When the Sun Bursts

"This book is a remarkable look at a confounding illness and the practices of one seasoned, passionate analyst."—Publishers Weekly

"The author's perspective embraces personal, social, and political life on a vulnerable planet. His expertise extends to civilization generally, making an esoteric specialty relevant to human improvement in general. The book is suited for a general audience interested in psychology applied to the most challenging dilemmas."—Library Journal, Starred Review

". . . immediately intriguing, perpetually enlightening, often very moving and, as is so often the case in the best examples of psycho-science writing, compassionate and hopeful."—Big Issue

"Bollas’s new book is his warmest and most accessible yet . . . a passionate and elegant account of his belief and experience that people diagnosed with schizophrenia can be treated through psychoanalysis."—Gillian Ingram, Therapy Today

“In this sensitive and evocative narrative, psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas draws on his personal experiences of working with people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia to offer an interpretation of how it develops as an understandable way of responding to our precariousness in a highly unpredictable world.”—Therapy Today

Finalist for the American Board & Academy of Psychoanalysis Book Prize in the Authored Books Category

"Christopher Bollas has written a beautiful, humane, and profoundly moving book. It tells us not just about the world of schizophrenia but also about what it is for all of us to be human, struggling not to be too frightened to live in a world of chance events. Its stories of the work of therapy illustrate the patient effort that is involved in respecting another person, and, indeed, offer a paradigm of love."—Martha C. Nussbaum, The University of Chicago

"Imaginative, heartfelt and moving, this is a beautiful book. Bollas' compassion and respect for his patients is palpable on these pages. The result is a sense of shared humanity, understanding and even hope. There's misery in When the Sun Bursts, and yet you will come away feeling ignited and consoled."—Stephen Grosz, author of The Examined Life

"If you want a book that will give you the living, vibrant, painful process of truly working with schizophrenia, then read this book. Christopher Bollas is famous in the world of psychoanalysis and beyond for the way he pushes us to the limits of possible thought. Here, in the most resonant, sensitive and even poetic writing—writing which teaches us anew what it really means to listen—Bollas makes a crucial clinical and political intervention into the increasingly vexed question of how to approach mental disturbance in our time."—Jacqueline Rose, author of Women in Dark Times

"Christopher Bollas writes with dazzling insight into the embattled mental world of schizophrenia. A profound and moving meditation on the tribulations of human subjectivity."—Barbara Taylor, author of The Last Asylum: a Memoir of Madness in Our Times (2014)

"In this absorbing, elegant, and uplifting new book, Christopher Bollas takes the reader on a personal odyssey through schizophrenia. In an era of biological reductionism, Bollas reminds us that no one we encounter in our work is completely out of reach by another human being. We all owe Bollas a debt of gratitude for keeping alive the flame with this extraordinary contribution."—Glen O. Gabbard, Baylor College of Medicine


“In this sensitive and evocative narrative, psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas draws on his personal experiences of working with people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia to offer an interpretation of how it develops as an understandable way of responding to our precariousness in a highly unpredictable world.”—Therapy Today * Therapy Today *