A vastly informative, coherent, and valuable assessment; useful and accessible for both mental health professionals and...
A contemporary appraisal of schizophrenia and its puzzling traits and treatments through the lens of a physician’s esteemed 40-year practice.
Building on his previous book, Catch Them Before They Fall: The Psychoanalysis of Breakdown (2013), which provided alternative methods of observing and treating psychotic breaks, veteran psychoanalyst Bollas presents a companion volume that skirts the causes and differing diagnoses of schizophrenia in favor of analyzing varying aspects of the condition itself. In an erudite, well-structured, three-part narrative, the author chronicles his early, intensive clinical experience with schizophrenic children and adults in the 1970s, accessible theoretical analysis of a typical patient’s behavior, and the methodology of popular psychotherapeutic practice and how it can be tweaked for maximum effectiveness. In a set of vividly harrowing chapters, the author describes the “apocalyptic moments” leading up to a schizophrenic breakdown, clearly showing how frightful the illness can be to the patient, their loved ones, and even their caregivers. Also insightful are Bollas’ explorations into schizophrenic speech, habitual behavior, and thought and personification patterning. He logically argues against assertions by associated mental health professionals that the illness is genetically determined and against the rampant prescribing of antipsychotic medications, which dull patients into what he calls a zombielike state. Too often, notes the author, patients are left at the mercy of a “throw the key away finality,” with the human element of the afflicted wholly disregarded. Instead, Bollas advocates for more fundamental curative measures employing compassionate, natural body therapies like daily massages and methodical interpersonal communication between psychotherapist and patient, approaches that have been proven efficacious within the scope of his own clinical practice. Precisely when the psychotic break occurs becomes a key component as well: “Timing is everything in analytic work.”
A vastly informative, coherent, and valuable assessment; useful and accessible for both mental health professionals and laypeople—even those who don’t share the author’s unique perspectives and treatment alternatives.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-300-21473-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
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