REVIEWS/ENDORSEMENTS
Guises of Desire
Hilda Reilly has written a vivid, powerful and highly readable version of Bertha’s story. The emotional turmoil of her experiences is empathetically portrayed against a carefully researched period setting and medical background. An absorbing and thought-provoking book.
Scientific and Medical Network Review
Hilda Reilly has written a novel of immense significance--a must read for anyone interested in the history of psychoanalysis.
Dr Terry Marks-Tarlow, author of Clinical Intuition in Psychotherapy: The Neurobiology of Embodied Response
‘[Reilly] writes superbly well and is thoroughly informed about her subject.’
Madness and Literature Network
This is a wonderful stroll through the Jewish culture of Vienna at the turn of the century, holding the hand of 'Anna O,' psychiatry's most famous patient, all the way. The local color is perfect, and Anna O becomes a believable and highly sympathetic young woman.
Dr Edward Shorter, Hannah Professor in the History of Medicine and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto
Reilly’s skilful writing and thorough research offer an empathetic portrayal of the vulnerable patient who had an abnormal attachment to the doctor who misdiagnosed her. Dark and distressing, but equally interesting, powerful, and educational.
The Lady
... the sympathetic Hilda Reilly has wrested the famous "Anna O" from the hands of clinicians and made her a whole woman again.
Herald Scotland
'The combination of a vivid portrayal of subjectivity with faithfulness to outer historical detail makes this a gripping story, easy to read, and providing significant insights.'
Transpersonal Psychology Review
Thanks to Hilda Reilly, Anna O. is no longer a name or a label but a real person with thoughts and feelings. Her trials and tribulations did not fit into neat diagnostic categories or reductive models of mental disorder, but reflected the aspirations, expectations, fears and taboos of the culture and society in which she lived. It is refreshing to see her side of the story, which highlights both the ambition and the limitations of psychiatry. This is a story, and a message, that desperately needs to be heard.
Dr Neel Burton, psychiatrist and author of The Meaning of Madness
Reilly's work is a vital contribution to understanding the birth and growth of psychoanalysis. But I also believe it's something more. It brings a soulful insight beyond the constraints of a clinical lens and allows the flawed and beautiful life of Pappenheim to take center stage. This book is a gift to anyone interested in psychoanalysis and the textures of human experience. I was moved reading it and in awe of the breadth of its scope.
Dr Deborah Serani, author of Living with Depression.
Historic figures often become reduced to selected details. Bertha Pappenheim is notable for many things, including being the first serious subject of Sigmund Freud and instrumental in the development of psychoanalysis. It is easy to forget that such people are, indeed, people. Even famous people have day to day lives and it is in the story of their lives that we begin to truly understand who they were and what it might have been like to be in their shoes. Hilda Reilly gives us the gift of Bertha Pappeheim's lived experience.
Richard Hill, Director, The MindScience Institute
Prickly Pears of Palestine: The People Behind the Politics
In all the political discussion about peace in the Middle East the lives of the Palestinians and their suffering has tended to be forgotten and Hilda Reilly's book brings out these human aspects so clearly and vividly, making the reader understand what it is really about.
The Rt Hon Tony Benn
This book gives a tender human face to the terrible suffering caused by the Israeli Palestinian conflict.
The New Statesman
Prickly Pears of Palestine is a moving and vivid introduction to the realities of life in Palestine/Israel.
Bruce Kent
At last a book that acknowledges that there are two sides to every story.
Waseem Mahmood, OBE
I thought I was well-informed on Palestine, but still reading Hilda Reilly's Prickly Pears of Palestine was an eye-opening experience.
Craig Murray, author of Murder in Samarkand and former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan
Seeking Sanctuary: Journeys to Sudan
There is a current fashion in this country for re-inventing oneself by taking up a new life in another country. This is the focus of Seeking Sanctuary. But the stories in it unfold not in a Tuscan hill village, or a French farmhouse or a Greek island. They take us rather to the heart of Sudan, in the footsteps of a group of western converts to Islam who have chosen to settle in a Muslim country – in a process of hijra – as a means of more fully living their adopted religion.
Although a non-Muslim herself, the author’s stated intention in writing the book was to provide a counterbalance to the negative stereotyping of Muslims projected in the media. Struck by the contrast between the converts she knew in Sudan and the images hitting the post-9/11 headlines, she felt that their voices should be heard.
Seeking Sanctuary addresses many of the issues central to an understanding of Islam and the phenomenon of conversion, much of it in the converts’ own words. Their personal journeys are set against the backdrop of present-day Sudan and supplemented by the author’s own exploration of its social, cultural, political and religious dimensions.
Seeking Sanctuary is an easy and enjoyable read which nevertheless encourages us to look from a different angle at modern western society. It also provides insight into a culture that is little known and largely misunderstood.
Emel Magazine
Seeking Sanctuary opens a window to a different world, exploring the motivation of convert Muslims who migrated to Sudan in search of a life more conducive to their beliefs. Although structured more like project report than a travelogue, the narrative captures the reader due to the author’s sincerity in approaching the topic and her readiness to let the people featured in her book tell their own stories. Hilda Reilly does not claim to be impartial. She recounts how after having lived in Sudan for several years she started seeing her native England with different eyes and how she wanted to demonstrate that migration was not just a phenomenon of those from Third World countries seeking out a materially better life in the West, but that their countries had cultural and spiritual offerings, too, which attracted Westerners. Her account sets Sudan aside from the hard-line, fundamentalist image in which it is portrayed in Western media, yet she does not gloss over the problems and contradictions. She states that sometimes “the niceness of a population is directly proportional to its poverty level or to the degree of political repression”, and quotes Tigani Hassan, the Director of the Faith Research Centre in Khartoum as saying: “You will notice that in Sudan the people don’t bend their heads to any ruler. He may have his own drum and beat it and dance to it but the people do what they are convinced to do. The net result right now is that there is a disparity between what is said and what is practised.”
Reilly displays great respect for Islam whilst trying to shed some light on the difference between Islam and cultural practices, but she is informed only by what she has been told when in the Sudan, so unfortunately she perpetuates some stereotypes alongside with dispelling others. She takes claims by her Sudanese interlocutors at face value that certain requirements are found in the Qur’an, and in her account of traditional practices one could easily come to the erroneous conclusion that tribal scars were only applied to the faces of females.
The main contributions in her book come, however, from the Western converts she interviewed and who managed to carve out a Spartan but spiritually rewarding niche for themselves within Sudanese society. They reflect on their lives and aspirations prior to their migration and on their presence in the heart of this African nation. Having been received with the welcoming charm, hospitality and generosity of the Sudanese people they are in many ways cocooned from the ethnic tension between Northern and Southern Sudanese against the backdrop of war and a fragile peace treaty, the excesses in Darfur, or the “routine torture and ill-treatment in the so-called ‘ghost houses’ where people were detained incommunicado without charge or trial.” When Reilly mentions the case of a young Mexican missionary she knew, who “was abducted and tortured by the security police” and “so traumatised by the experience that he had to leave the country”, she cannot know that similar treatment had also been meted out to Western convert Muslims whose attempt to settle in the Sudan did not go as smoothly as for her interviewees.
And even for them the experience of having sanctuary in Sudan may be short-lived: Sudan is rapidly undergoing a process of economic development and liberalisation, bringing with it many of the aspects of Western life-style they once tried to escape. “Because of all this influx of anti-Islamic practices you are going to be subject to the same situation you find in any of the other African cities around the country and in any of the European capitals of the world”, reflects Abdel Karim, one of the converts featured in the book. “If this happens I will live in the country. If it reaches me in the country I will leave.” Seeking Sanctuary is published by Eye Books, London, and definitely worth a read.
Mathaba News Network
Hilda Reilly has written a vivid, powerful and highly readable version of Bertha’s story. The emotional turmoil of her experiences is empathetically portrayed against a carefully researched period setting and medical background. An absorbing and thought-provoking book.
Scientific and Medical Network Review
Hilda Reilly has written a novel of immense significance--a must read for anyone interested in the history of psychoanalysis.
Dr Terry Marks-Tarlow, author of Clinical Intuition in Psychotherapy: The Neurobiology of Embodied Response
‘[Reilly] writes superbly well and is thoroughly informed about her subject.’
Madness and Literature Network
This is a wonderful stroll through the Jewish culture of Vienna at the turn of the century, holding the hand of 'Anna O,' psychiatry's most famous patient, all the way. The local color is perfect, and Anna O becomes a believable and highly sympathetic young woman.
Dr Edward Shorter, Hannah Professor in the History of Medicine and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto
Reilly’s skilful writing and thorough research offer an empathetic portrayal of the vulnerable patient who had an abnormal attachment to the doctor who misdiagnosed her. Dark and distressing, but equally interesting, powerful, and educational.
The Lady
... the sympathetic Hilda Reilly has wrested the famous "Anna O" from the hands of clinicians and made her a whole woman again.
Herald Scotland
'The combination of a vivid portrayal of subjectivity with faithfulness to outer historical detail makes this a gripping story, easy to read, and providing significant insights.'
Transpersonal Psychology Review
Thanks to Hilda Reilly, Anna O. is no longer a name or a label but a real person with thoughts and feelings. Her trials and tribulations did not fit into neat diagnostic categories or reductive models of mental disorder, but reflected the aspirations, expectations, fears and taboos of the culture and society in which she lived. It is refreshing to see her side of the story, which highlights both the ambition and the limitations of psychiatry. This is a story, and a message, that desperately needs to be heard.
Dr Neel Burton, psychiatrist and author of The Meaning of Madness
Reilly's work is a vital contribution to understanding the birth and growth of psychoanalysis. But I also believe it's something more. It brings a soulful insight beyond the constraints of a clinical lens and allows the flawed and beautiful life of Pappenheim to take center stage. This book is a gift to anyone interested in psychoanalysis and the textures of human experience. I was moved reading it and in awe of the breadth of its scope.
Dr Deborah Serani, author of Living with Depression.
Historic figures often become reduced to selected details. Bertha Pappenheim is notable for many things, including being the first serious subject of Sigmund Freud and instrumental in the development of psychoanalysis. It is easy to forget that such people are, indeed, people. Even famous people have day to day lives and it is in the story of their lives that we begin to truly understand who they were and what it might have been like to be in their shoes. Hilda Reilly gives us the gift of Bertha Pappeheim's lived experience.
Richard Hill, Director, The MindScience Institute
Prickly Pears of Palestine: The People Behind the Politics
In all the political discussion about peace in the Middle East the lives of the Palestinians and their suffering has tended to be forgotten and Hilda Reilly's book brings out these human aspects so clearly and vividly, making the reader understand what it is really about.
The Rt Hon Tony Benn
This book gives a tender human face to the terrible suffering caused by the Israeli Palestinian conflict.
The New Statesman
Prickly Pears of Palestine is a moving and vivid introduction to the realities of life in Palestine/Israel.
Bruce Kent
At last a book that acknowledges that there are two sides to every story.
Waseem Mahmood, OBE
I thought I was well-informed on Palestine, but still reading Hilda Reilly's Prickly Pears of Palestine was an eye-opening experience.
Craig Murray, author of Murder in Samarkand and former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan
Seeking Sanctuary: Journeys to Sudan
There is a current fashion in this country for re-inventing oneself by taking up a new life in another country. This is the focus of Seeking Sanctuary. But the stories in it unfold not in a Tuscan hill village, or a French farmhouse or a Greek island. They take us rather to the heart of Sudan, in the footsteps of a group of western converts to Islam who have chosen to settle in a Muslim country – in a process of hijra – as a means of more fully living their adopted religion.
Although a non-Muslim herself, the author’s stated intention in writing the book was to provide a counterbalance to the negative stereotyping of Muslims projected in the media. Struck by the contrast between the converts she knew in Sudan and the images hitting the post-9/11 headlines, she felt that their voices should be heard.
Seeking Sanctuary addresses many of the issues central to an understanding of Islam and the phenomenon of conversion, much of it in the converts’ own words. Their personal journeys are set against the backdrop of present-day Sudan and supplemented by the author’s own exploration of its social, cultural, political and religious dimensions.
Seeking Sanctuary is an easy and enjoyable read which nevertheless encourages us to look from a different angle at modern western society. It also provides insight into a culture that is little known and largely misunderstood.
Emel Magazine
Seeking Sanctuary opens a window to a different world, exploring the motivation of convert Muslims who migrated to Sudan in search of a life more conducive to their beliefs. Although structured more like project report than a travelogue, the narrative captures the reader due to the author’s sincerity in approaching the topic and her readiness to let the people featured in her book tell their own stories. Hilda Reilly does not claim to be impartial. She recounts how after having lived in Sudan for several years she started seeing her native England with different eyes and how she wanted to demonstrate that migration was not just a phenomenon of those from Third World countries seeking out a materially better life in the West, but that their countries had cultural and spiritual offerings, too, which attracted Westerners. Her account sets Sudan aside from the hard-line, fundamentalist image in which it is portrayed in Western media, yet she does not gloss over the problems and contradictions. She states that sometimes “the niceness of a population is directly proportional to its poverty level or to the degree of political repression”, and quotes Tigani Hassan, the Director of the Faith Research Centre in Khartoum as saying: “You will notice that in Sudan the people don’t bend their heads to any ruler. He may have his own drum and beat it and dance to it but the people do what they are convinced to do. The net result right now is that there is a disparity between what is said and what is practised.”
Reilly displays great respect for Islam whilst trying to shed some light on the difference between Islam and cultural practices, but she is informed only by what she has been told when in the Sudan, so unfortunately she perpetuates some stereotypes alongside with dispelling others. She takes claims by her Sudanese interlocutors at face value that certain requirements are found in the Qur’an, and in her account of traditional practices one could easily come to the erroneous conclusion that tribal scars were only applied to the faces of females.
The main contributions in her book come, however, from the Western converts she interviewed and who managed to carve out a Spartan but spiritually rewarding niche for themselves within Sudanese society. They reflect on their lives and aspirations prior to their migration and on their presence in the heart of this African nation. Having been received with the welcoming charm, hospitality and generosity of the Sudanese people they are in many ways cocooned from the ethnic tension between Northern and Southern Sudanese against the backdrop of war and a fragile peace treaty, the excesses in Darfur, or the “routine torture and ill-treatment in the so-called ‘ghost houses’ where people were detained incommunicado without charge or trial.” When Reilly mentions the case of a young Mexican missionary she knew, who “was abducted and tortured by the security police” and “so traumatised by the experience that he had to leave the country”, she cannot know that similar treatment had also been meted out to Western convert Muslims whose attempt to settle in the Sudan did not go as smoothly as for her interviewees.
And even for them the experience of having sanctuary in Sudan may be short-lived: Sudan is rapidly undergoing a process of economic development and liberalisation, bringing with it many of the aspects of Western life-style they once tried to escape. “Because of all this influx of anti-Islamic practices you are going to be subject to the same situation you find in any of the other African cities around the country and in any of the European capitals of the world”, reflects Abdel Karim, one of the converts featured in the book. “If this happens I will live in the country. If it reaches me in the country I will leave.” Seeking Sanctuary is published by Eye Books, London, and definitely worth a read.
Mathaba News Network
