“I will miss you, too.”

Acknowledgments

There are many people who in one way or another contributed to the writing of this book. David Hellerstein, Daria Colombo, and Ann Appelbaum gave me insight into the working lives of psychiatrists. Monica Carsky spoke to me about her experience as a psychotherapist. Rita Charon, head of the Narrative Medicine Department at Columbia Medical School, kindly allowed me to sit in on her class for medical students and then included me in the department’s lecture series. I want to thank Frank Huyler and Richard Siegel for their expertise in emergency medicine.

Mark Solms introduced me to the world of neuropsychoanalysis, first through his books, and then in person. He invited me to the monthly neuroscience lectures at New York Psychoanalytic Institute and to the small discussion group that followed. I owe a debt to all the researchers, psychiatrists, and psychoanalysts who came and went in that group, but I want to mention some of the regulars: Maggie Zellner, David Olds, Jaak Panksepp and, in memory, Mortimer Ostow. I thank David Pincus, also a member of the group, for his ongoing e-mail conversation with me about minds and brains.

George Makari’s knowledge of philosophy and medical history, as well as his experience as a working psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, were invaluable to me.

I want to thank Dawn Beverle, my supervisor at the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic, where I work as a volunteer teaching writing to the inpatients every week.

I am grateful to all the people who came to my classes. Teaching that workshop has been a powerful experience for me, and without my students, I wouldn’t have felt nearly so close to the stories of people who are fighting the pain of mental illness.

Jacquie Monda and Edna and George Thelwell deserve my gratitude for helping me find material on Jamaica, as well as sharing with me their own stories from that country.

My greatest debt, however, is to my father, Lloyd Hustvedt, who died on February 2, 2004. Near the end of his life, I asked him if I could use portions of the memoir he had written for his family and friends in the novel I was then beginning to write. He gave me his permission. The passages in the book from Lars Davidsen’s memoir are taken directly from my father’s text with only a few editorial and name changes. In this sense, after his death, my father became my collaborator. The story of my great uncle David is also true, and the newspaper article about “Dave the Pencil Man” is quoted verbatim. Despite these direct borrowings, I have throughout the novel freely mingled imaginary stories with real ones.