It's a nicely written article, but I have to take issue with the attempt to attach a psychiatric diagnosis to PKD, more than 40 years after his death. By all ac

It's a nicely written article, but I have to take issue with the attempt to attach a psychiatric diagnosis to PKD, more than 40 years after his death. By all accounts he was increasingly mentally unstable — the heavy drug and alcohol use did him no favours — and certainly had episodes of deep clinical depression and what would probably qualify as narcissistic traits. But to armchair-diagnose him as a psychopath seems wrong. The Vancouver period retold in this article is interesting and tragic because it marks the nadir of his 1970s drug addiction; after his suicide attempt, he was able to enter a recovery program (albeit an unfortunately cultish one with parallels to Scientology), weaning himself off heavy amphetamine use, moving out of the drug house and to Orange County, then starting to try write more "adult" novels (he wrote "A Scanner Darkly" during this time), which would lead to his significant international recognition towards the end of his life. But just as things got better, the VALIS incident happened, and he relapsed and started drinking whiskey every day, which contributed to his early death.