The Mummy at the Dining Room Table – Jeffrey A Kottler and Jon Carlson

Thirty eminent therapists, in addition to the editors, have submitted their most memorable cases from decades of clinical practice. In some cases the patients were memorable because of how they affected the therapists practice. In others it’s because the cases or clients were startlingly unique. The enticing title of this collection comes from one of co-editor Carlson’s most memorable cases, of a family so devastated by the death of their matriarch that they (her husband and a dentist friend) mummified her and continued to live their lives with her as normal. The family itself wasn’t in therapy – it came to light in the course of couples counselling that Carlson was doing with the woman’s niece.
Some of the stories don’t have a satisfactory conclusion, usually because the patient or family terminated therapy or moved before the problem was resolved. This aspect could have been frustrating, but is framed as, and gives insight into, one of the realities of clinical work – you don’t always get a happy ending. Or any ending. As one of the editors notes, "that’s the frustrating thing about doing therapy – people sometimes leave before we are ready to let them go."
I particularly liked Scott Miller’s case of a nineteen-year-old man who, in the course of his preparation for an overseas missionary position, reacted to the pressure with reactive psychosis, and thought he was the Terminator. Instead of trying to convince him that this was not reality, Miller accepted the patient’s reality, and worked within that framework to effect change.
The editors have worked hard to preserve each therapist’s voice in the presentation of the cases, which serves to deepen the experience of reading. This book is fascinating for anyone who is interested in the odd ways people behave, the sequelae of abuse and dysfunctionality, the candid experiences of therapists (who in many cases admit that they didn’t know what they were doing but had nowhere else to go, therapeutically), different modalities of therapy, and anyone who wants reassurance that they’re comparatively normal. - Alex