Peaking out

In 1965 Al Siebert, author of The Survivor Personality, received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan and was awarded a fellowship for post-doctoral training at the Menninger Foundation. The month before his fellowship started he found himself swept up in a life-transforming peak experience rich with insights and synchronicity. During this time he conducted an experimental interview with a young woman diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic. His interviewing method led her to immediate recovery. When Dr. Siebert told the psychologists and psychiatrists at the Menninger Foundation about his extraordinary breakthrough, they declared him mentally ill. They cancelled his fellowship. He was locked up in the back ward of a psychiatric hospital. Signed out "Against Medical Advice" for thirty years, this respected educator, business owner, author, and community leader now tells his fascinating story. In Peaking Out he describes a joyous, weeks long, mind-freeing peak experience, exposes undocumented practices and delusions in psychiatry, and reveals how he discovered the survivor personality.