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After a psychotic episode lands sixteen-year-old Kai Lum in a psychiatric hospital, he struggles to reclaim his life and pursue his culinary dreams while grappling with medication side effects, family pressures, and wavering friendships, as he questions the reality of the voices he hears.

A powerful reading of a mode of popular fiction made especially salient in an age of increasing financialization.Argues that contemporary realism has been shaped by the increasing abstraction by which neoliberal finance has come to rewrite what counts as real. Building on both established and emerging discussions of literature and finance,Finance Fictionstakes the measure of the tension between psychosis and realism in the contemporary finance novel. Revisiting such twentieth-century classics of the genre as Tom Wolfe'sBonfire of the Vanitiesand Bret Easton Ellis'sAmerican Psycho, this book considers that the twenty-first century is witnessing the birth of a new kind of finance novel that in the face of an ongoing economic crisis, ever more frequent market crashes, and the politics of austerity, pursues a more realist approach to the actual workings of the economy. But what kind of realism would be attuned to today's economic reality of high-frequency trading, dominated by complex financial instruments like collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps, and digital algorithms operating at speeds faster than what human beings or computers can record? If Tom Wolfe in 1989 could still urge novelists to work harder to \"tame the billion-footed beast of reality\", it seems today's economic reality confronts us with a difference that is qualitative rather than quantitative: a new financial ontology requiring new modes of thinking and writing. Mobilizing the philosophical thought of Quentin Meillassoux in the close-reading of finance novels by Robert Harris, Michel Houellebecq, Ben Lerner and less well-known works of conceptual writing such as Mathew Timmons' Credit, Finance Fictions argues that realism is in for a speculative update if it wants to take on the contemporary economy-an \"if\" whose implications turn out to be deeply political. Part literary study and part philosophical inquiry,Finance Fictionsseeks to contribute to a new mindset for creative and critical work on finance in the twenty-first century. Features readings of popular novels, such as Tom Wolfe's \"Bonfire of the Vanities\" and Bret Easton Ellis' \"American Psycho,\" as well as more recent works by Robert Harris, Michel Houellebecq, and others.

Imagine a world where all humans must hibernate through a brutally cold winter, their bodies dangerously close to death as they enter an ultra-low metabolic state of utterly dreamless sleep. All humans, that is, apart from the Winter Consuls, a group of officers who diligently watch over the vulnerable sleeping citizens. Charlie Worthing is a novice, chosen by a highflying hero Winter Consul to accompany him to the Douzey, a remote sector in the middle of Wales, to investigate a dream which is somehow spreading amongst those in the hibernational state, causing paranoia, hallucination, and a psychotic episode that can end in murder. Worthing has been trained to deal with Tricksy Nightwalkers, whose consciousness has been eroded by hibernation, leaving only one or two skills and an incredible hunger. He's been trained to stay alive through the bleakest and loneliest of winters. But he is in no way prepared for what awaits him in Sector Twelve. There are no heroes in Winter, Worthing has been told. And he's about to find out why.

In crime fiction courses, students cannot grasp the extent of psychological pressure, the danger of evil, or the importance of rational behavior without necessary involvement. Discussed here is coursework involving the film Gaslight (dir. George Cukor, 1944), where, although no murder occurs, the crime scene is spread all over the story and remains relevant today. I taught Anglo-American literature and culture at an Italian university for more than 20 years, and crime fiction-especially crime fiction involving women-soon became one of my favorite subjects. During my career, my students and I analyzed the main female characters in Sherlock Holmes' adventures, Louisa May Alcott's A Whisper in the Dark (1877), Kate Chopin's The Awakening (1899), Anna Katharine Greens stories starring Violet Strange (1915), Susan Glaspell's Trifles (1916), and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wall-Paper (1892) and Unpunished (1927, pub. 1997). Many of these female protagonists are victims of manipulation and abuse, and a recurring motif is the charge of insanity by a husband, a relative, or another representative of the patriarchy (Gilbert and Gubar; Melville). A fascinating case study is a particular film that attracted my attention since it perfectly shows what manipulation is and how it works. Gaslight (aka The Murder in Thornton Square) was directed by George Cukor in 1944. It was inspired by a 1938 play by the British author Patrick Hamilton (Gas Light, aka Angel Street) and by a previous film version by Thorold Dickinson (1940). This film gave the term gaslighting the meaning it still has today-that is, the act of manipulating a person to make the individual appear insane and thus to take control of the person's will (Carey; Cowie). The story takes place in the 1880s and features the young protagonist Paula. After the mysterious death of her aunt, a famous opera singer, Paula moves to Italy to become an opera singer herself. There she meets Gregor, and they decide to marry. He insists on returning to London, and they, despite Paula's initial resistance, live in her aunt's house. Little by little, Paula notices strange occurrences-missing pictures, footsteps in the night, and gaslights that dim without being touched. While she fights to retain her sanity, her husband behaves protectively, but his true intention is to drive her to madness. The home ceases to be perceived as a safe place by Paula, who finds it harder and harder not only to pursue her profession but also to meet people and to be a compliant \"angel of the house\" as expected. Even though elements of melodrama and even gothic are involved (Doane, cit. in Gallafent; Fletcher; Waldman), and far as it seems from our contemporary problems, this film still offers the perfect example of an elaborate crime scene constructed meticulously around the victim-an innocent and loving woman whose only fault is to undervalue the signals of predatory male narcissism. From 2017 to 2020, my master's classes-almost totally female-were encouraged to determine the exact moment in the film when Paula should have sensed danger. After watching the movie, they were asked to make a list of the critical moments-from the beginning, when the couple meet in front of a gate; continuing to scenes on a train, when Paula is traveling alone and meets an old lady; and moving on to the train station (when Gregor appears unexpectedly) and the house (when strange things start happening). Many discussions followed, and no one, at first, seemed to realize that the man has an attitude disrespectful of the woman that dates from his first appearance on screen. Psychological violence was understood as gallantry, insistence was perceived as true love, and oppression was interpreted as protection. The difficulty of many students to recognize the early signs of psychological violence shows that even today, 80 years later, this kind of crime fiction does not only have an aesthetical value but also can teach young women to acquire a deeper awareness of their rights and of the importance of words (Gheno; Lipperini and Murgia). Assignments for discussion included the following: 1. Can a \"no\" be interpreted as a \"yes\"? 2. If so, when and why? 3. Has such a case ever occurred to you? 4. Is \"courting\" still an option in our society? 5. On a scale from 0 to 10, how many points would you assign to these terms in a friend/lover relationship? Respect, Insistence, Jealousy, Protection, Sincerity, Caring. We worked on the sources, on the different versions of the story, and even on the legal lexicon-from stalking to rape to marital abuse-and great space was given to proxemics. Multilingualism was a resource rather than an obstacle, since it enhanced our capacity for watching and problematizing images, expressions, and extra-verbal codes. This is an excerpt from student Jasmine Farizi's essay: While watching the film, I tried to focus as much on the dialogues as on the aspects of nonverbal communication. .. . For example, when Paula is on a train conversing with an elderly lady. The interaction between the two turns out to be very important because it would seem to be intended to anticipate what we will see later in the film. In fact, the lady, as soon as she learns that Paula is traveling alone, advises her to be careful and tells her that the book she is reading tells the story of a man who, after killing six wives, begins a cohabitation with another woman. A further warning sign we sense is Gregory's [sic] sudden and unexpected appearance at the train station. We discussed the expressions on the protagonists' faces and the words sudden and unexpected: the students were asked if they would have been happy or upset in that situation. They agreed that the man's appearance might be an act of love, but it also reveals disrespect for the desire for solitude the woman had previously clearly expressed to him. We demonstrated nonverbal communication, performing big smiles and proud frowns. By empathizing with the characters and through role playing, we experienced joy, fear, betrayal, disappointment, and ultimate relief. I made sure to avoid gender biases and to distinguish between the offender and the rescuer-both male. Gaslight helped students understand that even though there is no murder by the end of the story, several serious crimes have been committed that cannot be dismissed as minor wrongdoing. This film made students better understand the ethical, social, and cultural relevance of crime fiction, also increasing their knowledge of gender and film studies. The importance of studying crime fiction-not only of reading books or watching TV series-was perfectly understood and appreciated, especially by those students who wanted to continue their studies or work in social sciences, psychological fields, and teaching. They realized that, through crime fiction, trauma and psychological violence can be studied, and they can learn to recognize and contrast those kinds of \"taboo\" crimes such as marital abuse. Students have learned that behind a seemingly romantic relationship, there may be big trouble, and this can help them defend themselves from cyberbullying, stalking, and any kind of manipulation.

Comparing Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) with medical essays found in Carroll’s private library, this article argues that an examination of Alice’s Adventures “through the looking-glass” of Victorian psychology can generate new perspectives of the novel. It demonstrates that Carroll’s literary treatment of nonsense—illustrated by the characters’ linguistic and cognitive incongruities, identity issues, forgetfulness, and altered perception of time—builds upon mid-nineteenth-century psychological investigations of the similarities between sleeping and madness. This article also shows that while little is known about the meanings that psychology and psychiatry bestowed upon the novel before the emergence of psychoanalysis in the 1930s, Alice’s Adventures supplied Victorian writers of psychology with a means of illustrating their ideas. My exploration of the two-way influence between Alice’s Adventures and Victorian psychology aims to shine a light on Carroll’s representation of the madness that characterizes Alice’s dreamworld of Wonderland. By likening Alice’s behavior to that of the “mad” characters in the novel, Carroll portrays Wonderland as a place where childhood dreaming and adult insanity converge in their capacity to provide escape from dull, everyday reality into the absurdities of nonsense.

When interacting with other people, we assume that they have their reasons for what they do and believe, and experience recognizable feelings and emotions. When people act from weakness of will or are otherwise irrational, what they do can still be comprehensible to us, since we know what it is like to fall for temptation and act against one’s better judgment. Still, when someone’s experiences, feelings and way of thinking is vastly different from our own, understanding them becomes increasingly difficult. Delusions and psychosis are often seen as marking the end of intelligibility. In this article, I argue first for the importance of seeing other people as intelligible as long as this is at all possible. Second, I argue, based on both previous literature and my own lived experience, that more psychotic phenomena than previously thought can be rendered at least somewhat intelligible. Besides bizarre experiences like illusions, hallucinations, and intense feelings of significance, I also explain what it is like to lose one’s bedrock, and how this loss impacts which beliefs one has reason to reject. Finally, I give an inside account of some disturbances of reason, and show that there are important similarities between certain psychotic reasoning problems and common non-pathological phenomena.

This essay explores the challenges of creating characters in crime fiction that are forensic psychiatrists. Forensic psychiatrists work at the interface of mental health and criminal law, and appropriate representations can both lend authenticity to crime fiction as well as potentially help to destigmatize mental illness.

The dystopian character of Joca Reiners Terron’s A morte e o meteoro (2019) is indissociable from its critique of colonialism. But while the novel makes frequent references to the violent methods of exploitation that characterized American colonization, it mostly relies on allusions to different literary traditions—including gothic fiction, the adventure novel, and science fiction—in its depiction of colonialism. The dialogue with Heart of Darkness plays a significant role in A morte e o meteoro, which to a large extent is a critical rereading of Conrad’s novella. This article examines how this appropriation of textual and cultural paradigms shapes the dystopian outlook of the novel, while also offering alternatives to the hopelessness that defines its fictional world.

Ambiguity is created by a readers uncertainty about those aspects of the novel that have been introduced by the author out of a desire to appeal to aesthetic values and those aspects related to complex underlying issues of authenticity that may stem from an authors potentially confused memories or sense of identity; this is particularly true for White, who suffered from mental illness and experienced psychotic episodes. While White is evidently upset by the later reviews, she has already acknowledged the difficulty of writing a testimony of her life as a work of art. According to Lejeune, the autobiographical novel differentiates itself from the purely autobiographical by not being a \"retrospective prose narrative written by a real person concerning his own existence, where the focus is his individual life, in particular the story of his personality\" (4). According to Lejeune, \"We must not confuse pseudonym, defined in this way as the name of an author (noted on the cover of the hook, with the name attributed to a fictional person within the book (even if this person has the status of narrator and assumes the whole of the text production), because this person is himself designated as fictitious by the simple fact that he is incapable of being the author of the book\" (12; emphasis in original).

While group-level functional alterations have been identified in many brain regions of psychotic patients, multivariate machine-learning methods provide a tool to test whether some of such alterations could be used to differentiate an individual patient. Earlier machine-learning studies have focused on data collected from chronic patients during rest or simple tasks. We set out to unravel brain activation patterns during naturalistic stimulation in first-episode psychosis (FEP). We recorded brain activity from 46 FEP patients and 32 control subjects viewing scenes from the fantasy film Alice in Wonderland. Scenes with varying degrees of fantasy were selected based on the distortion of the 'sense of reality' in psychosis. After cleaning the data with a novel maxCorr method, we used machine learning to classify patients and healthy control subjects on the basis of voxel- and time-point patterns. Most (136/194) of the voxels that best classified the groups were clustered in a bilateral region of the precuneus. Classification accuracies were up to 79.5% (p = 5.69 × 10-8), and correct classification was more likely the higher the patient's positive-symptom score. Precuneus functioning was related to the fantasy content of the movie, and the relationship was stronger in control subjects than patients. These findings are the first to show abnormalities in precuneus functioning during naturalistic information processing in FEP patients. Correlational findings suggest that these alterations are associated with positive psychotic symptoms and processing of fantasy. The results may provide new insights into the neuronal basis of reality distortion in psychosis.