In a House of Dreams and Glass: Becoming a Psychiatrist - Paperback

by Robert Klitzman (Author)

From Simon & Schuster, In a House of Dreams and Glass recounts in dramatic detail the true story of a young psychiatrist's grueling training.

Even as it illustrates the controversies and questions of psychiatry, ultimately In a House of Dreams and Glass is the story of a young doctor struggling to help patients in the face of sometimes harsh hospital bureaucracy, an overworked hospital staff and doctors, and the patients' own mental demons.

Front Jacket

EXCELLENT . . . I recommend [Klitzman's] book as a valuable account of one particular kind of training that goes into becoming a psychiatrist.
--The Washington Post
Fresh from medical school, Robert Klitzman began his residency in psychiatry with excitement and a sense of mission. But he was not prepared for what he found inside the city psychiatric center where he was to spend three grueling years.
In truth, as Dr. Klitzman's absorbing account of his apprenticeship reveals, he never ceased to be surprised--by his patients, by the senior psychiatrists' conflicting advice on how to help them, and by the unpredictable results of the therapies, both psychoanalytic and biologic, that he and his fellow residents practiced.
Nights in the emergency room, professional controversy, the minefield of hospital politics, the stress of his own therapy--everything is here, in a passionate and illuminating analysis of a doctor's struggle against tremendous odds to banish his patients' demons.
"[AN] INSIGHTFUL MEMOIR . . . RECOMMENDED."
--Library Journal
"A thorough diagnosis of contemporary psychiatry's intellectual lacunae, as well as its personal and institutional warts."
--Kirkus Reviews

Author Biography

Robert Klitzman is a Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University where he is the director of the Masters of Bioethics Program.