Insanity inside out

Insanity inside out by Kenneth Donaldson. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780517525319.

Kenneth Donaldsons fifteen-year struggle to procure his release from an asylum, to survive the drugs, cruelty, incompetence, bigotry, indifference, and lies, to clear his name, and to see the federal government assert the basic constitutional right--all this stands as a testament to Donaldsons tenacity, idealism, and courage. His account yanks the cover from one of societys storage bins, turns out the inside of a system we wish to forget, reveals the craziness which wields the hypodermic and the rubber stamp. Insanity Inside Out teems with the life of the asylum: the victims and the victimizers, the doctors and the "bugs," the attendants who torture and the few who nurture, the patients who crawl and the ones who soar. There is blood and horror and suicide and laughter. And all the while there is Donaldson--hiding incessant scribbling inside his shirt or between the pages of a magazine as he is shunted from one level of hell to another. Amidst the decay and the waste and the evil, he is keeping a diary and writing legal writs to be smuggled out, blowing an ember which the Supreme Court has now raised as a beacon of hope.