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A curious first impression of this book is the ambiguity of authorship and title. Ostensibly there are two authors, yet in his very clear and useful foreword John Steiner refers repeatedly to ‘the author’, in the singular, from which one gathers he means Murray Jackson. In the preface Murray Jackson describes how Paul Williams, a trained anthropologist, was appointed as a ‘participant observer’ to Jackson's ward
at the Maudsley Hospital, making many video and audio tape recordings of the work there. Later, Williams suggested these might form the basis of a book, which he eventually edited once it was in a manuscript form written, presumably, by Murray Jackson.
The main title is also misleading since the storms described turn out to be not only clearly imaginable but, as the contradictory sub-title implies, full of accessible meaning. Towards the end a partial explanation is given in the assertion that some psychotics show ‘a quality of existence that is difficult if not impossible for the more sane person to imagine’. In thus superficially presenting itself as uncertain both of its origin and identity the book introduces something of the quandary life poses for the patients it describes.
The bulk of the book consists of seven ‘clinical vignettes’ of patients in the former Ward 6 of the Maudsley Hospital. This ward was rare, if not unique, in applying a psycho-analytic perspective to the treatment of the severely disturbed within a general psychiatric context. Aged between 25 and 30 at the initiation of their treatment, the patients were followed up for some years after discharge. Recordings were made both of patient interviews (usually observed by others through a one-way screen) and of subsequent staff discussion. Excerpts from these are given at length and in detail. The main interviewer and discussant is Murray Jackson.
What emerges most strikingly is Jackson's basic method of work, which is essentially that of translating a psychotic presentation into a sane form