The other side of the couch

the long version

The practice of psychiatry is an extraordinarily private one, both for the psychiatrist and the patient. So how does someone know what to look for in therapy? The Other Side of the Couch takes the reader behind the closed doors and deep into the experience of several superb practitioners, revealing a world that bears little resemblance to anything portrayed in television, novels, or films and showing the unique healing bond that is psychiatry at its best. Based on interviews with twelve gifted psychiatrists, The Other Side of the Couch explores the revolutions in drug therapy and brain research now being integrated into the practice of psychiatry, resulting in psychiatrists who must be both prescribing physicians and empathic therapists, and patients who must be ever more knowledgeable about the options available to them. The Other Side of the Couch, Gail Albert writes, is "a guide to the ingredients of good psychiatric treatment" for people in therapy or considering it, and for therapists as well.