Casey's thoughtful account of the formation and integration of her 24 separate personalities. Diagnosed in 1981 as a multiple personality by therapist Wilson—whose case notes intersperse Casey's narrative—Casey initially resisted that finding, but slowly acknowledged her many selves. Among them were brilliant scholar Jo, worldly art lover Isis, and people-pleasing party girl Renee, with these relatively enviable personalities coexisting next to others who were childish, frightened, and suicidal—created, as multiples always are, to deal with abuse: in this case, from a raping father and a cold, demanding mother. Reconstructing the origins of the personalities forms the heart of Casey's touching story. As depicted here, the characteristics and motivations of all the personalities are straightforward and affecting, although Casey does not succeed in giving each an individual or even realistic voice. Rusty, a boy personality charged with placating Casey's father, talks like someone cut from an Andy Hardy film, while Renee seems decidedly down-to-earth for a self-described flirt. Of high interest also are Wilson's notes, which will probably appall orthodox psychiatrists as they detail how she broke every treatment rule in the book to heal Casey. Wilson and her husband, for example, always commingle their lives with that of a patient, and became in Casey's instance surrogate parents to all the personalities. The trio's first session together typifies the intimate therapy style: Wilson's husband ambled into the office, shucked off his jacket, and sat on the floor. A compelling psychological odyssey offering unique insights into a nightmare world.
Pub Date: May 29, 1991
ISBN: 0-394-56842-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1991
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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