Faith and Madness

Nobody loves a father like his daughter. That truth comes through powerfully in this memoir. Sarah was enchanted by her father; she loved him with all her young heart. But when she turned five, her father began to do strange things. His bizarre behavior ultimately cost him his job at a major pharmacy in Detroit. The time was the 1930s, with no medication for manic depressive disorder. Sarah joins forces with her mother and younger brother to contain the psychosis that with repeated hospitalizations relentlessly tightens its hold on her father. When she is seven, she watches her father's third episode of mania mount and vows never to let this happen to her--she would be strong with a faith like her valiant mother's. Nevertheless, when Sarah entered her second year at Wayne State University, she was gripped by severe depression and anorexia that almost took her life. Had she inherited her father's illness? Or had challenges to her Christian faith during her first year of university caused this depression? No one knew. The help of a department store, an astute psychiatrist, and an Anglican priest illustrate the interplay between financial, psychological, and spiritual resources in unraveling the mystery of Sarah's depression.

""Sarah Slagle Arnold's memoir manages the great feat of being harrowing and genuinely uplifting at the same time. It is adroitly observed and shot through with great feeling for an era, for the struggles of those around her, and for her own struggles. The fact of her faith is exactly that--a fact that remains in her life and shows the depth and importance of spiritual commitment. This is a brave and loving book.""
--Baron Wormser, Fairfield University MFA Program

""Faith and Madness takes us on a journey into the soul, allowing us to share in an experience of inner healing at the depths where spirituality and psychology converge. Thank you Sarah Slagle Arnold for this courageous book!""
--Dale T. Irvin, New York Theological Seminary

""It would be hard to find a memoir that is more honest, that inquires into the life of a family and the growth--and testing--of a religious faith with greater intensity than Sarah Slagle Arnold's Faith and Madness. It insists that clarity and charity are not mutually exclusive, and that sometimes faith and hope are hard to tell apart. Brava!""
--Richard Hoffman, Emerson College


Sarah Slagle Arnold (PhD, University of Michigan) is a psychologist/psychoanalyst and writer living in Maine. For thirty years she was in private practice in New York City and on the faculty of the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health. She is a graduate of New York Theological Seminary.