Keith Russell Ablow | The Sun Magazine

Keith Russell Ablow

Keith Russell Ablow is a psychiatrist in Lynn, Massachusetts. He writes a column on psychiatry for the Washington Post.

— From September 1993
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Psychotherapy And The Status Quo

Early in therapy, a young woman I treated for depression described her ideal relationship with a man. “If I had my way,” she said, “I wouldn’t do a thing, except clean the house and talk on the phone. He would make all the decisions. He would pick where we go, what we do, who we see.”

September 1993
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Hidden Clues

I did not begin training as a psychiatrist with an open mind. As strange as it might seem for someone beginning a career based on insight, I had resolved not to change. I was frightened that my personality might be pasteurized by the process, that forces would make of me a blank slate on which others would feel free to write their life stories.

April 1993
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Homeless, But Not Crazy

Shortly after 1 a.m. recently, on-call in the psychiatric emergency room of a Boston hospital, I was asked to evaluate a homeless man, and in the process I confronted the limits of my professional empathy.

March 1993
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Delicate Business

One of my patients recently informed me that she had decided to charge for sex. After many affairs with men who had proven untrustworthy, she was abandoning her search for a genuine relationship.

August 1992
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Buried Stories

The idea that a person’s past could unconsciously and dramatically influence the present used to make me smirk.

March 1992
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