Kirjahaku

Moving On chronicles the life of a new psychiatry resident who, during his first night on call at the psychiatric unit of the Oklahoma VA Medical Center, was faced with a decision he felt unprepared to make. What path had he followed to reach a place in his life where he was totally in charge of another person's well-being? Born into a long line of farmers with little education, his family had expected him to graduate from high school, then live as a farmer or a blue collar worker in rural Oklahoma. His father wanted him to be a tough, aggressive male above all else. His mother wanted him to be an honest and hard working man who would find a nice girl and settle down locally so he could give her grandchildren to spoil. But after leaving the home of his divorced mother at age fourteen to live and support himself for a year while attending his freshman year of high school, he learned to shoulder responsibility and make his own way. Instead of following his mother's wishes, he chose a different life path. Despite no scholarship and no family support (financial or otherwise), he entered Oklahoma A&M College and worked his way through. His path to higher education was filled with obstacles: financial hardships, intellectual naivet , spiritual turmoil, and college administrative bias. Despite a college official telling him he should drop out because he couldn't afford college and a psychologist cautioning that he lacked the intelligence to do college-level work, he persevered. Heavily influenced by a religious mentor but troubled by spiritual conflicts, he decided to become a medical missionary. Once in medical school, however, he became intrigued with studying the emotional and behavioral dysfunctions some people developed and resolved to devote his professional life to caring for those who suffered from them. That resolve led him to seek training as a psychiatrist and led to the night he found himself on a VA hospital psychiatry ward facing an enraged man sprawled on the floor with six aides pinning him down. Would he know what to do?

In the waning moments of the last night of his medical internship, Dr. Cliff Wilkerson for the first time delivers a baby and is almost immediately thrust into the unfamiliar world of psychiatry. Very little in medical school has truly prepared him for working in the field with distressed patients who look to him for relief from their emotional distress. In Still Moving On, the sequel to Moving On, which chronicled his early years on through his medical internship, Wilkerson chronicles the next fourteen years of his life-specifically, his training in adult, child, and adolescent psychiatry. He wants to understand the human mind and what leads to mental disorders. As Wilkerson peers into the minds of his patients, he must also explore his own mind-his emotions, anxieties, and neuroses. Wilkerson struggles to maintain a balance between work and life, and his family commitments and professional duties frequently collide, particularly during a three-year period when he works in a residential school for psychologically troubled children. Wilkerson must search for a way to emotionally support his wife and two sons while pursuing his work and his psychiatric and psychoanalytic studies. Needing to balance his intellectual life with something physical, Wilkerson turns to judo, a martial-arts sport and earns a black belt. Join Wilkerson as he explores his own identity while striving to help those suffering from emotional and behavioral disorders.

It is the spring of 1942, and war ravages Europe and the Pacific Theaters. With her son Charlie, Ruth Scarsdale returns to the cotton farm of her parents while her husband Chester deploys to the South Pacific theater. The story unfolding in this historic telling is one that highlights the fear, despair, tension, estrangement, and emotional upheaval that comes to bear on Ruth, Chester, Charlie, and on those around them. The story told is also one of a woman finding a new commitment and happiness in the midst of turmoil. It's about a nine-year-old boy who struggles with how to cope in the midst of family upheaval and descension. It is also the story of an estranged farm couple who must struggle with their mixed feelings about the return home of their daughter and grandson and the emotional demands this makes on them. And lastly, it is the story of a flawed man who displays heroism in the midstof war's death and destruction.