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What is illness? It is self-disregard. Self-disregard results from the loss of personal identity. Loss of personal identity gives rise to the fiction of otherness.
What is allness? Clinically, it is called “mental health,” another name for the state of being consciously whole. How is wholeness—mental health—achieved? It is the product of the conscious practice of self-awareness. Self-awareness is the appreciation of self significance. The study and practice of acknowledged self-consciousness is called “psychological medicine.” The affirmation of self is health giving (surely Walt Whitman was a mental health practitioner). The negation of self is a psychotic condition.
Simply stated, this dichotomy forms the conceptual basis for Illness or Allness, a thick, engaging book that develops a philosophical-psychological attitude for and toward healthful living. The author, a medical psychiatrist and educator (Dorsey never forgets that a doctor is primarily a teacher), has composed his “conversations” as a primer on mental hygiene. It is a practical medical handbook, co-authored by