Thanks to the “Cyberlibrarian” for this review of “Bedlam’s Door”

August 31, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

The Cyberlibrarian: Reviews and Views on Current Literature

Welcome to my blog. I am Miriam Downey, the Cyberlibrarian. I am a retired librarian and a lifelong reader. I read and review books in four major genres: fiction, non-fiction, memoir and spiritual. My goal is to relate what I read to my life experience. I read books culled from reviews in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, Bookmarks, and The New Yorker. I also accept books from authors and publicists. I am having a great time. Hope you will join me on the journey.

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Bedlam’s Door: True Tales of Madness and Hope

by Mark Rubinstein MD

Thunder Lake Press 2016

275 pages Nonfiction

Dr. Mark Rubinstein is a physician and psychiatrist, but in his heart, he is a storyteller. He has published several novels and medical nonfiction works over the years in addition to practicing psychiatry. Bedlam’s Door, his newest book, is a series of reminiscences about patients he encountered through his years as a psychiatric resident and then in his private practice.

Each chapter of Bedlam’s Door is a case study, from a Hungarian man who thinks that he is the King of the Puerto Ricans, to a suicidal woman suffering from post traumatic shock following the death of her husband. Each story is unique, heartbreaking, and eloquently told. Rubinstein says: “It’s really quite ironic. I fell in love with psychiatry because each patient—through sharing human commonalities—has a uniquely personal story.” Following each case study, Rubinstein outlines the diagnosis and the pathology, or the reason for the treatment. Often he offers a postscript to the story about how the patient fared following treatment. The after words are extremely valuable to help the reader understand the case.

My favorite story concerns a man named “Mr. Smith” who was brought to the hospital by the police. He had been hanging around a famous New York hotel, saying that he had plenty of money and that he wanted to rent a suite at the hotel. He was dressed in expensive, although worn out, clothing and was carrying a large briefcase and said that he had a lot of money inside. He looked around the hospital and decided that instead of the fancy hotel, he wanted to rent a room in the hospital. Dr. Rubinstein played along with the charade all the while trying to assess Mr. Smith’s mental stability. But it was not until Mr. Smith opened the briefcase to show the money—thousands of dollars of Monopoly money—that Dr. Rubinstein concluded that Mr. Smith really did need a room in the hospital.

Patricia, the suicidal woman suffering from post traumatic stress following her husband’s death, had been under treatment for several weeks when Dr. Rubinstein visited her and found her much calmer and more in control of her life. He mentioned that what she had needed was a chance to begin healing. Her response spoke volumes. “Thank you for not letting me make a permanent decision in a temporary frame of mind.”

The tag line of Bedlam’s Door is True Tales of Madness and Hope. Rubinstein illustrates graphically how there is almost always hope—hope that comes with intense counseling and balanced medicine. This is the great value of the book; while the stories are fascinating, the upbeat tone and implicit sense of hope pervades everything.

I have been trying to think about who benefits most from reading Bedlam’s Door. Certainly it would be valuable for medical students deciding whether to pursue careers in psychiatry, but it would also be valuable for families facing psychiatric treatment for loved ones. Dr. Rubinstein’s message of hope will resonate in many settings.

Linda Fairstein, a well known novelist, recommends Bedlam’s Door. “Bedlam’s Dooris a riveting read about madness and mental illness. Mark Rubinstein—award-winning novelist, physician, and psychiatrist—is the perfect guide for this journey through the mysteries of the mind, from despair to hope, and he does it in brilliant form. If you enjoy psychology, crime fiction, a good story, and forensics, this is a must-read book.”

Here is Mark Rubinstein’s website.

Posted by Miriam Downey

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“You’re Edgy and Irritable” My Wife Says

March 22, 2014 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Writing is an emotionally draining and solitary business. You spend hour upon hour alone with your thoughts and fantasies, doing your best to order, re-order and transform them into coherent stories people will want to read. Like any other endeavor, you have good days and bad days. Sometimes you feel exhilarated; at other times you feel frustrated and exhausted. As they say, it goes with the territory.

My wife has noticed what she’s called “carryover” from a day’s writing. She can tell if I’ve been working on an intense scene or chapter—one with plenty of action or anger, or one brimming with life-altering (even murderous) conflicts between characters. She picks up on the energy writing has generated within me. It doesn’t simply dissipate when the day’s writing is finished. It carries over for a while.

Read more on the Huffington Post >>

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Listening to the Soul

August 25, 2013 by Mark Rubinstein

As a novelist and psychiatrist, I listened to Eleanor Longden’s lyrical presentation with a mixture of awe, admiration and humility.

She hauntingly described the “toxic, tormenting sense of helplessness” accompanying severe mental disturbance. “My voices were a meaningful response to traumatic life events. Each voice was related to aspects of myself…that I’d never had an opportunity to process or resolve, memories of sexual trauma and abuse, of anger, shame, guilt, low self-worth.” I found these statements deeply insightful.

Read more on the Huffington Post >>

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Psychiatry, Fantasy and Fiction

September 4, 2012 by Mark Rubinstein

I’m often asked how I made a transition from psychiatry to writing fiction. As residents in training, we had to present case histories. To me, each case seemed like a mini-biography or short story. Some were stranger than fiction, and it struck me that psychiatry–of all medical specialties– emphasized the human dimension of living life. Each patient has a compelling story. It’s unique, but taps into a shared commonality. Really, we’re all different and we’re all somewhat the same, aren’t we?

Above all, psychiatry appealed to me because it aligned itself with creativity and the arts.

When I co-authored nonfiction medical books, we illustrated issues with case histories. This took some creativity, whether a story was about a man who broke down because he’d had a heart attack, or a woman was struggling with breast cancer, or a young girl was jealous of her newborn brother.

But once I began writing fiction, I could use imagination.

So, in a sense, I was always telling stories, whether they were psychiatric, medical or pure fiction. (Is there any pure fiction?)

The freedom to make stuff up provides a strange feeling of pleasure. There’s little to match the exhiliration when a patient suddenly “gets it” (that ah ha moment) or the incredible sensation you get when a novel’s plot twist suddenly falls into place, and the story assumes a life of its own.

It’s really an exploration followed by discovery and may mean finding the hidden clues within one’s self. Some psychiatrists would say it’s the revelation of the unconscious or the getting of wisdom.

When all is said and done, the very process of writing fiction is really a bit of a mystery to me. But the transition to fiction came easily.

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