I, SHRINK

A psychiatrist reflects on a long career filled with intriguing patients.

Over the course of debut author Green’s stint as a psychiatrist—he spent 46 years in practice—he encountered just about every kind of patient, the most memorable of which he charmingly chronicles in this recollection. He divides his brief memoir into short-term cases (sometimes a specific problem is adequately addressed quickly or a patient simply abandons treatment) and long-term ones—Green treated one woman for about 30 years. Between those two categories, he groups the patients he managed thematically: anxiety, homesickness, suicide, and more as well as ones that illustrate the mistakes he’s made. In one grouping labeled “Love,” the author freely admits he doesn’t know how to define romance (“I’m just a psychiatrist”), an endearingly unaffected moment of humility characteristic of the entire book. Some of the problems recounted to Green are peculiar—a successful professor simultaneously grieves the loss of a child and his uncommonly small penis. In another instance, the author treated a man who murdered his fiancee when she tried to end the relationship. Along the way, Green lucidly offers the lessons he’s learned, including the limitations of a psychiatrist’s power to produce a cure. He also provides some more general reflections on the psychological state of society, including, for example, the manner in which the current opioid crisis mirrors a general failing on the part of communities at large. The author’s work, while intellectually rigorous, is not written in the dry academic language of a clinician, but is refreshingly informal and unabashed. He doesn’t hesitate to call one patient a “very crazy woman.” And his advice to anyone being doggedly pursued by a potentially violent stalker is not what readers might expect: “Although it is difficult to do, moving far away, remaining incognito, seems like the only safe way. I, myself, would do either that or carry a pistol and if the guy broke the restraining order and came to see me anyway, I would shoot both of his kneecaps while backing off.” Especially for readers about to embark on a career in psychiatry or mental health, this book delivers a cheerfully wise and delightfully frank meditation on an eventful professional life.

An entertainingly anecdotal, candid, and perspicacious account of a psychiatrist’s career.