Pstalemate by Lester Del Rey

Here we have a 70s scifi novel about a man who finds an awakening of telepathic powers within himself. And as new information comes to him, he finds that he only has 3 months to cure himself, or disable these powers or else he'll lose his mind forever. More information on this might spoil the story.

This man is Harry Bronson, an engineer who hangs out in literate circles that do drugs and write science fiction. There are a lot of good scenes in this book, written by the husband of Del Rey publishing's founder, Judy-Lynn Del Rey. I feel like this was a great time for scifi and fantasy, when great writers were getting out of the pulp magazines and into novels.

Novels about weird, adult things were written with an exciting pace and efficient language, rare in today's epically thick fantastical novels. And for me, this was the right book at the right time, because new fantasy is starting to grate on me. I've never been especially interested in uplifting fairy tales about 'weird' kids who are secretly mega special, and heroes for their idiosyncrasies. Only in fairy tales.

In Pstaleamte, newly telepathic Harry goes through all manner of psychologically perverse hell, trying to fix what others might imagine is a gift until it occurs to them.