Tanya Byron is now a well-known media personality, a journalist, a campaigner for children’s mental health, and a public communicator of science. But she trained as a clinical psychologist. This book is a fascinating, riveting and also humorous account of her first year of clinical training.
The people portrayed in The Skeleton Cupboard are apparently fictional, made up from the many clients and colleagues that Tanya Byron has known. This is inevitable given the professional requirements of confidentiality and anonymity. But it raises questions about the authenticity of the overall account.
That said, the book is very believable, although Tanya’s hilarious clinical supervisor-mentor is a bit over the top – brilliant clinical insights combined with challenges to her student, poor time-keeping and disagreeable eating and smoking habits, and an unexpected relationship with one of the clinical psychologists Tanya works with. All too extreme and funny to be believed (but for all we know possibly the closest to reality).
The placements are, in order, an out-patient psychiatric department, a medium secure adolescent in-patient unit, a GP practice, a geriatric care home, an in-patient eating disorders ward, and a drug-dependency unit. In the encounters with staff and clients – or are they patients? – Tanya Byron paints a series of individuals in crises and change. Some clients change profoundly, and the student narrator certainly does. And on the way we get insights into the reasons people might behave as they do, the histories that formed their present, and the types of therapy, assessments and treatment strategies that psychologists might use. We get a fascinating glimpse into the doubts and impulsive decision-making of early career psychologists, and we admire Tanya Byron’s chutzpah, her courage and willingness to act in extreme situations even when she feels ignorant and inexperienced.
In the epilogue Tanya Byron remarks that “we understand [mental health] difficulties using narrative. Often the key part of the journey from chaos to clarity is telling the story. Stories give us a handle on how we feel and an ability to tolerate and accept those feelings.”
What a great recommendation for reading and engaging with illness narratives.