Dream State: The Storm Within
All books · Literary memoir
What did it feel like?
By Justin McDermott · Complete manuscript · Unpublished
Voices, visions and extraordinary significance enter an ordinary life of work, family, horses and friendship. Dream State: The Storm Within is Justin McDermott’s memoir of psychosis, survival and the work of finding a way back.
Read an extract
From “Session One – The Storm” · About 3 minutes
The clinical psychologist asks me where it begins.
He has a way of asking a short question and then leaving it alone. Most people rescue you from silence after a few seconds. He lets it remain long enough to become useful.
“Wherever you believe it starts,” he says.
“That is not the same as where it actually starts.”
“No,” he says. “It rarely is.”
The room is deliberately plain: soft white walls, a faint vent-hum, and a framed gum tree rendered in strokes that do not quite commit to realism. His notebook rests open on one knee. The pen lies across the page rather than pointing at me.
I look toward the window, buying time.
“Mum,” I say. Then, almost immediately, “The bottle shop.”
He waits.
“The lightning,” I add.
“That is three beginnings.”
“They are connected.”
“I believe you.” His voice carries no challenge, only caution. “But connected is not the same as interchangeable.”
I feel the first small resistance rise in me. The urge to give him the polished version. The version with weather, judgement, white fire and four instructions arriving at exactly the right moment.
He notices.
“You start where the story is loudest,” he says.
“That is usually where the story is.”
“Sometimes.” A small pause. “Sometimes it is only where the damage becomes visible.”
The sentence lands without accusation. That is one of the things I will gradually learn about him: he can disagree without reaching for humiliation.
“So you do not want the lightning?”
“I do.” He shifts the notebook slightly but does not lift the pen. “Give me the storm first. We can come back for the weather that made it possible.”
I was young, exhausted, and trying not to fall apart.
As soon as I say it, the room begins to loosen around me.
The gum tree fades first. The vent-hum deepens into wind. The filtered daylight drops away, and the carpet hardens beneath my feet into wet asphalt.
And I am back at the drive-through bottle shop, the night lightning found me.
The first thing that returns is the smell – hot asphalt rising in the rain, wet cardboard exhaling old hops, industrial cleaner burned into concrete. Then the sound: thunder rolling over corrugated iron in long surges. Wind drives rain sideways against the windows.
Outside, the sky keeps tearing the darkness open and stitching it shut. Each flash shows the world for a split-second – cars, puddles, the neon sign trembling – and then the night swallows it again.
And inside me, something answers.
Extract from Dream State: The Storm Within. © Justin McDermott.
Inside the book
The story follows fear, loss and hospitalisation alongside the relationships and daily practices that helped make a return possible. Horses, friendship and ordinary responsibilities remain part of that life. They give the reader a way to meet the person living through experiences that can be difficult to describe from the outside.
The felt experience of voices, visions and a world charged with significance.
The effects of fear, loss and hospitalisation on an ordinary life.
Relationships and everyday practices that helped make a return possible.
Who it is for
Begin here if you want the lived story behind The Dream State Compass. The memoir offers an entry point for readers of personal narrative, people with their own unusual experiences, and family members or supporters seeking a closer understanding.
Its place in the Compass
The memoir is the lived starting point for the wider project. When Meaning Becomes Sovereign takes up a question that follows from it: how can an interpretation become powerful enough to govern a life?
Explore When Meaning Becomes Sovereign · About the Compass project
A shorter way into the writing
We Are Vast. A shorter reflection on how much of a life can remain outside another person’s view.
Read more or get in touch
This is a complete, unpublished manuscript. Publishing enquiries welcome. To request a longer sample or discuss editorial interest, email Justin about Dream State: The Storm Within.
Browse all five books · Read the Field Notes · Meet the author