A Life of Philip K. Dick: The Man Who Remembered the Future

Binswanger’s model became known as Existentialist Psychiatry. Like all forms of therapy, this is an attempt to cure a person of psychological problems. To do this an existentialist psychiatrist must seek out the ‘lived world’, the Lebenswelt, of his or her client. This is, in simple terms, a person’s view of how the world functions for them. Centra

And the final inevitable phildickian twist? PKD was born in ’28 and died in ’82 – the same numbers reversed, just how he would have wanted it.

The following autumn, Anne became pregnant again. But this baby had not been planned and was certainly not expected as PKD and Anne had been using birth control. Anne did not feel ready for a fifth child. Nor did she feel that they had the financial security to support such a large family. Despite strong opposition from PKD, Anne had an abortion. S

PKD would later claim that the reason all his relationships ultimately ended in failure was that ‘I am so autocratic when I’m writing… completely bellicose and defensive in terms of guarding my privacy… It’s very hard to live with me when I’m writing.’198 Yet despite the often turbulent breakups, he said, ‘I still have a good relationship with my e

‘“We see as through a glass darkly,” Paul says in First Corinthians—will this someday be rewritten as: “We see as into a passive infrared scanner darkly?” A scanner which, as in Orwell’s 1984, is watching us all the time? Our TV tube watching back at us as we watch it, as amused, or bored, or anyhow somewhat as entertained by what we do as we are b

He was searching for the magazine that would complete his collection. He knew that this rare edition would contain a story called The Empire Never Ended. This younger version of PKD also believed, like his older self, that this much sought-after story would reveal the secrets of the universe to him. Every time the dream ended he had managed to get

This book deals with the illusory nature of reality from the viewpoint of a character existing in two separate states of consciousness. What is real and what is illusion becomes a fascinating meditation on sanity and insanity. Many of the events described in the book were actually witnessed by PKD in his time sharing his property in Santa Venetia w

Vince Lusby says he witnessed fights between PKD, Jeanette and her brother, who had soon appeared on the scene, and that threats were made with regard to the destruction of PKD’s writing and, especially, his records.41 When the inevitable divorce proceedings took place, this threat to PKD’s musical collection was cited as one of the grounds for div

We know that he used psychometrics as plot devices in some of his novels, including the Voight-Kampff Empathy Test in Do Androids Dream of Electric