With a
psychotic father, an alcoholic mother, an abusive stepfather, and two
so-called learning disabilities of his own, Ned was accustomed to
unpredictable behaviour from those around him and to a mind he felt he
couldn't always control.
The voice turned out to be right. Now, decades later, Hallowell is a
leading expert on attention disorders and the author of 20 books,
including Driven to Distraction, the work that introduced ADD to the
world. In Because I Come from a Crazy Family, he tells the often
strange story of a childhood marked by what he calls the "WASP triad" of
alcoholism, mental illness, and politeness and explores the wild wish,
surging beneath his incredible ambition, that he could have saved his
own family of drunk, crazy, and well-intentioned eccentrics - and
himself.
Because I Come from a Crazy Family is an affecting, at times
harrowing, ultimately moving memoir about crazy families and where they
can lead, about being called to the mental health profession and about
the unending joys and challenges that come with helping people celebrate
who they are.
