Reviews:
-This book is a great read, and not only for mental health professionals. It also has relevance for lawyers, lawmakers, civil planners, and administrators....Asylum: A Mid-Century Madhouse and Its Lessons About Our Mentally Ill Today consists mostly of Dr. Callaway's vivid memoirs: a more or less sequential cornucopia of many vignettes in short chapters only 2 or 3 pages long that are funny, poignant, intensley personal, and sometimes quite sharp-edged but never frivolous or lacking in common-sense perspective.
—Journal of the American Medical Association
-Enoch Callaway has written an entertaining, idiosyncratic story of Worcester State Hospital....This is a personal history, and an opinionated one, giving it an almost conversational tone. He largely shuns jargon, and writes clearly and with humor.
—Metapsychology Online
-Callaway looks back at those early years of training with fondness, humor, and wisdom. He asks the reader to pull up a chair, sit down, and listen to his recollections about the psychiatry of 60 years ago, see how it has evolved, and note his concerns about psychiatry today. His is a genial, generous memoir, amply illustrated with instructive anecdotes of patients and professionals who visited the hospital....As a memoir, it charmingly has much to teach the student and professional.
—PsycCritiques