The Healing Field (Paperback)

Sometimes it’s not just the patient who needs transformation. Such is the case with Henry Kaplan, MD, when he first meets Lori.

Just starting out in psychiatry, “Dr. H” approaches his client’s determination to starve herself to death with all the tools his profession provides: medication, therapy, hospitalizations, and even, when truly desperate, electroconvulsive therapy. But nothing works.

Discouraged by Lori’s continuous decline and overwhelmed by his growing practice, he decides to shake things up in his own life by enrolling in a stand-up comedy class. With the door to his creativity and humor now open, he surprises himself with fresh treatment ideas that just might startle Lori out of her deepening depression.

When he finally hears Lori repeat the words, “I have a beautiful soul,” Dr. H recognizes that healing doesn’t always follow protocol and that it requires the courage of not only the patient, but also the doctor.

A fictionalized account of a real-life journey from fear to love written by Dr. Howard E. Richmond, The Healing Field is an encouraging read that addresses the tough topics of anorexia, self-esteem, suicide, and abuse with enough gravity, humor, and hope to start you on your own path toward healing.

Howard E. Richmond, MD, is an integrative psychiatrist, an inspirational teacher, and a daily practitioner of hot yoga. Over the years, he has learned that healing is nonlinear and multidimensional, and he has come to incorporate a wide variety of techniques to help transform his patients' lives. To face his own fears and rejuvenate himself with creativity, he often performs stand-up as "the Comic Shrink."

His first novel, The Healing Field, is the inspiring, fictionalized account of an early patient who broke him out of his initially unyielding mold. Richmond is currently working on his second book, The Story Beneath the Story: The Power of Emotions to Harm or Heal.

As the son of a State Department Foreign Service officer, Richmond grew up in Japan, Thailand, and Brazil. Now he lives with his wife and their two German shepherd rescues in Encinitas, California.