You Must Be Dreaming - Softcover

Noel here charges she was repeatedly drugged and raped during an 18-year course of therapy by an eminent Chicago psychiatrist. "'It's very important for you to get rid of anything you're wearing that might be constricting,"' she reports being told by Jules Masserman, a past president of the Illinois Psychiatric Society, prior to his injecting her with sodium amytal. In "Amytal Interviews," Noel took off her clothes, lay under a blanket and slipped into an unconscious state intended to overcome her "resistance" to therapy. The author says she woke up during one such session in 1984, found Masserman on top of her and, after considerable anxiety, blew the whistle. Other patients told similar stories and, although the psychiatric establishment backed the accused, an out-of-court settlement netted Noel $200,000 and the promise that Masserman, then in his 80s, would never practice again. This acid and chilling account, written with freelance journalist Watterson, portrays Masserman as a lecherous, narcissistic psychiatric Rumplestiltskin. First serial to McCall's.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This book soberly recounts the 18-year treatment by renowned psychiatrist Jules H. Masserman of singer Noel, who began analysis because she experienced debilitating facial pain when she sang. Despite saying that she was relatively well adjusted, Masserman administered hundreds of unnecessary treatments of sodium amytal, a barbiturate that rendered Noel unconscious and to which she became addicted. In the last session, Noel awoke to find Masserman raping her. Though Masserman's insurers settled Noel's and three other cases out of court, and Masserman voluntarily surrendered his license to practice medicine and psychotherapy, he has received little public censure and only a five-year suspension from the American Psychiatric Association, on whose board of trustees he still sits. This book ought to be widely read. For most psychology collections.
- Bonnie Hoffman, Stony Brook, N.Y.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.