Welcome to My Country: Journeys into the World of a Therapist and Her Patients: A Therapist's Memoir of Madness - Softcover

Lauren Slater

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385487398 ISBN 13: 9780385487399

Publisher: Anchor Books,U.S., 2008

Synopsis

Lauren Slater, a brilliant writer who is a young therapist, takes us on a mesmerizing personal and professional journey in this remarkable memoir about her work with mental and emotional illness. The territory of the mind and of madness can seem a foreign, even frightening place-until you read Welcome to My Country.

Writing in a powerful and original voice, Lauren Slater closes the distance between "us" and "them," transporting us into the country of Lenny, Moxi, Oscar, and Marie. She lets us watch as she interacts with and strives to understand patients suffering from mental and emotional distress-the schizophrenic, the depressed, the suicidal. As the young psychologist responds to, reflects on, and re-creates her interactions with the inner realities of the dispossessed, she moves us to a deeper understanding of the complexities of the human mind and spirit. And then, in a stunning final chapter, the psychologist confronts herself, when she is asked to treat a young woman, bulimic and suicidal, who is on the same ward where Slater herself was once such a patient.

Like An Unquiet Mind, Listening to Prozac and Girl, Interrupted, Welcome to My Country is a beautifully written, captivating, and revealing book, an unusual personal and professional memoir that brings us closer to understanding ourselves, one another, and the human condition.

About this title

About the Author:

A psychologist and writer, Lauren Slater is the author of five books of nonfiction and two memoirs, as well as a collection of short stories. She has received numerous awards, including a 2004 National Endowment for the Arts award, multiple inclusions in Best American volumes, and a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Synopsis:

Provides a look inside the world of the schizophrenic, the suicidal, and other troubled individuals, in a personal study that chronicles the author's work with patients suffering from mental and emotional distress.

About this edition

• Publisher: Anchor Books,U.S.
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0385487398
• ISBN 13: 9780385487399
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224