Bibliotherapy and Beyond 06/2008: Memoirs

The summer reading season is upon us!  How delightful it is to lounge on a warm Sunday afternoon sipping a cold glass of iced tea while savoring a good book.  I always try to save my best reads for the summer because somehow summer reading is the best of all.  Most of us are so chronically busy these days that relaxing with a good book on Sunday afternoon may seem like too much of a frivolous luxury to indulge in.  After all, there are so many other more constructive things we should be doing, right?  Wrong!  First of all, we must practice what we preach.  If we preach balance to our clients, we must practice balance ourselves.  So a little indulgence becomes self-care, which is professionally responsible.  Second, if you read the books I recommend in this column you get to enjoy yourself, relax AND get some work done.  That’s a win-win all around.

This month, I am focusing on memoirs.  Memoirs are huge assets in our work as psychotherapists.  They can be as engrossing as novels but they have much more credibility.  After all, what better way to learn than to hear about it from someone who has actually been there and prevailed in a way that is interesting enough to publish?  Its far more efficient and enjoyable than actually having to go through the experiences ourselves!  There are so many great memoirs out there so it was hard to winnow down my list but upon reflection, these are my top three:

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (1969)

Maya Angelou is an amazing person and she seems even more amazing after you read her memoir.  Ms. Angelou is an African American poet who has inspired many women, including Oprah, to rise above oppression.  Considering all she’s been through, we would completely understand it if she spent the rest of her life curled up in the corner in a fetal position in a Seroquel haze instead of writing prize winning poetry.  The book is beautifully written.  Although some of her experiences are truly horrifying, the lovely prose keeps you reading.  She writes about victimization and helplessness with journalistic precision paired with compassion and hard-earned wisdom.  Reading this book is an enjoyable, engrossing and inspiring experience.

The Glass Castle by Jeanette Wells (2005)

This New York Times bestseller is one of the starkest dysfunctional family dramas I’ve ever read (and I’ve read a LOT of them).  Both of the author’s parents drag their four kids through the horrors of their mental illnesses. Depending on their parents’ folie de jour the children alternate between feeling neglected or abused and believing they are the luckiest, most special, cherished children on earth.   Their father is a master spinner of tales paired with misguided genius and unrequited dreams.  He is never formally diagnosed but symptoms of narcissism, antisocial personality, paranoid delusions, psychosis, bipolar disorder and alcoholism are evident.  Their mother is depressed, dependent, histrionic and ineffectual (borderline comes to mind).  One sister ends up schizophrenic but the other three children demonstrate a resilience that is remarkable to behold.  This book demonstrates that all children from dysfunctional households do not have to end up dysfunctional themselves.  The author’s compassionate but unflinching consideration of her complex, chaotic and heartbreaking childhood raises fascinating questions about the varying roles of adversity, resilience, love and redemption in personality development.          

Divided Minds by Pamela Spiro Wagner and Carolyn S. Spiro, M.D. (2005)

What is it really like to be schizophrenic?  How can we even begin to imagine the chaos in the mind of someone who is psychotic?  If you want to know, read this book.  Divided Minds chronicles the lives of a pair of identical twins raised in an upper middle class family in Connecticut from their earliest memories (in the 1950’s) to the present.  One twin, Pam has chronic paranoid schizophrenia and the other twin, Carolyn, is a psychiatrist (I know, I know, hold the jokes please!).  The twins, who are now in their 50s, wrote the book together, primarily during the psychotic twin’s more lucid (aka well-medicated) moments.  For the researchers among us, please note that this pair of twins represents one of the most fascinating natural experiments in the etiology of schizophrenia to date. This illuminating and compellingly readable book will forever change your understanding of psychosis.  

Until next time…Happy Reading! 

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Bibliotherapy and Beyond 6/2010: So Much to Read and So Little Time

So much to read, so little time!  We have paperbacks, hardbacks, ebooks, audiobooks, books on CD or MP3, books for  iPod,  iPad, iPhone, Kindle, Nook and the Sony ereader, magazines, newspapers, as well as emails, blogs and all the other tantalizing material on the internet.   And what about professional reading, journals, newsletters, listserve entries and pamphlets? At any given time, I find myself “reading” several magazines or journals, my book club book, a professional book, an escapist utopian science fiction novel, an audiobook on MP3 in my car and an audiobook on my iPhone.   One or more of these books is usually on my Kindle, which, in my opinion, is the best thing to happen to reading in centuries.  I can put my Kindle down on my nightstand and resume from where I left off on my iPhone while waiting at a restaurant and then pick right back up on my computer at the office.  When I want to read in bed before falling asleep, I grab the Kindle from my nightstand and it knows right where I left off on my computer before leaving the office.  What a miracle of technology!  And I can control the font size to accommodate my less-than-perfect vision.  Changing pages just requires the flick of a finger and the Kindle is lighter than most hardbacks and easier to manage nimbly than most paperbacks.  Apparently it can even read the book to you with its text to speech feature, although I haven’t found any need to experiment with that yet.  An author who is a Facebook friend even suggested putting the Kindle in a zip lock bag to read in the bathtub (and yes, it works great!).  Many self-help books, textbooks and professional books are now available for the Kindle and in other ereader formats, as are some journals, magazines and newspapers.  Another helpful feature with the Kindle is the ability to download the first chapter of a book before actually purchasing it.  I’ve spared myself quite a few duds taking advantage of this feature.  This new technology can help even the busiest among us grab precious snippets of blissful reading when presented with a little spare time, no matter what the location or circumstances. 

Recently, I find particular delight in audio books.  I had eye surgery several years ago and I was unable to spend more than a few minutes reading ordinary written text for months.  For me, reading is as necessary to life as eating so this presented a formidable challenge. I decided I would rise to this challenge by exploring the world of audiobooks and I have been a fan ever since.   I am a member of Audible, an online audiobook club recently purchased by Amazon.  For a basic monthly membership fee of $14.95, I can choose one audiobook each month.  I used to get 2 books for $22.95 but I got backlogged so I dropped down to the basic membership and I just buy extras as I need them.  The quality of audiobooks has dramatically improved in recent years, with professional readers who have delightful accents, lovely voices and excellent diction.  Many audiobooks have unique actors or separate voices for different characters which creates dramatic flair and really enhances the timeless pleasure associated with having someone read to you.

FYI, I have no vested interest in Audible, Kindle or Apple.  I just think they offer wonderful products and services to those who love (or have) to read.  I’ve done a lot of research on these resources, which you can benefit from without having to reinvent the wheel on this issue unless you choose to do so.

I’ve recently listened to several excellent audiobooks, but one in particular was a real stand-out.  For my book club last month, we read a memoir, called “The Kids Are All Right” by Diana Welch, Liz Welch, Amanda Welch and Dan Welch.  These four siblings experienced the death of both parents before they were grown.  At the time of their mother’s death they ranged in age from 8 to 19 years old.  Their parents had not made plans for this eventuality so the children found themselves split up among different families with limited contact with one another and minimal practical or emotional support.  They reconnected as young adults and started sharing memories of their parents and childhood experiences.  To their surprise (but hopefully not ours), they discovered their memories of the same events were wildly different.  So they decided to write about their shared past in a way that would candidly reflect their diverse recollections.  The book recounts the time from their father’s death in a car accident, through their mother’s illness and death from cancer 3.5 years later and the time they were separated from one another.  It’s a raw, honest, poignant account that will touch you deeply.  The siblings abiding love for one another and triumph over adversity is truly inspiring.  I was privileged to have Liz Welch “attend” my May book club meeting via Skype.  I put my laptop on a stand at the head of my dining room table and dialed her up (by prior arrangement, of course).  She was articulate, open, thoughtful, frank and funny.  She had marvelous insight, much of which she admitted had come from a wonderful relationship with an excellent therapist (yay us!).   The discussion that night was one of the best we’ve ever had.  This is no small statement considering my book club has been around for over 20 years and this was not our first meeting with an author in attendance.  I highly recommend this book for fellow psychologists since the opportunity to understand real life events from four separate, insightful, articulate members of the same family is a rare opportunity.  Take advantage of it, you will be glad you did.

Until next time, grab your ebook, audiobook, paperback or hardcover whenever you can, enjoy the summer, and HAPPY READING!    

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