A comforting companion for those coping with Alzheimer’s; a collection of vignettes of awkward and/or frightening situations are here cast in a gentle, humorous light that helps take the edge off of pain and frustration. Social worker Young knows all the physiology and the statistics relating to this disease of dementia—but she is also at the front line: having first nursed an aunt to her death from Alzheimer’s, Young is now on a similar path caring for her mother. Young knows the reality: it is a toss-up as to who suffers more, patient or caregiver. But she urges us, successfully, to “access mirth”: find humor in the most difficult situations, carry on day by day or hour by hour if necessary, try to humor the person with Alzheimer’s wherever possible, avoid arguments—hers is a steadying, encouraging tone that can help caregivers find one more small reserve of strength. Case story after case story (loosely grouped by subject) touches on the daily struggles of coping with the disease: running away, undressing in public, attacks on family members. Throughout, Young’s voice helps readers focus on the gentle humor of the situation rather than the overall tragedy. Not a reference, then; just a quiet, boost toward the brighter side of a difficult time. (photos)
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-57392-697-3
Page Count: 230
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1999
Hudson and Jacot (The Way Men Think, 1992) make a perplexing and incoherent effort to analogize intimacy and art. The authors declare ``that psychological differences between the sexes are both deeply engrained and imaginatively galvanising'' and ``that there exists a parallel between art and intimate relations.'' Unfortunately, very little that follows has anything to do with these potentially engaging assertions. For example, they devote two chapters to a ``thought experiment'' in which they describe several historically important women, including Margaret Mead and Kate Millett. The experiment requires imagining these figures as men, with the assumption that, as such, their stories would not make sense. The experiment fails thoroughly, however, for well-read readers of gender and sexuality literature, possibly because the authors dismiss these fields as postmodern and liberal to the point of irrelevance. Basically, they see men and women as fundamentally different because of early relationships with parents. Based in Freudian thought, they believe that men and women grow up with different complexes, and ``wounds,'' which color future interactions. The authors are exclusively concerned with ``the mutual fascination of individuals who are categorically dissimilar'' in terms of biological sex, so although they bill this as a history of desire and intimacy, only heterosexual love is addressed. And many of their characterizations of patterns of loving are rooted in stereotypes and structural inequities, criticisms of which they discard as extremist rhetoric of feminists and other radical groups. In their final analysis, intimacy and art are comparable because they both spring from the imagination, what Hudson and Jacot see as the ``mind's central function.'' But there never emerges a natural history of intimacy at all. What could have been a compelling discussion about the imagination is cluttered with conservative biases and false interpretations of social scientific data. (illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-300-06293-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
Mood-disorder specialist Jamison (Psychiatry/Johns Hopkins) comes clean about her own mood disorder: manic-depression. Less bitter and defensive than Kate Millett (The Loony-Bin Trip, 1990) in writing of this illness, Jamison has one thing in common with her: the reluctance to take lithium, despite her knowledge as a professional that it would control her extremes of mood. Why the refusal? Because, Jamison says, the periods of mild mania, or hypomania, are ``absolutely intoxicating states that gave rise to great personal pleasure, an incomparable flow of thoughts, and a ceaseless energy.'' Jamison now takes her lithium dutifully, however, after being hobbled for years by cycles of extreme mania (sleepless nights, mental chaos, shopping sprees with bills totaling over $30,000) and suicidal depression. The illness began to manifest itself after the delicate balance of her family life was disrupted. In a highly fluid, readable memoir, Jamison wonderfully describes her childhood as an Air Force brat, capturing both the ``romance and discipline'' of military life. But in 1961, when she was 15, Jamison's father retired from the Air Force and the family moved to California. Her father, an imaginative, playful, charismatic man, began displaying signs of manic- depression, and a few years later, so did Jamison. Always passionate, curious, independent-minded, she was now subject to crippling mood switches as she began a successful academic career and passed through a failed marriage, love affairs, and a new marriage. Jamison is convincing on the seductiveness of hypomania. But the author of Touched with Fire (1993), which claimed a link between the artistic temperament and manic-depression, goes too far here in claiming a superiority of experience for herself: that she has lived more truly and intensely than folks whose moods are better calibrated (``I have run faster, thought faster, loved faster than most''). But overall, a well-written, vivid depiction of a devastating mental illness. (First printing of 75,000; Literary Guild alternate selection; author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 18, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-44374-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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