To Wrestle With Demons: A Psychiatrist Struggles to Understand His Patients and Himself [Hardcover]

Keith R. Ablow (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0880485469 | ISBN-13: 978-0880485463 | Publication Date: September 1992

"To Wrestle with Demons" offers a glimpse of a psychiatrist's innermost thoughts about how his work affects his patients and himself, and also reflects the society in which we live. Ths collection of columns originally appeared in "The Washington Post". Describing the unconscious as music, "a silent and explosive score", Dr. Ablow recalls the process of helping patients ferret our the past from the deep recesses of their minds. He describes the lonely man who, gaining a sense of security from hearing voices, refuses the medication that would take them away...the depressed woman whose extreme dependence on others is rooted in a violent and abusive childhood...the doting husband whose obsessive devotion to his ill wife harks back to the tragic loss of a childhood friend. In delving into the minds of his patients, Dr. Ablow must also confront himself. He speaks with candour about the guilt he feels about exchanging empathy for money, his struggle to help a homeless veteran, and the embarrassment of warning a mother of her son's intent to kill her. Through his eyes, the reader confronts a patient's suicide and a close colleague's murder. Discussed here, among many issues, are poverty, the insanity defence patients rights, sexual malpractice, and changing medical economics. Captured here is the critical moment at which psychiatry now finds itself - attempting to integrate technology with spirituality, science with the soul, and economics with empathy.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A young psychiatrist examines his responses to his first years on the job in these essays, originally published in the Washington Post . As a resident in an unidentified Boston hospital, Ablow tells us about his patients, colleagues and supervisors with youthful, though measured, enthusiasm and in direct prose uncluttered by jargon. A woman comes to the mental health clinic with a mystifying symptom: her feet feel as if they're burning. She and Ablow discover the sensation originated when her grandson went to Saudi Arabia to serve in Desert Storm. Surprised during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings to hear a respected male psychiatrist make a blatantly sexist remark about a female resident, Ablow notes that even in supposedly enlightened psychiatric circles, sexism continues to "smolder underground." Other subjects include the use of electro-shock therapy and drugs in treatment. Ablow's main topic remains the individuals he sees, and in the connections he forged with them he finds proof of his belief that "we are much more alone than we need to be."
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This book is a collection of short essays that originally appeared in the Washington Post , discussing a number of topics, such as electroshock therapy, the controversial antidepressant Prozac, the problems of the homeless, and the dynamics of the patient/therapist relationship. Ablow is a fine writer, but despite the book's subtitle, we learn little about him or his patients. Sometimes a collection of newspaper articles becomes more than the sum of its parts, but in this case the result feels thin. Public libraries that do not keep back issues of the Washington Post and are not too strapped for cash (if such exist) may want to consider this title; others can wait for this promising author to write a "real" book.
- Mary Ann Hughes, Washington State Univ. Libs., Pullman
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Amer Psychiatric Pub (September 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0880485469
• ISBN-13: 978-0880485463
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,690,563 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A deliciously contrarian view of the psychiatric profession., September 12, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: To Wrestle With Demons: A Psychiatrist Struggles to Understand His Patients and Himself (Hardcover)

The authors will be familiar to any regular reader of alt.flame.psychiatry. Ablow and Coles have a long-standing reputation as two of the most provocative--and talented--investigators of the region where social norms, criminal activity, and the human brain meet. That's brain, not mind, and the distinction is an important one when approaching A & C's body of work. Wielding an informed position best described as "neo-materialism," the authors masterfully unearth the links between doctor and patient, criminal and victim, normalcy and deviance. In particular, this work puts to rest many of the issues raised in Danielski's "The Relationship of the Physician and the Trauma Patient," [1986] and Bearden's "Shrinks and Other Friends" [1992]. Please don't get the impression that A & C's work is simply another dry academic work on patient/doctor interaction, though. This is also a penetrating first-person account of one doctor's frightening but ultimately redemptive plunge into the nightmarish world of the mentally disturbed. A tasty read, and highly recommended for everyone, from fans of true-crime to serious academics hungering for the latest in therapeutic theory.