Welcome to My Country [Abridged, Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

Lauren Slater (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 30, 1996

Slater takes the listener on a mesmerizing journey into her work with troubled psychiatric cases. With great humor, humanity, and insight, she makes us feel closer to understanding the foreign and frightening world of the schizophrenic, the depressed, the catatonic, the suicidal. Simultaneous hardcover release from Random House. 2 cassettes.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A psychologist whose empathy with her patients is tempered by her own bout of treated mental disability takes readers into encounters with her dysfunctional clients. With disarming candor, she allows her voice to mingle with those of her patients?schizophrenics, borderline personalities, bulimics and others?in an inner-city residential unit. Slater traces the early years of her career, expressing her belief in the transforming power of love, and she shares with readers the almost imperceptible changes in her patients' feelings that her intimacy with them brings about. As she interviews a patient in the very place where she herself was once incarcerated, the author ponders anew the mystery of why she "managed somehow to leave behind at least for now what looks like wreckage, and shape something solid from life," while others have not. This debut book opens a vista on emotional and mental distress. First serial to Harper's; author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In this fittingly subtitled work, Slater introduces the schizophrenic, depressed, and suicidal patients she treats. Painting tender portraits of these troubled souls, she recounts her efforts to close the gap between therapist and patient and persuades the listener to make similar connections. Slater's personal struggle with mental illness is touchingly revealed when she journeys to the treatment facility wherein she lived for long periods in order to treat a patient with problems reminiscent of her own. The author's flat narration underplays her elegant prose, which is more effective in the uncut print version (LJ 12/95) than in this abridged recording. All in all, large collections should consider.?Linda Bredengerd, Univ. of Pittsburgh Lib., Bradford, Pa.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Random House Audio; abridged edition edition (January 30, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679448829
• ISBN-13: 978-0679448822
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,776,992 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars 6 stories of mental health patients, October 4, 2000

By 

Maria from London (London UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Welcome to My Country (Paperback)

"I have learned that the only way to enter another's life is to find the vector points where my self & another self meet...There is no way, I believe, to do the work of therapy, which is, when all is said & done, the work of relationship, without finding your self in the patient & the patient's self in you. In this way, rifts within & between might be sealed, & the languages of our separate lives might come to share syllables, sentences, whole themes that bind us together".

This comes from the preface of "Welcome to my country". And, if the whole message of the book had to be put in one paragraph, this is the one. Never in this book does Lauren Slater write from a position of power, of "me versus them". Through her own recovery, through battling her own problems (see "Three Spheres") she knows what it is to reach out & touch that dark part within ourselves: the fact that she keeps the access open to that part of herself, the "sick" part, open to be used for understanding & relating to patients...this shows a great sensitivity, is not very common, & makes the book interesting & different.

Apart from this, the book contains 6 stories of therapy, the first in a group setting, the rest on an individual, one on one basis. All take place in the boston mental health clinic where the author worked, early in her practice. The stories are not the most original in the world, what makes the book original is SLater's personality & her writing, which often comes close to literature. I'm looking forward to more of her work.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Psychology Book I've Read, December 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Welcome to My Country (Paperback)

This book is one of the best books on mental health problems I have ever read. Each chapter introduces and describes a different type of mental illness (depression, personality disorder, etc.) through anecdotes from the author's clients and treatment situations. The author has a beautiful writing style, and the descriptions of the clients and their problems make them understandable not just intellectually but emotionally by the reader in a way that few books about mental health problems ever do, as few authors write this well or can empathize with the patients as Ms. Slater does. One can actually understand and feel what the patient does; this is not just a dry clinical book, which is frequently the case with topics such as this. Aside from understanding and feeling with the patients, it also helps one appreciate life and the human mind and soul better. I wish the author had written more books; I only hope she does in the future, as I will read them all.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Easy, Enjoyable Read, November 19, 1997

By 

[e-mail] (Boca Raton, FL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Welcome to My Country (Paperback)

Slater recalls her treatment of some of her most memorable clients. From her work at a group home for chronic schizophrenic males to an offensive, aggressive and violent man diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, Slater discusses how she reached out to these clients and tried to create a positive change in their lives. When she is asked to counsel a girl at the same psychiatric hospital where Slater was once a patient herself, memories come flooding back, along with the fear that she will be recognized and her career will be ruined. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in psychology, mental disorders or the therapy process.