Book Reviews by Stacey J. Miller

In Pieces by Sally Field Raise your hand if you thought Sally Field might be the one person on the planet who had been blessed with a perfect set of life circumstances. Me, either.  Her lifelong challenges were as real and profoundly disturbing as those of many other people. The good news is that Sally's wisdom and self-awareness turned her experiences into a candid, compelling memoir that all of her fans -- as well as everyone who appreciates autobiographies, as I do -- should read. Candid and compelling, " In Pieces " is a story that deserved to be told, and Sally should be gratified that she had the ability to tell it so well. Solid, poignant writing by a gifted and highly skilled actor. She is as good at parsing words as she is at working a stage (and screen). Five stars! See my full review on Amazon. 

How can catatonia be a major psychiatric illness when no-one knows what it is? Could it be that psychiatry has lost touch with the real mental disorders? The question is important because catatonia is probably more treatable than anything else in psychiatry. And it affects one patient in every ten with a serious illness — but first it has to be recognized. It is not a form of “schizophrenia,” and does not respond well to the anti-schizophrenic drugs that many doctors might be inclined to use.   In his novel, The Winter Soldier, Daniel Mason writes of a World War I soldier's body that is curled up among a pile of roots: "Alive...But it doesn’t move. It doesn’t speak." The fictional soldier's body only twitches when someone touches his shoulder. "The man’s eyes were wide, his nose flared, as he tried to take in breath. But no words, nothing save the flinch, the stare," the novel continues. That is a fair description of catatonia, a bodily cond