cover image The Making of a Modern Psychiatrist

The Making of a Modern Psychiatrist

Neil Clark Warren, Mark Warren. Doubleday Books, $16.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-385-19821-9

""You will have to use all your resources and defenses,'' Warren is warned by a supervisor as he begins his first year of psychiatric residency at a state mental hospital. Using eight composite case histories of actual patients most of them violent, including a suicidal would-be actress and an incoherent Vietnamese refugeethe author recounts in lively detail his day-to-day struggles to develop as a doctor and as a human being, learning to deal with his own anger, exhaustion and conflicts along with those of his patients. Without sensationalizing, he is candid about the horrors of ``Bedlam,'' as he calls the hospital, admits to persistent frustration and doubts about his capabilities and about the mental-health and judicial systems. Gradually, however, with the help of his wife, he begins to see results and to believe in his ability to communicate with his patients and colleagues. February 7