Welcome to My Country: A Therapist's Memoir of Madness

by Lauren Slater and Laverne Slater

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385487398
• ISBN13: 9780385487399
• Release Date: July 1997
• Publisher: Anchor Books
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.43 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A Great Book

The book was fasinating reading about the dynamics between a therapist (with problems )trying to help her patients with similar difficulties. This set-up distinguishes Welcome to My Country from other, author-centered-self indulgent books (like PROZAC NATION). I really felt like I could relate to this author. She was so successful in her career yet she simply had a few things missing in her life (I'll leave those to you to figure out). I have read many books about women with mental problems but this is one of my favorites. It is simpler than PROZAC NATION but I think just as effective in terms of remembering characters and plot several months after you finish the book. The characters are not superficial. Not everybody would like this book. Rather, it is for the reader who likes deep literature and is not afraid of reading about all kinds of emotional problams. Moreover, much of Lauren's life revolves around pychology, so one should not read this book unless they love that topic, or are in need of an emotional story. I highly recommend this to anyone in the mental health or helping professions.

Best Psychology Book I've Read

This book is one of the best books on mental health problems I have ever read. Each chapter introduces and describes a different type of mental illness (depression, personality disorder, etc.) through anecdotes from the author's clients and treatment situations. The author has a beautiful writing style, and the descriptions of the clients and their problems make them understandable not just intellectually but emotionally by the reader in a way that few books about mental health problems ever do, as few authors write this well or can empathize with the patients as Ms. Slater does. One can actually understand and feel what the patient does; this is not just a dry clinical book, which is frequently the case with topics such as this. Aside from understanding and feeling with the patients, it also helps one appreciate life and the human mind and soul better. I wish the author had written more books; I only hope she does in the future, as I will read them all.

An Easy, Enjoyable Read

Slater recalls her treatment of some of her most memorable clients. From her work at a group home for chronic schizophrenic males to an offensive, aggressive and violent man diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, Slater discusses how she reached out to these clients and tried to create a positive change in their lives. When she is asked to counsel a girl at the same psychiatric hospital where Slater was once a patient herself, memories come flooding back, along with the fear that she will be recognized and her career will be ruined. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in psychology, mental disorders or the therapy process.

Interested in mental health? Read this book!

A wonderful book of real-life, colorful experiences of a psychologist and the schizophrenic men and other patients with whom she has works. The author shows that her patients are often insightful, not unlike herself, sometimes enviable and sometimes tragic. Her prose is equally engaging One of my favorite books in a long time that I think is a must-read for everyone interested in the mental health profession, and a great read for everyone else

Compelling memoir of working and healing in a mental clinic

I have to admit to a bias as I review this book. Lauren Slater was both my English student and, subsequently, my ³foster² daughter; in fact, her time living with my family in our seventeenth-century house comprises part of the moving last chapter of her book, a chapter in which she talks of healing, her own and that of a patient¹s. The majority of the book, which she terms ²creative non-fiction,² is her account of working with psychotic patients in a clinic in East Boston. Her descriptions of these patients, her ability to identify with them no matter how desperate their circumstances might seem, combined with her lyrical, metaphoric use of language makes this book compelling reading. The only question I asked myself as I read it was the extent to which I was reading ³fictionalized fact². If the last chapter is typical, I can personally vouch for the fact that Ms. Slater took almost no liberties, except to disguise names and some identifying details, suggesting that the rest of the book is largely true to life, albeit more beautifully expressed than one would expect the messy lives of the psychotic and neurotic persons who inhabit the pages to be. I recommend it!