HEARING VOICES: Reflections of a Psychology Intern...

HEARING VOICES: Reflections of a Psychology Intern by Scott Haas (Plume: $8.95). This warm, informal journal chronicles the author’s internship at Harvard’s prestigious Commonwealth Mental Health Institute. Haas found himself in an unfamiliar world, caught between the powerful, remote doctors and powerless, often pathetic patients. Sincere and well-intentioned, he found his academic training offered little preparation for the realities of dealing with the inmates, from the vulgar blue-collar worker who would rather be in prison than a mental hospital, to the genteel, anorexic young woman who refused to talk about the problems that were leading her to self-starvation. As Haas struggled with his own problems, especially his troubled relationship with his father, he began to identify with the patients he sought to aid, “There is no faraway pain, and there is nothing remote about their suffering. In many ways, They are just like Us. Their misery and their madness are fundamentally human experiences.”