Mount Misery, Samuel Shem
Mount Misery, Samuel Shem
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Mount Misery

Author: Samuel Shem

Narrator: Sean Runnette

Unabridged: 21 hr 28 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 01/10/2023


Synopsis

From the Laws of Mount Misery:

There are no laws in psychiatry.

Now, from the author of the riotous, moving, bestselling classic, The House of God, comes a lacerating and brilliant novel of doctors and patients in a psychiatric hospital. Mount Misery is a prestigious facility set in the rolling green hills of New England, its country club atmosphere maintained by generous corporate contributions. Dr. Roy Basch (hero of The House of God) is lucky enough to train there *only to discover doctors caught up in the circus of competing psychiatric theories, and patients who are often there for one main reason: they've got good insurance.

From the Laws of Mount Misery:

Your colleagues will hurt you more than your patients.

On rounds at Mount Misery, it's not always easy for Basch to tell the patients from the doctors: Errol Cabot, the drug cowboy whose practice provides him with guinea pigs for his imaginative prescription cocktails . . . Blair Heiler, the world expert on borderlines (a diagnosis that applies to just about everybody) . . . A. K. Lowell, née Aliyah K. Lowenschteiner, whose Freudian analytic technique is so razor sharp it prohibits her from actually speaking to patients . . . And Schlomo Dove, the loony, outlandish shrink accused of having sex with a beautiful, well-to-do female patient.

From the Laws of Mount Misery:

Psychiatrists specialize in their defects.

For Basch the practice of psychiatry soon becomes a nightmare in which psychiatrists compete with one another to find the best ways to reduce human beings to blubbering drug-addled pods, or incite them to an extreme where excessive rage is the only rational response, or tie them up in Freudian knots. And all the while, the doctors seem less interested in their patients' mental health than in a host of other things *managed care insurance money, drug company research grants and kickbacks, and their own professional advancement.

From the Laws of Mount Misery:

In psychiatry, first comes treatment, then comes diagnosis.

What The House of God did for doctoring the body, Mount Misery does for doctoring the mind. A practicing psychiatrist, Samuel Shem brings vivid authenticity and extraordinary storytelling gifts to this long-awaited sequel, to create a novel that is laugh-out-loud hilarious, terrifying, and provocative. Filled with biting irony and a wonderful sense of the absurd, Mount Misery tells you everything you'll never learn in therapy. And it's a hell of a lot funnier.

About The Author

Samuel Shem (Stephen Bergman, M.D.) graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College and earned a Ph.D. in physiology from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He graduated from Harvard Medical School. He is the author of the novels The House of God and Fine and seven plays, including, with Janet Surrey, Bill W. and Dr. Bob. He is on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and the Stone Center, Wellesley College. He lives with his wife and five-year-old daughter near Boston.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Joanie on August 24, 2008

It took me a lonnngggg time and many stops and starts to get through this book but in the end, it was okay. The book is about a doctor doing his residency in a psych hospital and all the crazy patients he deals with. Of course, the craziest people turn out to be the doctors. Some of the stuff about......more

Goodreads review by Phoenix on January 21, 2020

A young resident psychiatrist who has a lot of ambitions and also he had decided during his internship that this one medical speciality is the easiest or the most suitable for him. While he hits the sorrow reality in the psychiatric ward and discovers the pathways of each department, he changes hims......more

Goodreads review by Andrew on March 20, 2020

I finished this book a week ago and for some reason just started throwing together thoughts that grew beyond what probably should be a review, and won’t really be useful to anyone unless they read the book - or maybe they won’t be useful at all. For that reason, I’ll do a conventional review of the......more

Goodreads review by Remo on January 02, 2022

Segunda parte de La casa de Dios. Nuestro médico protagonista ya ha pasado su año de prácticas y es ahora residente de psiquiatría. Esto le permite al autor seguir ahondando en todo lo que cree que está mal con el sistema sanitario norteamericano. Ya la descripción del libro nos da bastantes pistas:......more

Goodreads review by Austė on March 29, 2023

Jau taip vargau su tuo Vargo kalnu... Dialogai kažkokie netikroviški, viskas užtempta iki begalybės, net tos išties opios problemos kažkur tame begaliniame tekste pasimeta. Kelios citatos patiko, bet šiaip - „Dievo namai“ ir „Vargo kalnas“ kaip diena ir naktis.......more