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Welcome
to My Country
(Paperback - 1996)
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.
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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.
More
Lauren Slater Books
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