Abraham Nussbaum
Physician, Teacher, Writer
The Reading Cure
People sometimes confuse psychics and psychiatrists. Shrinks can’t read minds; we read books. A few years ago, I left social media and resumed reading. Reading builds resiliency and the ability to form therapeutic alliances. Here are some books about doctoring that I have been reading lately:
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Gentle Vengeance, Charles LeBaron
The 1st of the HMS memoirs. Reads as cynicism masquerading as idealism, like The House of God for the med school set. Not sorry to see this kind of gender politics out of print, but for anyone who believes burnout it is a new phenomena, here’s the proof it ain’t.
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The Collected Schizophrenias, Esme Weijun Wang
Shrinks say schizophrenia is a heterogenous collection of disorders awaiting further understanding. Wang knows the schizophrenias as a range of experiences awaiting further encounter. Includes a description of being hospitalized involuntary all shrinks should read and read again.
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Sharp’s Dictionary of Power and Struggle, Gene Sharp
You won’t find Blue Flu in Harrison’s Internal Medicine, but it is in Sharp’s Dictionary. Sharp directs readers to communal options for conflict and change–Grievance Group! Hijrat! Human Chain! Ice Front! Lysistratic Nonaction! Quickie Walkout! Renouncing Honors! Writers’ Silence!– beyond mere resistance. Pick one for the name of your cell.
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Boomer1, Daniel Torday
A funny, multi-voiced riff on intra-generational conflict. Toraday nails Gen X angst and music, but his Colorado geography was iffy. Becoming a doctor is a way to leave the stage in pursuit of bourgeois stability. In the end, it’s a story of how Mama Tried.
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Villette, Charlotte Bronte
My favorite Bronte novel features Lucy Snowe, the fictional protagonist famed for disclosing and concealing, and Dr. John Graham Bretton, a physician whose clinical gaze Lucy resists. Lucy tells herself: “I would not be known.”
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Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back), Jeff Tweedy
The king of dad rock’s charmingly human memoir includes opiate-pushing docs, star-mugging therapists, life-saving shrinks, and (for real) a Dr. Dickover. My bet: ten years from now, Tweedy takes over Springsteen’s Broadway stage for another show about a rock star saved by love and psychotherapy.
