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The Inheritance of Shame is the true story of author Peter Gajdics' six years in a bizarre form of conversion therapy that attempted to -cure- him of his homosexuality. Virtually imprisoned in a cult-like therapeutic house called the Styx with other heavily medicated psychiatric patients, they were all under the total authority of a violent, dominating, rogue psychiatrist named -Dr. Alfonzo.- Their treatment devolved into intense primal scream therapy, weekly injections of Ketamine Hydrochloride (a dissociate drug most commonly used as an animal anesthetic) and constant pressure to abandon their birth parents and form unquestioning bonds with surrogate parents - Alfonzo, as -daddy, - and a woman hired to act and nurture them as a new -mommy.- They learned not to question Alfonzo, and to prove their loyalty by complete obedience and unpaid servitude. The Inheritance of Shame details Gajdics' recovery and somewhat successful attempt to seek legal recourse, juxtaposed against his parents' histories of trauma: his mother's incarceration and escape from a communist concentration camp in post-World War II Yugoslavia, and his father's upbringing as an orphan in war-torn Hungary. Though culturally and politically dissimilar, the emotional undercurrents of each of their narratives converge at key moments throughout the memoir.