The Education of a Psychiatrist: Human Encounters in the Field of Vulnerability

Rethinks the status of bodies in a field that is meant to heal the mind and how institutions can shape the drama of psychiatric education.

The Education of a Psychiatrist offers a fresh engagement with the challenges of learning a profession and building a practice in hospital settings often resistant to care. With astute analysis of works by both clinicians and critics of the field, such as Oliver Sacks and Michel Foucault, Sheila Harms reflects on the role of myths of endurance in education and the more promising possibilities of an ethical turn toward personal transformation, precisely as an educator. Working across the humanities and medical education and drawing on her own experiences in Canada and Uganda, Harms shows why relations of concern, vulnerability, and dependency must become urgent grounds for psychiatric practice.