With Hope in My Heart

Rarely do we see inside the life and mind of a psychiatrist, but that’s exactly what we get in With Hope in My Heart: Musings of a Spirited Psychiatrist. With candor and openness, author François Mai shares how and why he ventured into psychiatry, the lure of academia, and his professional triumphs and troubles along the way. Educated in Apartheid-era South Africa, Mai takes his clinical practice across five countries: South Africa, the United Kingdom, Australia, the US, and Canada. Inspired by his time and adventures in these places, as well as his greatest influences, psychiatrists William Sargant and George Engel, this memoir is for a diverse audience. Readers eager to learn more about the history of psychiatry and its contemporary problems will enjoy Mai’s commentary and professional anecdotes. Lovers of religion and spirituality contextualized in a secular society will appreciate the ways these intersect with Mai’s professional and personal lives.

With Hope in My Heart is more than a psychiatrist’s memoir. It’s a deeply intimate look into the life of a man who endures the death of a brother who had life-long schizophrenia, and himself had two life-threatening medical diagnoses. With themes of hope, Mai navigates readers through tumultuous terrain of spirituality, morality, politics, life, and death.