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Fool Becomes Wise!
Lunatic-turned-psychologist pens novel
For a printable version of this release, please click here.
December 1999 - Novelist M. William Wythe earned a doctorate in psychology the hard way. After escaping from an Oklahoma state mental hospital in 1969, Wythe found himself on the lam in Hawaii, where his therapist at a local mental health clinic labeled him a "chronic" schizophrenic. Using transcripts documenting his treatment and diagnosis at both facilities, Wythe fictionalized his own case study, earning a Ph.D. in 1993 for writing his dissertation-turned-novel, One Hand Clapping, the "Mister Toad's Wild Ride" of psychological page-turners.
Along the way, the author claims to have discovered one of life's best-kept secrets: "The madness we're witnessing today, as exemplified by all the mass shootings, stems from a fundamental misconception about how we learn to view ourselves and the world around us. Simply put, we're oblivious to the fact that our senses make reality into what we think we see. What we get is a distorted view of the world, one that tends to make 'bad guys' out of the people we don't agree with. This leads to the kind of intolerance which breeds violence. In One Hand Clapping I tried to show how unreliable our perceptions are. When this is widely understood, intolerance will give way to the realization that nobody really knows reality. We all have the freedom to change our perception of reality. That's how we change the world."
One Hand Clapping is the story of a fool who becomes wise. Not surprisingly, the narrator is a psychologist trying to come to grips with a troubled past. Taking the form of an allegory, Clapping is a parable about freeing our minds from the illusions that imprison us. With charming, irreverent wit, Wythe lifts the curtain on reality, exposing our personal dramas as stories we conspire to tell ourselves.
"In the movie of life, everyone has a script. Whether we know it or not, we each have a hand in writing our own parts. The trouble is, we get trapped in these roles because we forget who created them. The scripts we're following then become confused in our minds with who we are. As Shakespeare reminds us, all the world's a stage. Like Jim Carrey in The Truman Show, we're unwitting actors, the stars of our own production, until that climactic scene when we see beyond the boundaries of the set and realize for the first time that it's just a play!"
M. William Wythe
Twilight Press
970-245-2298
mirl@acsol.net
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