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Behind the Gates of Gomorrah
Behind the Gates of Gomorrah: A Year with the Criminally Insane | Stephen Seager
6 posts | 7 read | 24 to read
A darker twist on Orange is the New Black, this true insider's account delivers an eye-opening look into the nation’s largest state-run forensic hospital, a facility that houses the real-life Hannibal Lecters of the world. Psychiatrist Stephen Seager was no stranger to locked psych wards when he accepted a job at California’s Gorman State hospital, known locally as “Gomorrah,” but nothing could have prepared him for what he encountered when he stepped through its gates, a triple sally port behind the twenty-foot walls topped with shining coils of razor wire. Gorman State is one of the nation’s largest forensic mental hospitals, dedicated to treating the criminally insane. Unit C, where Seager was assigned, was reserved for the “bad actors,” the mass murderers, serial killers, and the real-life Hannibal Lecters of the world. Against a backdrop of surreal beauty—a verdant campus-like setting where peacocks strolled the grounds—is a place of remarkable violence, a place where a small staff of clinicians are expected to manage a volatile population of prison-hardened ex-cons, where lone therapists lead sharing circles with sociopaths, where an illicit underground economy flourishes, and where patients and physicians often measure their lives according to how fast they can run. To cross through the gates of Gomorrah is to enter a looking-glass world, where the trappings of the normal calendar year exist—Halloween dances and Christmas parties (complete with visits from Santa), springtime softball teams and basketball leagues, but marked with paroxysms of brutality (Santa goes berserk), and peopled by figures from our nightmares. Behind the Gates of Gomorrah affords an eye-opening look inside a facility to which few people have ever had access. Honest, rueful, and at times darkly funny, Seager’s gripping account of his rookie year blends memoir with a narrative science, explaining both the aberrant mind and his own, at times incomprehensible, determination to remain in a job with a perilously steep learning curve.
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AvidReaderandGeekGirl
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This book is fascinating!

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LeahBergen
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This one works for both #MadWorld and #Subtitles. The author, a psychiatrist, tells of the year he worked at one of the largest forensic mental hospitals in the U.S. (and it's still on my TBR). #LyricalApril #AprilBookShowers

My_novel_obsession This one sounds intriguing! 8y
Kalalalatja Oooh exciting! 8y
Cinfhen These types of reads are difficult ones😬 8y
87 likes8 stack adds3 comments
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imaginarium2
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Pickpick

For non fiction and true crime fans this book is a must. Written in a conversational way it is an insightful and interesting read.

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the-flashley
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Pickpick

I was assigned this for a class, but ended up actually enjoying it. I recommend it if you're curious to see what the inside of a state-run mental hospital looks like.

LeahBergen I have this. I'm glad you liked it! 8y
66 likes9 stack adds1 comment
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Ais
Panpan

I really don't know what to make of this one. It just didn't ring true for me at all,I'm not sure what it was, but a lot is the events that balls we seemed contrived and far too coincidental.Also the style of writing was over the top and sensationalistic.I wouldn't recommend

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Ais
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I am so excited to delve into this one - a psychiatrists account of a year on a locked ward at Napa State hospital in California.

MrBook Oooh, sounds interesting. Eager to read your review. 8y
14 likes3 stack adds1 comment