rom the patient’s point of view. Deborah's parents, Esther and Jacob, show the struggle that family members face. This is a conflict between their love for their daughter and their shame of her illness. They blame themselves for what their daughter is facing and they fear what they must do to help her. In spite of this, they manage to gather the courage to get Deborah treatment, and allow it to continue, even though the therapy seems to have no effect for quite some time. These people get help from a brilliant psychiatrist, who is not only strong-willed, but also empathetic towards their situations. Deborah’s therapist, Dr. Clara Fried, gradually gains Deborah's trust, because she never forces Deborah to accept her point of view. While she helps Deborah, the doctor, in turn, comforts Deborah’s parents. During the course of the three years, Deborah gains the courage to fight her illness, only with Dr. Fried’s expertise. Fried’s goal is to allow Deborah to have the opportunity to choose between having a life in the reality of Earth, even though it does have many faults and problems, and living in the phantoms of Yr. While she is in the process of fighting her illness, Deborah builds friendships with the other patients in the hospital even though they have a sort of fear of emotional attachment to other people. Even though she still has fears of the Earth’s reality, Deborah goes on to earn a GED degree, and, eventually, wins her struggle against the illness.This novel does contain some misconceptions about schizophrenia. The way that Deborah is treated in the novel is different from how she would be treated today. Based on what was known in the 1960’s, Joanne Greenberg uses the method of therapy as the majority of treatment. Today, schizophrenia is treated mostly with psychiatric drugs. Although this novel uses outdated treatment methods, it does succeed in allowing the reader to see i...
