The author of this book is an award-winning writer/psychologist who works with schizophrenic and psychotic patients at a clinic in Boston. In this book she confronts the problems and strivings of six different patients, culminating with a turn inwards in which she becomes the subject of her own analysis (Slater herself suffered from psychologicial disorders as a teenager). Ultimately, Slater is less concerned with the brain's chemical eccentricities as such, as with the human dilemmas that stem from them. This is an account of both her patients' and her own struggle to accept and to overcome.