A therapist memoir written from both sides of the clinical relationship, by a clinical psychologist who spent 28 years serving veterans with depression, anxiety, and PTSD, and who has personally navigated the same struggles he spent his career treating.
Scenes Through the Narrow Window is a collection of twenty personal essays, called Scenes, that explore the moments when clarity arrives uninvited. Dr. Samuel J. Popkin, Ph.D., calls these narrow windows of opportunity: brief, unguarded moments when honest reflection becomes possible before the mind talks itself out of it.
Themes explored across these twenty scenes include:
Forgiveness -- not as a single decision but as a daily practice that demands more than most people expect.
Grief and loss -- and what they teach us that comfort and reassurance never could.
Gratitude -- examined honestly, without the performative optimism that makes most self-help books feel hollow.
Fear -- the kind that outlasts the event that caused it, and how a psychologist learns to sit with it rather than treat it away.
Faith and maturity -- the slow, unglamorous work of becoming someone you can actually live with.
Mental health and personal growth -- explored from the dual perspective of a clinician and a patient, which is what separates this collection from most psychology memoirs on the market.
This is not a self-help book that delivers life lessons from a position of authority. It is a personal growth essay collection written by a retired psychologist who earned every observation the hard way, through decades of sitting with people at their most broken, and through his own reckoning with the same darkness.
Who reads this book:
Readers in retirement or life transition who are looking for wisdom that feels earned rather than packaged. Adults navigating grief, loss, or the particular disorientation of getting older in a culture that has no patience for it. Readers of reflective nonfiction and psychology memoir who are looking for something with real clinical authority behind it. Mental health professionals and veterans seeking perspective on resilience, fear, and the meaning that can be found on the other side of suffering. Anyone who has had enough of performative self-help and is looking for personal essays that honour complexity without demanding certainty.
What readers are saying:
"A must-read for those who seek answers, easily relatable and eye-opening."
"Insightful and relatable, gets deep without being overbearing."
"True wisdom from a master at self-reflection, a keeper."
"A modest, thoughtful life review that values clarity over grandiosity."
Twenty scenes. Twenty narrow windows. The kind of book you read slowly, mark up, set down, and return to when the next narrow window opens.
About the Author :
Sam Popkin, Ph.D, is a retired clinical psychologist who served 28 years in five Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Centers. He also maintained a private practice in psychotherapy with emphasis on the diagnosis and treatment of depression, anxiety disorders, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Dr. Popkin grew up in the lovely seacoast town of Swampscott, Massachusetts. He graduated summa cum laude with Honors in Psychology from Bowdoin College (Brunswick, ME) in 1977. He obtained his Masters and Doctoral degrees in Clinical Psychology and Adult Development and Aging at the University of Southern California. He had postdoctoral training in geriatric psychology at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. Dr. Popkin has authored/co-authored several journal articles and book chapters with emphasis on issues in cognitive aging. His primary avocation is music, and he is a self-taught keyboard player who has enjoyed playing in several bands over the years. He presently resides in Northport, Alabama with his wife Mary (Weekes) and their adored cat and dog, Mija and Gracie, respectively. Dr. Popkin's son and daughter live in Atlanta, GA.
