Explores the creativity, excitement, importance, and influence of John Ford, director of nearly 150 movies and in the film industry over 50 years.

One of the greatest and most influential of Hollywood's film-makers, John Ford was crucial in developing, and extending Hollywood's traditions. Stylistically, Ford was instrumental in experimenting with new camera techniques, atmospheric lighting and diverse narrative devices. Thematically, long before it became conventional wisdom, Ford was exploring issues such as gender, race, the treatment of ethnic minorities and social outcasts, the nature of history and the relationship of myth and reality. Popular film would be different had John Ford not been a director and Brian Spittles illustrates the excitement, importance, influence, creativity, deviousness and complexity of the man and his films.

John Ford is a monumental figure in Hollywood and world cinema. Throughout his long and varied career spanning the silent and sound era, he produced nearly 150 films of which Iron Horse (1924), Stagecoach (1939), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), The Searchers (1956) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) are classics of cinema. Ford was also an influential figure in developing, and extending Hollywood's traditions. Stylistically Ford was instrumental in developing new camera techniques, atmospheric lighting and diverse narrative devices. Thematically, long before it became conventional wisdom, Ford was exploring issues that concern us today, such as gender, race, the treatment of ethnic minorities and social outcasts, the nature of history and the relationship of myth and reality. For all these reasons, John Ford the man and his films reward thought and study, both for the general reader and the academic student. Ford's pictures express the world in which they were made, and have contributed to making what Hollywood is today. This book illustrates the excitement, importance, influence, creativity, deviousness and complexity of the man and his films.

From a psychiatric perspective, psychosis is generally viewed as a psychopathological and often incomprehensible mental disorder of biological cause. In his book, Brian Spittles argues that this represents a rather limited view, and that a psychospiritual investigation of psychosis may enable a better understanding of its nature and determinants. His aim is not to negate the discipline of psychiatry, but to demonstrate the viability and efficacy of incorporating psychospiritual considerations into psychosis research. Within these pages, Spittles challenges several core psychiatric beliefs, and calls for the discipline to extend its investigative parameters beyond the limited epistemological bounds of materialism. The book uses an open-ended heuristic approach that enables the systematic examination and critical appraisal of views on psychosis across the materialist-to-metaphysical spectrum. This is structured in four 'Focal Settings' that sequentially examine the construal of psychosis within different paradigms of psychospiritual understanding, which provide a historical overview of evolving understandings of psychosis within the tradition of psychiatry, in which psychospiritual matters are generally not considered.