--- abstract: 'Partly motivated by his increasing brushes with psychosis, by the early 1970s the science fiction author Philip K. Dick was struggling with increasing doubts over the nature of reality and personal identity. Perhaps unsurprisingly, characters with unstable worlds and existential doubts are a familiar focus of his work. Dick was interested in more than just description however, and often used his novels to explore personal theories of existence. During his research, he discovered the work of Roger Sperry, who had rocked the foundations of neuroscience by discovering that when separated, the hemispheres of the brain seemed, at least to some degree, independently conscious. Worried about his own perception of reality, Dick considered that this could explain his increasing feelings of alienation and self-detachment. These reflections resulted in A Scanner Darkly, a partly autobiographical near-future novel that remains an incisive commentary on society, psychosis and the brain.' altloc: [] chapter: ~ commentary: ~ commref: ~ confdates: ~ conference: ~ confloc: ~ contact_email: ~ creators_id: [] creators_name: - family: Bell given: V honourific: '' lineage: '' date: 2006-08 date_type: published datestamp: 2006-08-01 department: ~ dir: disk0/00/00/50/21 edit_lock_since: ~ edit_lock_until: ~ edit_lock_user: ~ editors_id: [] editors_name: [] eprint_status: archive eprintid: 5021 fileinfo: /style/images/fileicons/application_pdf.png;/5021/1/VaughanBell_ThroughAScannerDarkly.pdf full_text_status: public importid: ~ institution: ~ isbn: ~ ispublished: pub issn: ~ item_issues_comment: [] item_issues_count: 0 item_issues_description: [] item_issues_id: [] item_issues_reported_by: [] item_issues_resolved_by: [] item_issues_status: [] item_issues_timestamp: [] item_issues_type: [] keywords: 'neuropsychology, psychosis, scanner darkly, Philip K. Dick, PKD' lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:56:32 latitude: ~ longitude: ~ metadata_visibility: show note: ~ number: 8 pagerange: 488-489 pubdom: FALSE publication: The Psychologist publisher: ~ refereed: FALSE referencetext: | Butler, A.M. (2000) The Pocket Essential Philip K Dick. London: Pocket Essentials. Carrère, E. (2004) I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey Into the Mind of Philip K. Dick. (T. Bent, trans.). New York: Metropolitan Books. Dimond, S.J. (1979) Disconnection and psychopathology. In J. Gruzelier and P. Flor-Henry (eds) Hemisphere Asymmetries of Function in Psychopathology. Oxford: Elsevier. Enoch, D. & Ball, H. (2001) Ekbom's Syndrome (Delusional parasitosis). In Enoch, D. & Ball, H. Uncommon psychiatric syndromes (4th edition). pp209-223. London: Arnold. Gur, R.E. & Chin, S. (1999) Laterality in functional brain imaging studies of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 25, 141-156. Laing, R.D. & Esterson, A. (1964) Sanity, Madness and the Family. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Pelican Books. Pantelis, C., Velakoulis, D., McGorry, P.D., Wood, S.J, Suckling, J., Phillips, L.J., Yung, A.R., Bullmore, E.T, Brewer, W., Soulsby, B., Desmond, P. & McGuire, P.K. (2003) Neuroanatomical abnormalities before and after onset of psychosis: a cross-sectional and longitudinal MRI comparison. Lancet, 25, 361 (9354), 281-8. Sperry, R.W. (1993) Roger W. Sperry Nobel Lecture, 8 December 1981. In T. Frängsmyr and J. Lindsten (eds) Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine 1981-1990. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co. Stanghellini, G. (2004) Disembodied Spirits and Deanimated Bodies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. relation_type: [] relation_uri: [] reportno: ~ rev_number: 12 series: ~ source: ~ status_changed: 2007-09-12 17:06:17 subjects: - clin-psy succeeds: ~ suggestions: ~ sword_depositor: ~ sword_slug: ~ thesistype: ~ title: "Through A Scanner Darkly: Neuropsychology and psychosis in Philip K. Dick's novel \"A Scanner Darkly\"" type: journalp userid: 6575 volume: 19