Poynton, John

Brief Authority

Brief Authority gives an insider's perspective of one of the great issues of our time: the conflict between established materialism embraced by standard science, 'Dress'd in a little brief authority, ' and the growing holistic, spiritual view. The novel follows the struggles of a retired medically-trained psychiatrist as he becomes caught in this conflict through encounters with a cluster of gifted young people. How may a conventionally trained psychiatrist react when his fixed materialism is challenged? Could he even begin to think the unthinkable, that his entrenched world-view is unsustainable? It is a world-view that proves to be powerful; he finds himself placed on a knife-edge of deadening theory versus living experience