- © 2007 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors
Psyche in the lab: celebrating brain science in Canada Mary V. Seeman, Neil Seeman Hogrefe & Huber; 2006 258 pp $37.45 ISBN 0–88937–304–3
Everywhere you look in medicine these days, there are stories. Proponents of narrative medicine debate supporters of more traditional medical humanities. Medical students attend storytelling workshops and present “narratives” to an attentive audience. Storytelling is presumed to have benefits for those who tell the tale and those who listen (the potential risks seem to be less often considered). In addition to providing a means of conveying information, the process of storytelling has been imbued with a number of virtues, including the opportunity for better patient care and enhanced self-awareness. In the discussion of the therapeutic benefits of storytelling, one key fact is often overlooked: some stories are just more interesting than others.
This is apparent when reading Psyche in the Lab: Celebrating Brain Science in Canada, by Mary Seeman and Neil Seeman. Published to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Canadian Psychiatric Research Foundation (CPRF), this book contains 29 profiles of Canadians in the mental health field. Sixteen individuals profiled are researchers, while the remainder are consumers, philanthropists or other non-professionals. By telling the story of an institution through the narratives of people involved in its work, the authors add humanity to what could otherwise be a rather dry history.
The second half of the book is especially engaging. Voices of consumers and family members are well represented. Likewise, the stories of philanthropists and patrons provide interesting opportunities to learn about donors ranging from Joseph Tanenbaum, a generous supporter of Canadian charities, to Renée Claire Marier, a woman with schizophrenia who gives 50% of the profits from paintings she sells to schizophrenia research.
But as I read through the first section of Psyche in the Lab, featuring profiles of psychiatric researchers, I found that while some stories were especially interesting, others were rather unremarkable. The authors used “criterion-based techniques” to select “16 leading scientists” for semistructured interviews. The intention was to choose a diverse group of accomplished scientists associated with the CPRF or the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. The interviews were conducted by an assistant, David Gentili, who also transcribed them.
In some cases, the person's research was interesting to me, while in others, it was the life story of the researcher. But I was struck by the fact that people who do fascinating research may lead lives that are, at least on the face of it, quite unexceptional. In contrast, the chapter on Bruno Cormier, a now-deceased Québec psychiatrist who signed the “Refus global” in 1948, made for engrossing reading not only because of his pioneering work in forensic psychiatry, but also because of his political activism.
Because the Canadian psychiatric community is relatively small, there were people profiled who I knew on a personal or professional level. While that stimulated my interest to read those chapters, the same obviously could not be said for the general reader.
Perhaps if the authors themselves had been able to interview the persons being profiled, the first part of the book might have been more engaging. Particular avenues of inquiry that stimulated the interest of the authors could have been explored, and then developed more fully. Several times I found myself wanting to know more about how the researcher felt at a critical juncture of his or her career. If the authors could have fleshed out the biographies with more detail, even tales that appeared to be quite ordinary might have revealed thought-provoking insights.
The greatest risk in telling the story of a research foundation is that it will be deathly dull. While the interest level may vary by chapter, Psyche in the Lab is, overall, a book that successfully integrates the experiences of several groups as it describes the history of an organization that has made an important contribution to mental health in Canada.