My Life as a Psychiatrist - Memoirs and Essays

At the age of 12, Ajita Chakraborty, one of the first woman psychiatrists in India, read Bijoylal Chattopadhyay’s Moner Khela, resulting in her lifelong fascination and commitment to psychiatry. She looks back at her life and work, her unconventional family and the confusions of her childhood that propelled her to becoming a psychiatrist. Qualified as a doctor, she went to England in 1952, taking courses in psychiatry, working in British mental hospitals and obtaining qualifications such as DPM and MRCP. Chakraborty faced considerable hostility and opposition and saw her dreams of setting up an advanced department of psychiatry fail. The book throws considerable light on the sociology on medicine and discusses why Chakraborty was thwarted to set up a modern health system. Of interest is her discussion on why psychiatry taught in the West cannot be applied directly in other cultures. The second part offers a selection from her essays, published in various distinguished journals.