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A review by lory_enterenchanted
Welcome to My Country: A Therapist's Memoir of Madness by Lauren Slater
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.0
I found this book through the excerpt included in You Can't Make This Stuff Up, the last chapter titled "Three Spheres." It's a series of interconnected essays exploring the author's interactions with the so-called mentally ill, and glancing at her own past mental struggles. I found the mannered, poetic prose to be very effective at reaching toward expression of impossible to express, liminal experiences...others may find it opaque and irritating. But that will probably be only if you have had no experience of such states yourself.
That lack of experience, or the ability to admit those dark and wordless places in ourselves, is probably what produces the distance between "therapist" and patient" that Slater urges us to break down. "My patient and I sit down, look at each other. I see myself in her. I trust she sees herself in me. This is where we begin." A moving, heart-ful yet not at all sentimental dive into some of the deepest mysteries of being human. I won't soon forget this.
That lack of experience, or the ability to admit those dark and wordless places in ourselves, is probably what produces the distance between "therapist" and patient" that Slater urges us to break down. "My patient and I sit down, look at each other. I see myself in her. I trust she sees herself in me. This is where we begin." A moving, heart-ful yet not at all sentimental dive into some of the deepest mysteries of being human. I won't soon forget this.