Again, Dowling (Perfect Woman, 1988, etc.) uses personal experience—her daughter's depression—as the springboard for her writing, this time arguing for the primary role of brain biochemistry in a large number of illnesses frequently considered biological in origin. Dowling believes, along with Hudson and Pope (Harvard psychiatrists who identified affective spectrum disorder) that the level of serotonin, a brain hormone, has as much to do with mental status as do environmental influences, and she urges medication for depressed patients to restore and regulate equilibrium. Having seen her daughter successfully treated with an antidepressant, she eagerly encourages others to seek similar relief for mood disorders, and goes on to examine the broad range of diagnoses- -bulimia, PMS, obsessive-compulsive disorder, addictions, kleptomania—that respond to these medications. Psychiatrists, she finds, often take incomplete family histories, miss cases of depression, undermedicate, or fail to recognize and treat dual illnesses (e.g., depression and addiction). Also, most people see mood as a matter of personal control and resist professional intervention. Dowling realizes that many will resist this point of view (``Life is flattened, we feel, by a one-dimensional, chemical approach to the brain''), and she tries to persuade with anecdotal case histories, always recommending psychotherapy as part of the process, not merely to monitor dosages and possible side effects but also, as one psychiatrist sees it, to learn ``to unravel what is normal personality from what the illness has superimposed upon it.'' No researcher, Dowling admits, has established a cause-and- effect relationship between serotonin and these mood disorders, just an association, so she does not insist that her argument is more than plausible. She does insist, though, some antidepressant will always relieve these conditions, a certainty many psychiatrists will dispute. As in Dowling's previous books, readers will recognize themselves, welcome the accessible vocabulary, and appreciate the balanced presentation of related issues (will people use PMS as evidence of inferiority or reason for discrimination?). Expect the warmest response from a nonprofessional audience.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-684-19257-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1991
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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