Welcome to My Country by Slater Lauren - Book Report/Review Example

Slater, Lauren. (1997) - Welcome to My Country 1. In brief: what is the book about? Describe what an apple is. Howsoever detailed may be the description, one will not know what an apple is, unless one tastes it. Similarly is the case about human illness. One who has undergone the suffering is eminently suited to describe the intensity and various facets involved in the process of suffering and how one recoups the original health. The relationships of Lauren Slater, a psychologist and the author of the book, “Welcome to My Country,” with her patients need to be understood from this viewpoint. She is treated for mental disability. Subsequently, as the qualified medical practitioners she is posted at the same hospital to treat the patients. Her encounters with dysfunctional patients can be better appreciated in the backgrounder information of her own serious psychological ailment. 2. What is the mental illness or mental health issue the book discusses/explores? Lauren Slater’s patients are those who suffer from borderline personality disorders, suicidal tendencies and other types of serious illnesses. She (1997) writes about the categories of patients thus: “My patients—borderline personalities, sociopaths, bulimics, schizophrenics of every type—are foreign, tropical, green roses and striped plants that are hard to understand.”(p. xii) She expresses her findings and eulogizes the profound strength and transforming power of love and her observations touch the borderline of spirituality. Her intimate interactions with the patients help to bring about their recovery and inner transformation. She recalls the processes of her recouping the original mental health and poise from a state of near inner wreck. The book deals in detail the challenge of emotional and mental distress. She establishes the connection between the physical disorders and the mental illnesses. 3. What is the tone of the book? Funny? Sad? The author writes with a powerful, original voice. Since the contents are experience-based they derive additional strength. The explanations in the book are a personal and professional memoir and they have come from the one who suffers from anorexia and attempted suicide. The poetic prose and figurative language appeals to the emotions of the reader and establishes a spiritual connection to the life around us. She makes good use of the metaphor. The tone of the book is neither absolutely sad not it is funny. Slater has the special style of putting forth her views on the treatment to her patients. She describes the state in which she finds them in her first interactions with them but that funny approach has an undercurrent of fear, anxiety and sympathy about the suffering of the patients. She has made it clear in the first assignment in the hospital that she has an enormous challenge in front of her and that she is going to meet it squarely. She has one important success story that remains embossed in her mind—the saga of her own recovery from the serious mental disorder. 4. What do you think the main point of the book is? What is the message the author wanting you to take from the book? To Slater counseling her patients is not only a professional work, but a philosophy of life. She writes, “I believe in a place, somewhere in the air, where my Self and your Self might meet, merging in what we might learn to call, at least for a moment, love.”(p.xiii)Apart from the line of treatment, the author highlights the importance of communication skills. Some loving words addressed to an individual with hearty affection may work wonders on the patient’s psyche and are more beneficial than the medicated capsules. The author is emphatic about this aspect of the treatment, and she is absolutely right. The message of the book is clear and straightforward. Live life in its trials, tribulations, duty and beauty and challenge the darkness of sickness. She achieves this with total identification with the suffering of the patients and making the patients believe (and rightly so) that she is their real friend. Read this investigative observation which appears like a revelation of a realized soul. Slater argues, "I have learned that the only way to enter another's life is to find the vector points where myself & another self-meet...There is no way, I believe, to do the work of therapy, which is, when all is said & done, the work of relationship, without finding yourself in the patient & the patient's self in you". (p. xii) 5. Did you learn something new? Did the book make you think about mental disorders or issues in a way you hadn’t before? Slater has perfected a unique procedure of treating her patients. She has the knack to identify the dark spots within her patients and takes care of them to perfection. Only an individual with sensitivity to the suffering of others can develop such poise in individual and social dispositions. She is not an orthodox hardcore therapist. She is a first rate human being in her interactions with the patients. I am highly motivated by the missionary zeal in her style of working. The wise saying goes, ‘what you do is important; but how you do, what you do is more important.’ The important aspects to be noticed in Slater are her human approach with the patients, besides the clinical aspects. Love and understanding in dealings with the patients are her powerful weapons. She has demonstrated that an individual with worst physical and mental disorders has a right to live in this world like normal healthy human beings. 6. Did you like the book? Why or why not? Would you recommend others read it? Why or why not? I like the book. Slater converts the complexities and the sufferings of patients like Lenny, Moxi, Oscar and Marie into beautiful enthusiastic souls, willing to live their lives for the second time. When she interacts for the first time, what is the impression she forms about them? Slater writes, “They appear to be grotesques of this world, burdened by the most horrifying psychiatric illness known to humankind.”(p.5)They are reborn through the efforts of Slater. The six stories of therapy, per se, are like six research papers. I recommend this book to the one interested in literature and also the one who likes to pursue a career in mental health. In between the serious discussions she introduces sentences with amazing sense of humour. She writes, “…it is a dangerous thing for us, we people who grow up sucking the steel nipples of this country's missiles, many think living in the world is living in war, women who think their bodies are Molotov cocktails that must be detonated, destroyed, before they are munched up by their own metabolism" (p. 62) Viewed from any angle, content, language, literary style and genre, I immensely like the book and its contents leave a lasting impression on me. It has the double merit. It can be a text book for the medical students, and it is a literary masterpiece for the students of literature. References Slater, Lauren. (1997)Welcome to My Country. Anchor; 1st Anchor Books. Read More