Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Book Preview: #1 I worked as a clinical intern at a psychiatric inpatient unit in Manhattan in 1994. The patients on the ward were diverse in ethnicity and age, many poor, and many with rough lives and recurrent diagnoses.
#2 I had visited a psychiatric ward when I was eight years old, and I had noticed the same phenomenon then. The patients there seemed to be in a great deal of pain, but they were also very isolated. I began to wonder if we could do more to support patients' long-term healing.
#3 I began to realize that instead of helping patients get better, we were making them worse by reinforcing their burdens and handing them a deterministic perspective.
#4 I began asking my patients questions outside the psychoanalytic mold. How are you doing now. I'd ask. What happened this week. What's new. Questions that brought them into the present. They'd adjust themselves, sit up straighter, and lean forward, looking me in the eye.
