425. The Silent Patient
Rating: ☆☆☆1/2
Recommended by:
Author: Alex Michaelides
Genre: Fiction, Thriller, Mystery
325 pages, published February 5, 2019
Reading Format: Audio Book on Overdrive
Summary
The Silent Patient is a psychological thriller written from the point of view of Theo Faber, a criminal psychotherapist whose latest patient is Alicia Berenson, a famous painter who is in a mental ward after killing her husband Gabriel, a successful fashion photographer. Since the murder, Alicia has refused to speak. Her most recent painting, entitled Alcestis, is a self portrait and is based on the Greek myth of a female heroine who is betrayed by her husband who selfishly asks his wife, Alcestis, to die in his place. When Alcestis is returned to him from her death, Alcestis mysteriously remains mute.
Quotes
“Choosing a lover is a lot like choosing a therapist. We need to ask ourselves, is this someone who will be honest with me, listen to criticism, admit making mistakes, and not promise the impossible?”
“Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive, and will come forth later, in uglier ways. —SIGMUND FREUD”
“The aim of therapy is not to correct the past, but to enable the patient to confront his own history, and to grieve over it. —ALICE MILLER”
“We’re all crazy, I believe, just in different ways.”
“About fireworks?
About love. About how we often mistake love for fireworks – for drama and dysfunction. But real love is very quiet, very still. It’s boring, if seen from the perspective of high drama. Love is deep and calm – and constant. I imagine you do give Kathy love – in the true sense of the word. Whether or not she is capable of giving it back to you is another question.”
“At the time I didn’t understand. But that’s how therapy works. A patient delegates his unacceptable feelings to his therapist; and she holds everything he is afraid to feel, and feels it for him. Then, ever so slowly, she feeds his feelings back to him.”
“There’s so much pain everywhere, and we just close our eyes to it. The truth is we’re all scared. We’re terrified of each other.”
“Somehow grasping at vanishing snowflakes is like grasping at happiness: an act of possession that instantly gives way to nothing. It reminded me that there was a world outside this house: a world of vastness and unimaginable beauty; a world that for now, remained out of my reach. That memory had repeatedly returned to me over the years. It’s as if the misery that surrounded that brief moment of freedom made it burn even brighter: a tiny light surrounded by darkness.”
“Love that doesn’t include honesty doesn’t deserve to be called love.”
“You know, one of the hardest things to admit is that we weren’t loved when we needed it most. It’s a terrible feeling, the pain of not being loved.”
“I believe the same is true for most people who go into mental health. We are drawn to this profession because we are damaged – we study psychology to heal ourselves. Whether we are prepared to admit this or not is another question.”
“No one is born evil. As Winnicott put it, “A baby cannot hate the mother, without the mother first hating the baby.”
My Take
The Silent Patient is a taut thriller that delves into the worlds of greek mythology and modern day therapy. It kept me guessing and there were some unexpected twists at the end. Recommended.
