In a House of Dreams and Glass: Becoming a Psychiatrist

A psychiatric resident's firsthand account reveals his struggles with the homeless, suicidal, and paranoid, and his frustrations with hospital politics and the limitations of an inexact science.

Fresh from medical school, Robert Klitzman began his residency in psychiatry with excitement and a sense of mission. But he was not prepared for what he found inside the city psychiatric center where he was to spend three grueling years.

In truth, as Dr. Klitzman's absorbing account of his apprentice...