Synopsis
Through writer and psychologist Lauren Slater we come to know Lenny, Moxi, Oscar, Marie, and other patients suffering from mental and emotional distress, and through them, come to understand more about the workings of the human mind and the human spirit.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1997-08-01 |
| Size | | Length: | 199 pages | | Height: | 8.5 in | | Width: | 5.5 in | | Thickness: | 0.5 in | | Weight: | 6.4 oz |
Publisher's Note
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.
ally ill patients that "gently unfurls to become a revealing memoir and thoughtful meditation on the therapeutic process itself" ("The New York Times"), brilliant young writer and therapist Lauren Slater brings readers closer to understanding themselves, one another, and the human condition. Targeted mailings.
Industry Reviews
"This is a beautiful book. I can't say that it brought me peace, because there are no happy endings here, but it showed me a more stringent kind of comfort, an active engagement with people whose world is constantly melting....Slater's ethic of linking is the only non-schizoid way for her to live: She is both doctor and patient, and she must never forget it."
Nation - Stacey D'erasmo (02/26/1996)
"Reading this book was like reading an intimate letter from a fascinating friend. It achieves what I ask of art: it took hidden and little-understood parts of my own mind and soul and connected them to the light of day."
Advertisement - Lucy Grealy
"Powerful. Like Oliver Sacks, Ms. Slater writes about her patients with enormous compassion and insight."
New York Times Book Review - Michiko Kakutani
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