Paul Linde

The good:

The stories of the patients, mad, bad, high, low enough to want to commit suicide and all the other varieties of craziness that end them up in a psychiatric emergency room.

The indifferent:

As so much of it is on the job, I am usually interested in the methods and practice of medical training. However, the author's training for this job was essentially talking. About himself. I didn't find this fascinating. There were discussions of patients' rights and the ethics of treatment which also weren't fascinating but quite interesting.

The bad:

The author takes it on himself to represent his entire medical speciality and philosophises and pontificates on too many boring aspects related to his profession like insurance companies, Big Pharma and all the usual suspects.

I used to like Tolstoy and quickly learned (from reading Anna Karenina) to skip over the politics and peasants and philosophising. I wish I'd read this book like that too.
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Linde uses patient stories to open discussions of psychiatry/psychology concepts and intervention principles. It makes for a somewhat uneasy blend of story and pedagogy. The most consistent focus is on the author and his growth as a psychiatrist. This is fine; however, Linde often makes statements about philosophy and practice that he overgeneralizes to most or all psychiatric workers. I don't agree with Linde at a reasonable number of points, and would not have been troubled by this if he did not make such over-inclusive assertions. This puts me, a reader who has worked in multiple psychiatric assessment and treatment units, in the position of countering Linde as I'm reading, which distances me emotionally more than I would have thought going into it.… (más)