Daamir

Daamir was the youngest of the psychiatrists participating in the study. His account was a Pandora’s Box of the “awful”, yet “fascinating”. At one point in his telling, he stretched his right arm across his upper body, gripping the chair firmly, and “strapping” himself in, in a seat-belt-like maneuver, as if bracing himself for the impact of revisiting painful parts of his story, including situations involving the use of coercion. This chapter is a careful reading of his narrative account. Part of the rationale for the lengthy and detailed individual case write-up is to honor the sequence and manner of telling of the narrator, but also to demonstrate the richness and complexity in a single professional’s narrative account. Hence, there are many quotes included. This is both to ensure transparency and idiosyncrasy and to privilege the phenomenological aim of the study. The latter calls for an eliciting of the complexities evident in the account, before subjecting it, together with all cases, to interpretation and theoretical discussion in later chapters.