Curing Nuclear Madness: A New-Age Prescription for Personal Actions

E.T. Sharp specialized in military history and disarmament and lived in Toronto.

Curing Nuclear Madness is an attempt to address the most difficult problem facing the peace movement: what can the individual do to prevent nuclear war? Although there is a vast literature on the causes and effects of nuclear warfare, no satisfactory solution to the problem has yet been proposed.

Sommers, a Toronto-based psychiatrist and sexual counsellor, attempts to solve the global problem on a personal level. Taking his cue from Einstein’s call for the invention of a new way of thinking about war, Sommers attempts to link his solutions to the sexual and personal problems he treats as a doctor to the grand-scale disorders that contribute to a cold war mentality. Before a truly peaceful and bomb-free world can be created, adults have to become sensual and sexually fulfilled.

The ten-step program he develops to create the new man is supposed to free mankind from both worries and inhibitions, thus enabling a peaceful society to emerge. Although the book is an interesting and thoughtful attempt at overcoming a baffling problem, neither the logic Sommers uses to address the question nor the solutions he comes up with are very convincing. This book is yet another answer to the unanswerable question.