A New Age text offering alternatives to traditional medicine for practitioners and patients alike.
From Gilbert (Dr. Chris's A, B, C's of Health, 2010, etc.), an exhaustive guide to giving voice to the body for better health.
Suppressed emotions may be the root causes of common maladies like headaches, skin rashes, abdominal pain, joint pain, obesity, fatigue, and sexual disorders. By vocalizing and listening to these emotions, Gilbert believes patients can heal themselves. “Lasting cures, versus temporary symptomatic relief, come about only when the root cause of disease is addressed, and the root cause of disease is usually emotional,” she states. [11, italics original] Readers meet patients like Cynthia, whose sore throat seems to be a symptom of an unhappy marriage. “Part of her wanted to scream, and yet another part of her that wanted to save her marriage had restrained her voice and kept her from lashing out at her husband. This constant, unconscious tension inside her larynx stressed her throat, generating great pain,” Gilbert writes. [6] Her treatment involves using pillows as sounding boards – and as punching bags. Then there’s Peter, who feels trapped in his relationship. During an open seat Gestalt therapy session, four volunteers form a human wall around him, forcing him to confront this feeling and break free from it. Gilbert encourages patients to converse with their body parts, such as when she asks Amanda, an obese patient, to speak as her stomach “to uncover unconscious struggles that, once exposed, accepted, and even welcomed, allow patients to find their own long-term fixes,” Gilbert writes. [47] In cases of sexual dysfunction, Gilbert encourages couples to give voice to their genitals. When verbalization fails, Gilbert takes patients into nature, interprets their dreams, or asks them to draw. While her approach to health care is refreshingly unconventional, Gilbert may be overstating the mind-body connection at times. One patient’s back pain is attributed to anger when it could easily be due to his long commute and a desk job. (Indeed, Gilbert’s “prescription” is for stretching.) Sections like “Why French People Don’t Gain Weight” lean more on stereotypes and anecdotal experience than on science. Illustrations throughout are unnecessary and border on hokey, such as a banana and an oyster discussing sex.
A New Age text offering alternatives to traditional medicine for practitioners and patients alike.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-59079-437-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: SelectBooks
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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