Just published on Amazon
The Cockroach Catcher II: Attempted Living.
In medicine, we have often been brought up to accept terms that were traditionally used without asking questions. After encountering many cases from my very early medical career in Internal Medicine, through Adult Psychiatry and eventually Child Psychiatry, attempted suicide is a term that puzzled me on and off.
One such case eventually changed my mind and it is described in the Chapter that carries the book title: Attempted Living.
Attempted Suicide
or
Attempted Living!
Ålesund , Norway
One day before the
meeting he asked me, "After Pretender, which Ibsen are you now
reading?”
So he remembered recommending Ibsen to me.
"Ghosts! I thought that was about
syphilis." I valiantly ventured.
“Substitute
syphilis with the other condition beginning with S…..”
"Schizophrenia?"
“……And the son
Oswald went catatonic! And hallucinating about ghosts……”
It was only after
Ibsen’s
death that the term schizophrenia was coined and the disorder described.
My guru was a
Freudian psychoanalyst and so it would not surprise you that he would like to
analyse and understand even the worst psychotics. We had an understanding not
to put any patient on medication for the first six weeks of admission, unless
they became too unmanageable.
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Review on Amazon:
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 17, 2023
Reading his memoir is eye opening, and at times therapeutic. It was like meeting up with a learned old friend, as you sit with him and listen while his memories and ideas overflow. You travel with him as his stories move from continent to continent, from detailed episodes to gentle remarks, from freshly harvested catches to gourmet preparations, from ancient finds to modern scientific research ......
A most delightful read.
