Life in Rewind

March 1, 2009
A respected, compassionate psychiatrist unchains a man from the grips of crippling mental disorder.

For the past 30 years, co-author Janike (Psychiatry/Harvard Medical School) has dedicated his medical practice to the study of obsessive-compulsive disorder. This should have more than qualified him to manage Zine, a muscular 24-year-old from Cape Cod stricken with a severe case of OCD. But Janike, often criticized by his peers for becoming"overinvolved" (he still makes house calls), considered Zine the greatest challenge of his career. At their first meeting, the young man emerged from a putrid live-in basement strewn with bagged and bottled human waste; he hadn't showered or changed his clothes in more than a year. Zine's condition—"logic gone completely awry"—was rooted in a belief that as each minute moved him toward death, he could effectively retard aging by exercising tiny, precise back and forth"rituals within rituals" that could make getting across a room take seven hours. It took a full year of visits before Zine, a former athlete, would allow Janike into the"organized chaos" of his cellar sanctum. The devastating death of Zine's beloved mother when he was a boy appeared to have exacerbated his condition. Janike, who returned from active service in the Vietnam War with posttraumatic stress disorder, had a"profound depth of compassion" that, while it couldn't"cure" Zine, definitely worked wonders. He progressed from showering for the first time in a year to marrying a local girl, starting a family and moving into a new house. TV correspondent Murphy delivers Zine's story in sympathetic, never mawkish tones, offering not just a fascinating case history but a surprising tale of success by medical science confronted with a nearly insurmountable disorder.

Well-rounded, powerful and inspirational.

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