Rating: 
Summary: Best Psychology Book I've Read
Review: This book is one of the best books on mental health problems I have ever read. Each chapter introduces and describes a different type of mental illness (depression, personality disorder, etc.) through anecdotes from the author's clients and treatment situations. The author has a beautiful writing style, and the descriptions of the clients and their problems make them understandable not just intellectually but emotionally by the reader in a way that few books about mental health problems ever do, as few authors write this well or can empathize with the patients as Ms. Slater does. One can actually understand and feel what the patient does; this is not just a dry clinical book, which is frequently the case with topics such as this. Aside from understanding and feeling with the patients, it also helps one appreciate life and the human mind and soul better. I wish the author had written more books; I only hope she does in the future, as I will read them all.
Rating: 
Summary: worth the trip
Review: This book was an interesting and easy read. I enjoyed the stories of the patients and it gave me some insight on schizophrenia. The book though left me wanting to know more about the patients and less on what she thought and her own feelings. She often made herself look like the one in need of help. Overall, it was a good read that I got through in 2 days.
Rating:
Summary: lyrical account of mental illness. maybe even too lyrical
Review: this is a very compassionate and honest look at a group of mentally ill patients.Slater is a good writer, though she sometimes goes too far out of her way to make a poetic analogy. While she is honest about her own weaknesses as a therapist, she tends to come off as being the one to help her patients when no one else could. Despite these issues, it's a great read.
Rating:
Summary: A Country Worth Visiting
Review: Welcome to My Country is a beautifully written narrative about psychotherapist Lauren Slater's challening work with mental patients in Boston. She goes to greath lengths to get inside the minds of each patient, following their schizophrenic dreams and fears, their history, and treatment. Her prose is vivid and poetic, albeit a little overwritten at times. Her metaphors are far-fetched, but the language is astounding. The ending is a bit short, but works well. The reader does not get a true grasp of Slater's own private struggle with mental illness, but it is touched on enough to show how her compassion and experiences set the groundwork for her entrance into the mental health field. It is more lyrical essay than psychological text. For all intents and purposes, this book seems to have more to do with Slater recognizing her own voice and self in her patients (much countertransference) than the patients themselves. However, the memoir, at its most basic point, is a fascinating study into Slater's own psyche.
Rating:
Summary: an eloquent memoir
Review: When I first read this book, I was training to be a psychotherapist, and to make sense of the new feelings and experiences associated with that role. I loved her attitude toward her clients--that it is a privilege to know your clients and to relate to them, that "the border between the helper and the one who is helped is always blurry." I highly recommend this book for counselors, counselors in training, clients undergoing therapy, and for those who enjoy memoirs. I have read this book many times--I appreciate how well written it is and how the author uses her own psychiatric history as a tool to understand others' experiences. Wonderful book!
Rating:
Summary: worth the trip
Review: While I'm ambivalent about writers who seem intent on building an industry out of their psychic pain, this book out of all of Slater's is the least focused on her mental problems. Instead we are introduced to people, who for all their issues, want the same things from life as more normal people - to communicate, to have their stories heard, to find love, and ultimately, to connect. Perhaps the most interesting is a woman who suffers from the most unglamorous illness of all - depression and whose brief lifting of mood and return to "ordinary" life is all-too-short and the more heartbreaking to read about because of it. These subjects come across as real individuals, not just freaks. And at the end of the book, we learn why Slater possesses such empathy - she knows the country from more than a clincian's viewpoint.
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