How a therapist responds to their patient is an important part of the therapeutic process and Adshead experiences transient fear, sadness, irritation and even drowsiness during the course of her consultations, and each for a different reason. His story illustrates an unfathomable Jekyll and Hyde existence that Adshead endeavours to understand, uncovering a childhood of violent abuse. If this seems to possibly prejudice the therapy in any way, she consults a supervisor or another psychiatrist. He describes some of the recent protests surrounding racial justice as mere “cabin fever racial consciousness” flowing from exhaustion with the pandemic, a performative activism that will not yield lasting changes.

Charles Blow provides numerous examples of this in the Northern and Western United States, the very places to which Blacks flocked during the Great Migration with hopes of equity and work, only to be discriminated against and policed through legal means (redlining, workplace discrimination, policing, etc). Now, as with any book of this type, I have to declare my Whitey McWhite-ness right off the bat because I know I have no real place in the conversation except to be a part of the “educated, suburban, ‘radical’ progressive Left” who seeks drastic, fundamental, and systemic changes in these United States of Hypocrisy. In my thinking, we need proactive holistic healthcare for all; we need teachers and police officers to be the best-trained, best-vetted, and best-paid public service employees; we should have the best education system on Earth, free for all; we should be investing in infrastructure and jobs-creation with the unpaid taxes of the filthy rich and their corporations; we should be uplifting and empowering the impoverished, the disenfranchised, and the marginalized to be powerful contributors to society; and of course the policing, legal, and judicial systems need fundamental overhauls from the ground up. The miscommunication is kind of a mess, but I thought that it worked well for this story, Cooper and Tate's relationship, and how it affects Cooper's friendship with Jackson.

It had some fun moments but I honestly felt like it could have been shorter (like a novella) and cut out the fake dating part. But beyond the headlines, and within these pages, lies the true narrative of the patients and alongside them, the calming presence of Adshead herself. Blow spends a good portion of the book arguing for the Black connection to the South, and laying out the case that there is more racism in the North than people think there is. The Devil You Know is “a helpful introduction for those seeking to make sense of fractious political debates about race and voting rights in the South, and the broken promises of American democracy.

And yet for all his examples of Black people being targeted (individually or by policy) in the North, he conveniently never names Ahmaud Arbery’s shooting in Georgia (but we get an interview with Tamir Rice’s mother (Cleveland) and hear about Eric Garner (NYC), George Floyd (MN), and many more who are all conveniently not in the South).The Devil You Know makes the case for radical empathy and reminds us that all human beings are capable of darkness, and of light.

The only thing I didn’t like about him was the way he talked about ‘other’ girls (girls who weren’t Tatum).In eleven vivid narratives based on decades of providing therapy to people in prisons and secure hospitals, an internationally renowned forensic psychiatrist and psychotherapist demonstrates the remarkable human capacity for radical empathy, change, and redemption.