Description: This book is a story about people; in particular, two men who knew trauma, loneliness, and sometimes despair. They dealt with their pain in some of the ways that people do: drinking, anger, disparaging others, and withdrawal. The element that redeems the story was their use of their pain, uncertainty, and loneliness to help other suffering people.
Review Quotes:
"Being with Patients introduces us to the lives and intellectual contributions of Harry Stack Sullivan and Otto Allen Will. The book is part biography, part review of psychotherapeutic ideas and methods. Carlton Cornett is not just interested in two prominent psychiatrists who have shaped psychotherapy in the United States, he appreciates them as mentors across time, who have guided him in his own development as a psychotherapist. The book is of interest to the novice as well as the expert - it blends the introduction to basic ideas with the teaching of humility, earned over many years of practicing psychotherapy."
Stephan Heckers, M.D., M.Sc.
Professor and Chair of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Vanderbilt University School of Medicine
"Cornett's book is a probing study of ideas, personalities, and institutions, heightened by telling anecdotes of the moments when rules were broken and something new in the treatment of patients was able to break through."
From the Foreword by Kim Chernin, Ph.D.