The Desire to Heal: A Doctor's Education in Empathy, Identity, and Poetry (Paperback)

by Rafael Campo (Author) "His erection startled me..." (more)
Key Phrases: formal poetry, pneumocystis pneumonia, San Francisco, Amherst College, New Jersey (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Rafael Campo, the author of The Other Man Was Me and What the Body Told, is both a doctor and an important contemporary poet. In The Desire to Heal, he uses his gift for language to delineate and explicate the connections between his two vocations, writing and healing, and his roles as a gay man and an educator. Campo's topic is always the body; he understands its fragility and resistance, its power and grace. His prose is precise and poetic, and his insights are revelations. The Desire to Heal is a work of literary grace and compassion--a memoir that illuminates the world with new light and urgency.

Review
An extraordinary memoir about the body and the soul. -- Richard Rodriguez

An extraordinary memoir about the body and the soul. (Richard Rodriguez )

Campo's gift is being able to describe the evolution of his manhood . . . fearlessly and with breathtaking honesty. He is truly a doctor of the soul. -- Abraham Verghese

Campo's humanity suffuses these absorbing, deeply felt essays, written in bold and graceful prose. -- Mark Doty

Campo's humanity suffuses these absorbing, deeply felt essays, written in bold and graceful prose. (Mark Doty )

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.; 1 edition (June 17, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393317714
• ISBN-13: 978-0393317718
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #931,113 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful language, beautiful thoughts., July 22, 1999

By A Customer

As a pre-med student, this book caught my interest because of its focus on the side of medicine that is internal to the physician: the medicine that works in a physician's heart and mind. Campo gives a poetic and well-constructed testimony of his struggles and triumphs in reconciling his personality with the world around him and the difference between simply wanting to practice medicine and having a "desire to heal." I definitely recommend this to anyone with an intense desire to see the humanity of a field that is so often seen as something sterile and impersonal.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A young doctor's journey of self-discovery, June 7, 2003

By	Ronald Scheer "rockysquirrel" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I almost didn't read this book. I was expecting a discourse on the healing power of the creative arts as an alternative therapy in medicine. Campo may write about that elsewhere, but not here. If anything, the book concerns the power of poetry for the physician in need of healing.

Campo's book is part memoir, part polemic. Chiefly, it recounts his struggles to forge a single identiy as doctor, poet, Latino, and gay man. He articulates with considerable and painful clarity the many ways in which these separate identities have been in conflict. They seem finally to come together in his role as a physician to AIDS patients. But even in that there is conflict, both with the devastating nature of the disease and the efforts of managed health care to diminish his best efforts to fulfill his calling as a doctor.

As memoir, his book retraces the steps of his life journey into his profession (at the time of the book's writing he is still a young doctor, in his early 30s). We meet his Cuban-American parents, learn of his middle class suburban background, and hear of his struggles of sexual identity, which produce in him intense shame, anger and fear. We follow him to Amherst, where he meets and falls in love with a fellow med student who becomes his life partner, and from there to residency in UCSF hospital in San Francisco. He describes his bout with suspected cancer, discovered after a skiing accident. And he tells of a patient, Gary, dying of AIDS, who teaches him much about being both a doctor and a poet.

As polemic, his book argues against homophobia (even as he overcomes it in himself) and its contribution to the continuing health crisis for gay men. He argues that the catch phrase "safe sex" diminishes the fragile self-esteem and challenges the identities of gay men. He argues that modern medicine, with its reliance on technology and pharmaceuticals and insistence on professional objectivity, robs young doctors of the compassion, empathy, and desire that drew them into the profession in the first place -- and thus makes them less effective in the delivery of health care. And he argues for the legitimacy of poetry as both a practice and a guiding metaphor for the role of physician. He notes that poetry and healing are both arts; one informs and supports the other.

I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the practice of modern medicine, the training and self-education of physicians, and journeys of self-discovery. It is especially affirming in its embrace of same-sex affection, love, and passion. As companion volumes, I recommend two other books: Richard Rodriguez' memoir "Hunger of Memory" and Abraham Verghese's account of his experience as an AIDS doctor, "My Own Country."

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Breathtaking, August 9, 2001

By	Diana "dianag825" (United States) - See all my reviews

Eloquent, honest, beautiful. It's obvious Campo is a poet at heart, and that he brings his poet's sensibility to his life as a physician. Although the details of this book are personal and particular (his Cuban heritage, life as a gay man, experiences caring for AIDS patients at the height of the epidemic), Campo's observations are universal.