I read that book! And I thought it was wonderful too, although my opinion of the shrink was not that he was "nearly" mad himself but that he was absolutely out of his mind.

I don't know if you care for the humor of David Sedaris, but in his book called Naked he paints a wonderfully bizarre picture of his family, and himself - the crazy Greek grandmother, his chainsmoking mother talking to his teachers about him and turning their frustration into laughter with the aid of alcohol and mimicry, his childhood inability to prevent himself from tapping his forehead with his shoe and touching his tongue to lightswitches...