Overview

A psychoanalyst's sensitive exploration of schizophrenia through the stories and words of three women patients In the spring of 1994, psychoanalyst-in-training Steven Poser arrived for his clinical internship at one of the last remaining nineteenth-century mental hospitals in New England. Intending to observe and offer compassionate care to the most chronically ill patients, he ended up staying for two years, forming close therapeutic relationships with three female patients suffering from schizophrenia, ""Agnes,"" ""Mrs. Lutzky,"" and ""Lucia."" Drawing from his clinical diary, Poser presents his encounters with the women in their own words, each speaking in a poetry of her own invention. Rather than treat the women as casualties of their illness or their words and actions as nonsensical, Poser sees his patients as dignified and struggling people—and not as markedly different from the rest of us as we might think. This is a deeply human book about the frailty and importance of human connection and the intangibly healing force of being heard.

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9780300276541

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Reviews

“The most moving book on the schizophrenic self that I have ever read. With tough-minded passion and creative intelligence, Dr. Poser takes us into the hearts and minds of the people whom he reached and who touched him.”—Christopher Bollas, author of When the Sun Bursts “The voices of schizophrenia are presented here without pathologisation, rendering the illness much less mad but no less disturbing as we recognise the deep well of suffering and terror it involves. An extraordinarily affecting and original book.”—Devorah Baum, author of On Marriage

Author Information

Steven Poser is a practicing psychoanalyst in New York City and the author of The Misfit and Though This Be Madness. Since 2015 he has been a member of the Faculty Psychotherapy Conference of the Department of Psychiatry, Mount Sinai Hospital. He lives in Salt Point, NY.

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