Summary

In her first-person Introduction, which she titles “I Had My Secret, and My Secret Had Me”, the author (Dr. Eger) begins the book with a description of an encounter with a rigidly self-controlled military patient named Jason who was there by choice, but who did not respond to her attempts to communicate. She describes her intensifying concern as he remained silent despite her best efforts, worrying that the next step for him would be medication, and that if he did take that route, “he might feel better, or feel less – which we often mistake for feeling better – but he would not be healed” (5). Finally, she realized the best way to get through to him, at first, was to order him to take a walk with her. He was...