Breakdown: Sex, Suicide and the Harvard Psychiatrist: Breakdown: Sex, Suicide and the Harvard Psychiatrist

Paul Lozano was a beloved son of a Mexican American family in El Paso, Texas. In his first year at Harvard Medical School, he had a difficult time adjusting to the loneliness and the strange environment. He sought psychotherapy with Dr. Bean-Bayog, a member of the Harvard psychiatry faculty. She told him to think of himself as a 3-year-old, and gave him flash cards with messages such as "I'm your Mom--I'll always be your Mom." Paul regressed, and his mental functioning deteriorated. As their relationship grew more peculiar, Dr. Bean-Bayog apparently gave Paul more than 50 pages of her handwritten sadomasochistic sexual fantasies about the two of them. Then she stopped seeing him, because she was adopting a baby boy. Paul killed himself. It's a distressing, suspenseful story. As the New York Times writes, "Breakdown: Sex, Suicide, and the Harvard Psychiatrist, its lurid title notwithstanding, makes a serious attempt to arrive at the truth in this strange case." Author Eileen McNamara also uses the case as a springboard for discussing broader issues such as the need for professional standards and accountability in psychotherapy.