Crawford (Mommie Dearest, 1978, etc.) focuses on the family as the incubating ground for all the social and emotional ills for which psychologists and talk-show hosts have recently found names. Stalking, racism, sexism, terrorism, homelessness, pain, panic, sleep disorders, the state of having few friends: Crawford explains all of these and more in one rather slim volume. Under the always seductive rubric of ``Addictive Behaviors'' she includes not only alcoholism, gambling, and drugs but also love and religion. To which an ungenerous reader, sick of the facile application of psychobabble to the complex condition of being alive, might snarlingly add publishing.
