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A Piece of My Mind: A Psychiatrist on the Couch. By Parker Gordon. Pan Macmillan Australia. 2012. AUD $13.63 (pb). 347 pp. ISBN:9781743345320
What makes a good psychiatrist? Is it a bonus to like your colleagues? What does depression mean? What is it like to be a professor of psychiatry? Disparate questions find disparately satisfying answers in this lively but disjointed book, part memoir, part polemic, by a grizzly Australian academic who early on defines his role with consummate clarity as one of ‘a prickly bastard who keeps asking questions and won't shut up’.
The biographic opening speeds through early decades, carried by a fluent, informal style. Parker's emotive recall of events is interesting; his use of ‘closure’, for example, seems to overlap with justice and satisfaction. En route from medical school to professorial chair, via a detour into comedy writing, he paints a fondly detailed picture...