I Never Met a Paranoid Schizophrenic I Didn't Like

I Never Met a Paranoid Schizophrenic I Didn't Like takes the reader on a twenty-year journey through state mental hospitals, a maximum security prison psychiatric unit, an institution for the mentally challenged, and two outpatient mental health centers. The author, a psychologist who comes from a dysfunctional family himself, reveals his growth as a person and professional as he treats people with such diverse illnesses as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, kleptomania, obsessive compulsion, sociopathic personality, paranoia, and multiple personality, among others. Gradually he becomes aware that much of what he learned in graduate school does not apply to the real world of mental illness, and necessary adjustments begin to be made.
"The words I now put on paper constitute a memorial for the patients who came and went, and for the young psychologist who wanted to heal them all. He arrived believing he knew a lot, and emerged years later realizing that the door to understanding had only been cracked." And yet the knowledge came, to the benefit of those he treated, and, ultimately, to himself.