This book is particularly interesting in light of Gene Brewer's novel (and now film) "K-PAX", based on "The Jet-Propelled Couch" episode in this book. In this episode, we meet the original model for prot -- not a homeless person, but a respected scientist. Conjecture has it that he may have been science fiction writer Cordwainer Smith. In any event the story is fascinating, and Lindner writes in a clear, mature and intelligent style. Well worth it!

I have been doing psychotherapy for years and always find it fascinating to see how childhood experiences lead to the development of problems. There are lots of books about the theories, but the actual cases always seem much more striking to me. This book is fun to read if you are interested in looking at these kind of connections. I wish there were more books about this, but the subject seems to be out of vogue these days although people still have as many psychogenic problems as ever. I don't particularly like the books that make case material like this too artistic and flowery; this book describes the characters to the point. The examples part of "The Road Less Traveled" was also good in the same way.

I read the "The Fifty Minute Hour" in the 1960's and was particularly impressed by the chapter "The Jet Propelled Couch." In the mid 1990's I was telling my teenage daughter about the chapter and we went out and bought the book to see if dad remembered correctly. I did and she enjoyed the book as much as I did. It is a classic. I believe the scientist in "The Jet Propelled Couch" was at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The "Fifty Minute" comes from Freud. He advised therapists to reserve ten minutes to cool down after a session with a patient and to prepare for the next patient. In this post-Freudian era patients are seen back-to-back and the hour is fifty minutes to increase revenue, not to cool down. In fact the hour is now down to 40 minutes and even 30 with some doctors!

Unfortunately Lindner's next book "Prescription for Rebellion" as I remember was a dud. Really disappointing let down after the FMH.

The book contains many important and holy stories concering the BESHT, the founder of Chassidus. Unfortunately, the translators aren't Chassids or even observant. In their attempts at a "scholarly" translation I'm afraid much of the spirituality in the tales is lost. Certainly the language is often cumbersome and the names of places and transliterations follow an odd form. Some of the footnotes are useful in identifing who the tale is speaking of for audiences that are novices, others where a topic is explained in a "scholarly" way are terrible. Still it is one of the only places to get English translations of some of these tales and so it is a good book for English speakers interested in gaining an insight into Chassidim, especially of the early days.

They do get the right idea in that one of the best ways to get a "feel" for Chassidus and Chassidim is through Chassidic stories.

Still, I think one can gain a better insight through reading some of the following books (either instead of, or in addition to "In Praise of..."):

-"Rebbes and Chassidim: What They Said-What They Meant" (I absolutely love this book, it is a small book that can easily be carried with short one or two page entries that can be easily digested on first glance yet contain much wisdom- one could finish the entire book in an hour or two on the first read or each entry could be meditated upon and studied for hours.)

"Not Just Stories: The Chassidic Spirit Through Its Classic Stories"

"Generation to Generation: Personal Recollections of a Chassidic Legacy"

"Visions of the Fathers: Pirkei Avos with an Insightful and Inspiring Commentary by Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski, M.D." (a bit more advanced, this is Perkei Avos with the commentary written from a Chassidic and psychiatric perspective)

"Twerski on Spirituality "

All by Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski (he is a prominant psychiatrist as well as a Chassidic rabbi who is decendent from a very important line of Chassidic rebbes- his lineage goes back to the Baal Shem Tov). There are other good books on Chassidus by him that you can't find here like "The Zeide Reb Motele" (about an extremely important Chassidic tzaddik and the great-great grandfather of Rabbi A. Twerski, M.D.). Most of his books are equally accessable to the novice or the life long Chassid.

-"The Bostoner Rebbetzin Remembers: Rebbetzin Raichel Horowitz of Boston/Har Nof recalls Jewish life in Poland, America and Israel " by Raichel Horowitz. I bet you didn't know that there was a Chassidic Dynasty that was founded in America (Boston to be exact). Here are some important stories from the Rebbe's wife (Rebbetzin is a term of respect for a rabbi's wife).

-"A Treasury Of Chassidic Tales: On The Torah" and "A Treasury of Chassidic Tales: On the Festivals" by Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin

-"On the Study of Chasidus: A Trilogy of Chasidic Essays, Some Aspects of Chabad Chasidism, on the Teachings of Chasidus, on Learning Chasidus" by Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn (the previous Lubvitcher Rebbe)

-Also, look up "Breslov" for some good books on and stories from Breslov Chassidus (especially "Rabbi Nachman's Wisdom"
by Reb Nathan, and "Rabbi Nachman's Stories" by Aryeh Kaplan).

There are many more I can include but I'd like to leave this a managable size. Unfortunately, one must be careful which books on Chassidus, Chassidim and Chassidic history one picks up and many are written by those who are rather antagonistic towards Chassidim specifically and even Yiddishkeit generally and one could be influenced by their prejudices without being aware they are even there, unless you know what to look for.

Time and imagination have ramified and refined the body of tales associated with the Baal Shem Tov. Ben-Amos and Mintz have given us an authoritative translation of the first written redaction of that corpus. Here is much of the spirituality, vitality and immediacy, along with the rough edges of historical reality. The editors have done an excellent job of clarifying that reality in their introduction and the notes which accompany each tale. I believe this is a valuable text for those who would understand Hasidism and the powerful cross currents of the Haskalah which was arriving. I would recommend as well Mr. Mintz's later books, especially Tales of the Hasidim, for a scholarly treatment of modern American Hasidic folklore.

I have just past the midway point of my internship at a very busy public hospital filled w/ incredibly sick patients. It has definitely been the most difficult year of my life. I have been hearing about the House of God since I was a pre-med, and I read about the first 50 pages when I was a 2nd year in medical school. At that time, I wasn't too impressed. I mean Shem is no Hemmingway. But now that I've picked it up again, I must say that reading this book has been a redemptive experience. Not only because it is true (apparently very little has changed since the 70s) and because I can relate personally to everything in it (except the sex w/ nurses), but because, like anything else, there is more than one truth to being an intern. Shem's happens to be incredibly cynical, but also exactly what I need at this moment. This past six months I have been privvy to too much suffering: my patients', my peers', my significant others', my own. The House helps me to see the absurdity of it all, and that is worth a lot.

If you are wondering whether this book is a realistic portrayal of residency -- in my observation it is. I first read this book in 1978 while working in an emergency room. Coincidentally, I started working in the ER on July 1, just as the new residents were starting. At that time I was a nurse-paramedic, had just worked two years in the float-pool on the med-center floors (as well as part-time on an ambulance). I intended to eventually apply to medical school and wanted more ER experience, as I contemplated becoming an ER physician. I learned my niche as the residents learned theirs.

I felt somewhat like an anthropologist as I watched the residents go through the same things described in the book "The House of God." Many of the residents passed the book among themselves that year. And the next. And the next. On occasion, each resident said more-or-less, "Yeah, it's a documentary."

After the third year I stopped working in the ER -- it was fascinating work that never let-up, but it can be a burn-out job -- and I moved on to other things, never going to medical school, but marrying a doctor. For twenty years I have kept in touch with my old environment on its periphery. Many things have changed in medicine the past two decades, but some things remain essentially the same.

I presume that one of the things unchanged is that new copies of "The House of God" are still being passed around among the residents, year after year. Probably the stress and distress that the residents experience -- as well as the black comedy of daily dealing with the impossible and hopeless -- is as heartbreaking, invigorating, debilitating, and tragic as it ever was. Thank you Dr. Shem, for taking the time to write such an excellent and realistic book on that complicated and perplexing time of growth and change in medical doctor's lives.

It's interesting to hear non-medical opinions on HOG. This book is actually not that humorous. I can see how it "seems" to be; with all the dark morbid humor and the LAWS. A colleage told me not to read this book until i had finished my 3rd year of MD-school. Why? Until you put yourself on the ward, this book doesn't mean much to you. I didn't believe him and read it at the end of my 2nd year. I read it again at the end of my 3rd year. It was like i was reading a different novel. There is no way to clearly describe the sensation of having 7 admissions on call...all gomers....trying desperatly to BUFF and TURF them.

This book is a must read for the doctor to be. The nonmedical world has to realise that what seems as perverse dark sick humor (gomers, turfing, not doing anything, the only good admission is a dead admission) is merely an attempt to survive the onslaught of internship. Balance fatigue with limited knowledge and throw in some unparralled responsibility and you get a taste of what it's like.

House of God does just that.

Oh.. and never ever.... go to a teaching hospital in July. :)

This book is oriented to people from the USA society. Some ideas discussed in the book might not work for people with other cultural backgrounds, like Asian or Latin American. However, even if you are not from the USA, you could get some good tips, but don't think the whole book will be useful.

"We Have to Talk" is a good read, almost too good, and I was left wondering how much was fiction and how much was non-fiction. Is Samuel Shem deliberately teasing us in using identical passages in his work of fiction "Mount Misery" and his later release ( with Janet Surrey) "We Have to Talk"?

"We Have to Talk" (pg. 83)

Kate: Where shall we go to dinner?
Mitch: Let's go to Miguel's.
Kate: How 'bout Pintemento
Mitch: Okay, let's go to Pintemento.
Kate: (after a pause) But it sounded like you wanted to go to Miguel's.
Mitch: No, no, it's okay-let's go where you want to go.
Kate: But I want to go where you want to go too.
Mitch: (silence)
Kate: Why don't you want to go to Pintemento?
Mitch: I just want to decide.
Kate: But we are deciding.
Mitch: We're not getting anywhere. (tensely) Let's just make a decision.
Kate: (screaming) Why are you yelling at me? (starts to cry)
Mitch: (screaming) I'm not yelling!

"Mount Misery" (pg. 175-176)

. . . "Let's go out to dinner."
"Fine. Where shall we go?"
"Let's go to Miguel's."
"How about Pentimento?"
"Okay," I said, not really caring, "let's go to Pentimento."
She paused, studying me. "But it sounded like you wanted to go to Miguel's."
"No, no, it's okay-let's go where you want to go."
"But I want to go where you want to go too." She considered this, and asked, "Why don't you want to go to Pentimento?"
Feeling more tense, I said, "I just want to decide."
The phone began ringing.
"Why are you yelling at me?"
"I'm not yelling."

Also compare pages 201-202 of "Mount Misery" with page 44 of "We Have to Talk".

The point to be made is not that Shem, the master of extreme hyperbole, is a sham, but that, while his fiction is eerily like real life, his non-fiction smacks of anecdote and fantasy. Even if Tom and Ann are real, a couple detailed in "We Have To Talk" who but the most affluent with limitless recourses, could afford the luxuries they take for granted, in and out of therapy. What about a boot-strapping theory for the rest of us?

Also, why the pervasive Freud bashing in both books? I am certainly not a Freud fan, but why is "holding the We" any less contrived then "the shadow of the object falls across the ego"? Doesn't Shem do exactly as Freud, concocting fanciful theories to fit his anecdotal experiences from a small cross section of the American population in order to serve his own notoriety?

I still recommend "We Have to Talk" but ask the reader to sift through the self help dross for the occasional enlightening pearls.

This is a great book - the kind of book that you wish you had read 10 years ago. It would have saved me a lot of pain and grief in my relationships. I'm a 35 year old male - and I could recognize both the male responses in the book - and the reaction of the women. I recommend it to all my male friends - this is the book all men should read if they want to make their relationships with women work - and if they really want to learn what it means to truly connect, not just with women, but with each other as well. A truly insighful - and inspirational - book.

A masterwork of self indulgence. One gets the feeling asyou labor through Fine that the author wrote this either while on an opuim binge or recovering from to much sun. Chock full of assinine puns and semi-autobiographical trash. Shem is excellent as a writer of clinical psychology, he should stick to that area and leave cheesy novels to the rest of us. Leave this one home if your going on vacation!

This is an excellent book. Fine is a young analyst in training learning the rudiments of psychotherapy. Meanwhile, a killer is stalking psychiatrists and murdering them in the Boston area. Fine has many adventures with his wife, best friend,and patients while trying to discover the killer who might or might not be one of his patients. In the process he also discovers the secret to his humanity and to successful psychotherapy which turns out to be the root of all of his other searches

~ ~ * * * * * ~ ~
~ ~ As an MD who spent lots of time in 3rd and 4th year doing clerkships studying Psychiatry, at about the time this novel takes place, I have to admit it is an entertaining and frighteningly accurate illustration of the confusion that reigned in most Psychiatry training programs in the 70's and 80's.

~ ~Readers of "House of God" will enjoy this semi-autobiographical story. It is continuation of the story of the young doctor who spent a disillusioning year in a medical Internship in a prominent Boston training hospital, took a year off, and decided to leave the physical Medicine for Psychiatry.

~ ~Friends who have worked "M. Hospital" the prominent mental hospital (outside Boston), that Mount Misery is clearly modeled after, tell me that the characters in the book are also very thinly disguised versions of real life prominent Doctors in the training program.

~ ~It's not necessary to have much medical knowledge to enjoy the cutting humor of the book. The story will probably be more entertaining, the more knowledge you have of the field of Psychology. Be prepared though, this book isn't one you want to read to give you confidence in your Psychiatrist!

I am a Psychiatric R.N. at a county hospital. The situations and profiles of the M.D.'s and other staff in this book are very real. The only difference is the book is set in a private hospital. The county hospital setting is even MORE dysfunctional!!!! I loved the book, and am going to read House of God again, too.

Shem's new book is not what I expected. What I basically thought I'd get was a mere follow up to "The House of God", his 15 year old outstanding novel about medicine and internships. Mount Misery describes one year of residency training in a psychiatric hospital. While not remotely as funny as "House of God" this piece of work is more mature and goes much deeper. Shem doesn't leave too much good on psychoanalysis and Freud. This book really got to me and will keep me thinking for a while. Another masterpiece of medical novels