Summary:

Frank Carveth (Art Hindle) has a wife, Nola (Samantha Eggar) who is mentally ill (the exact nature of her "breakdown" is never made clear, but it is implied that she was abused as a child). Nola is an in-patient at the Somafree Institute of Psychoplasmics run by Dr Hal Raglan (Oliver Reed). Raglan treats patients by engaging in intense role play encounters in which he takes the part either of parent or child to the patient.

The result of his approach is the somatization of emotional problems, his logic apparently being that allowing psychopathology to manifest in the (medically treatable) body liberates the less accessible psyche from illness or harmful emotions. So, for instance, a man with unresolved anger against his father develops sores all over his body during therapy. Their healing enacts his catharsis.

There are problems, however: another patient attributes his terminal cancer to Raglan's therapy, saying "psychoplasmics . . . encouraged my body to revolt against me and it did." Most terrifying of all is Nola's rage. It expresses itself in the form of strange buds that appear on her abdomen. These develop into external wombs, or amniotic sacs, from which she keeps giving birth to deformed and malevolent children.

These children, "the brood," literally enact her rage, escaping from Somafree to attack and kill anyone who is the object of Nola's anger, including both her parents and, eventually, Dr. Raglan himself. When the brood turns on Candy, Frank and Nola's actual daughter, Frank strangles his wife, and her evil offspring die with her.

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Tim Metcalfe is an Australian general practitioner who gave up medical practice to become a full-time poet and writer. A statement on the back cover summarizes the process in relation to this collection of 38 poems: " ’Cut to the Word’ is a moving account of one man’s transition from doctor to poet." He begins with the customary initiation: "We were introduced, respectfully, / to the volunteer dead . . . " (p. 13) He discovers the limitations and uncertainties of his new profession: "In tense moments / I wish my stethoscope / was all they want it to be." (p. 18) And the omnivorous demands of medicine: "I come home from work / and there it is: the family / the oldest crying / at the youngest crying / at her mother’s anger / at her crying . . . " (p. 21)

Metcalfe carries the reader through a series of short, incisive poems describing the doctor’s day-to-day work ("Morning Session, " pp. 47-50), as well as through a number of disturbing poems about the world of mental illness, but the book’s climax--so to speak--arrives with "The Doctor’s Complaint, " in which the physician heals herself "by laying down her stethoscope / and walking right out / of that in-patient clinic." At the end the poet writes, "Like a patient I have learned silence . . . Fine steel scissors in hand, / I cut to the word." (p. 63)

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Joe Rose, a popular science writer, and his partner Clarissa, a Keats scholar, are picnicking in the English countryside when an accident happens: a hot air balloon carrying a man and his grandson goes out of control. Five men, including Joe, run to help, holding onto the balloon's ropes; when a gust of wind lifts the balloon, four men, including Joe, let go but the fifth holds on, is lifted high in the air, and falls to his death.

One of the would-be rescuers, Jed Parry, becomes obsessed with Joe, and begins to stalk him, interpreting all rejections as veiled invitations. Jed wants both to convert Joe to charismatic Christianity and, it seems, to become his lover. Communication is impossible, the police are no help, and under the strain Clarissa and Joe's relationship comes apart. In a restaurant, someone at the next table is shot, making Joe realize that Jed is trying to kill him. After breaking into their apartment, threatening Clarissa at knifepoint, and then attempting suicide, Jed is arrested and committed to a psychiatric hospital.

In a subplot, the dead man's widow suffers a loss exacerbated by the belief that her husband had been having an affair. Joe learns the truth about the suspected affair and is able to reveal to the widow that her husband had been faithful after all.

The book ends with two appendices: an invented article from a British psychiatry journal presenting Jed's case, and a letter written to Joe by Jed three years later, still hospitalized, and still, deludedly, in love.

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This film was inspired by the true story of mathematician John Forbes Nash, Jr., who was one of three Nobelists celebrated in 1994 for their work in game theory. The film is driven by the agonizing conflict between Nash’s mathematical brilliance and the paranoid schizophrenia which almost destroys both his career and his marriage to Alicia Larde (Jennifer Connelly). The film shows Nash (Russell Crowe) as obsessed and, in schizophrenic episodes, delusional and occasionally violent. He undergoes 1950s insulin shots and later is on and off pills that seem to take away his brilliance along with his schizophrenia.

Late in the film he is off medication and says, in effect, that he has decided not to be deluded by delusions. The film ends with a triumphant series of scenes around the Nobel Prize, including the tribute of his colleagues at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study and Nash’s emotional Nobel acceptance speech at Stockholm expressing his gratitude to his wife for standing by him.

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I am feeling crabby / unlikely to reveal any hidden tidbits . . . Yet, the narrator gamely decides to continue psychotherapy, hoping to "crack open" the shell and discover the "succulent confessions" that lie within. She recalls her neighbor telling her about soft-shelled crabs and the adventurous day she ordered them for the first time at "a favorite hangout of my past." Sure enough, she ate the crabs, and "I was so pleased with myself / trying some exotic new dish" and not being afraid. [35 lines]

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Summary:

To relieve her insomnia, Claire Vornoff seeks help from Dr. Declan Farrell, a well-known holistic physician, who begins to see her professionally at his country home. Farrell's methods focus on massage and bodywork, along with some acupuncture. Claire finds him an attractive paradox--sensitive and "tuned in" to her, yet also blunt and emotionally unsettling.

The client-therapist relationship becomes deeper and more complex. After Claire has a brief sexual escapade with a married man, she admits to herself that she actually loves Declan and confesses her love to him. Indirectly, he reveals that he also has strong feelings for her, but is desperately resisting those feelings and attempting to maintain his professionalism.

Claire finally breaks off their relationship and attempts to go on with her life. Over the next couple of years, Declan closes his practice, moves elsewhere, divorces his wife, and ultimately commits suicide. Claire learns of these events gradually, at second hand, as she, too, moves on, but in much a different direction. Eventually she begins a new life in Toronto.

Although the relationship between Claire and Declan occupies center stage, Claire's quest for improved health leads her to consider, and sometimes consult with, other alternative medicine practitioners as well. (I say "improved health" rather than "relief of insomnia" because, although never stated, it seems clear that Claire seeks a sense of completeness and meaning in life that goes far beyond solving her sleep problem.)

One of these healers, for example, is Mr. Spaulding, who reviews Claire's blood work and concludes, "You're in rough shape, girl." (p. 231) He explains that her "body salts are so high I can't measure them" and that her "body is throwing off one hundred times more dead cells than it should . . . "

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It is evening; the shades are drawn; the sanitarium is quiet. Inside, the inmates knit and play chess. "The period of the wildest weeping, the fiercest delusion, is over. Inside, everyone has quieted down; even "the manic-depressive girl / is leveling off." There has been a certain amount of improvement. The poet salutes the fortunate ones; for example, the older wife "who has been cured of feeling unwanted" and will soon be home, feeling "as normal and selfish and heartless as anyone else." There is so much to be happy about. Soon the drunks will be cured, and all the cats will be happy. And so, as we leave this scene, "Miss R looks at the mantelpiece, which must mean something." [35 lines]

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Summary:

Dr. Constance Petersen (Ingrid Bergman) is a beautiful, unattached psychiatrist whose business-like facade fails to conceal a natural empathy that draws men. For her, however, love is a mere epi-phenomenon, easy to explain and resist, until she meets Dr. Edwardes (Gregory Peck). The famous expert on the guilt complex has arrived to replace the retiring chief (Leo Carroll). Constance is smitten, and so, it seems, is he.

But soon, she realizes that Edwardes is "not well," that he is terrified of dark lines on white: fork marks on a tablecloth; threads in her robe. Worse, she discovers that Edwardes is not, in fact, Edwardes, but an amnesic physician of initials "J. B." who is convinced that he has murdered his analyst. Constance does the right thing by having him removed from work, but she refuses to believe he is a murderer. Wanting to protect her, he leaves. But she, intent on curing her lover, follows him on a journey to retrace his last movements. The task is to recover both a memory and a missing person.

They go skiing (dark lines on white) at a resort where the real Dr. Edwardes had sojourned with his patient-colleague. On a dangerous slope, J. B. suddenly remembers that Edwardes went over the cliff. The body is found, but it has a bullet in the back.

Now hiding from the police, the couple pose as newlyweds and flee to her old mentor in Rochester. Complete with accent and beard, Dr. Brulov (Michael Chekhov) is a delightful double of the recently deceased Sigmund Freud (1858-1939). It emerges that John Ballantine (Peck) never lost his childhood feelings of guilt over the accidental death of his little brother.

In a gruesome ten-second flashback, the tyke is abruptly impaled on a iron-spike fence. This ancient guilt was reactivated by his doctor’s demise and it was sublimated by the defense mechanism of an assumed identity to keep the dead man alive. An idle slip of the tongue reveals the murderer to be the jealous retiree. The killer threatens Constance and then makes a quick end by dispatching himself instead.

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In the "free love" context of the nineteen-sixties, Harriet and David Lovatt are throwbacks to a more conservative, traditional, and family-oriented decade. Their life dream is to have a big house in the country filled with children, and it seems that they will succeed. After bearing four young children, however, Harriet is feeling the strain of years of childbearing, sleeplessness, money trouble, and her parents' and in-laws' disapproval of her fecundity.

Her fifth pregnancy is not only unplanned, but also unusually painful and disruptive. Harriet's doctor prescribes sedatives but finds nothing abnormal in her situation. When Ben is born, Harriet jokes that he is like "a troll or a goblin," but no one responds well to this unusually hairy and physically vigorous baby, who in turn does not respond to anything but his own desires and fears.

As he grows older, family pets and other children seem to be in physical danger. Health care professionals do not confirm the couple's conviction that Ben is not normal, but neither do they obstruct the decision to send Ben to a private institution, a removal that leaves the family temporarily happy until Harriet visits Ben and recognizes the institution for what it is, a place where all manner of "different" children are sent to live heavily medicated, physically restrained, and foreshortened lives away from families who do not want them.

Harriet brings Ben home, where he grows up amid what remains of the Lovatts' domestic fantasy, and finds community in a gang of thuggish older boys whom Harriet suspects are involved in various criminal acts. As the story closes, Ben has left home and Harriet imagines him in another country, "searching the faces in the crowd for another of his own kind" (133).

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Summary:

The Physician in Literature is an anthology edited and introduced by Norman Cousins that aims to illustrate the multiple ways in which doctors are portrayed in world literature. Literary selections are organized into 12 categories including Research and Serendipity, The Role of the Physician, Gods and Demons, Quacks and Clowns, Clinical Descriptions in Literature, Doctors and Students, The Practice, Women and Healing, Madness, Dying, The Patient, and An Enduring Tradition.

Some of the notable authors represented in this collection include Leo Tolstoy, Herman Melville, Albert Camus, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, George Bernard Shaw, Anton P. Chekhov, Orwell, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Mann, Gustave Flaubert, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A healthy dose of William Carlos Williams makes for some of the most enjoyable reading ("The Use of Force" and excerpts from his Autobiography).

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