A Boston Globe reporter's on-the-spot account of the media's—and the public's—rush to judgment when Harvard psychiatrist Margaret Bean-Bayog was suspected of seducing a young male patient and driving him to suicide. A preface explains that this first-person narrative was written by Gary, the younger Chafetz, who covered the story for the Globe, while Morris, his psychiatrist father, served as consultant and reviewer. Assigned to the story under enormous deadline pressures, Chafetz was initially certain of Bean-Bayog's guilt. With time to study the case more carefully, he developed doubts and came to believe that the allegations against her could not be proved in court. Whether his assessment is accurate cannot be known, for Bean-Bayog avoided a hearing before the state medical board by resigning her medical license, and she made an out-of-court settlement in the malpractice suit brought by the patient's family. Chafetz criticizes the interpretation of Bean- Bayog's case notes made by the plaintiff's lawyer, reviews various other documents, interviews the patient's sister and some of the lawyers involved, and gives cursory attention to the issues of psychiatric practice raised by the case. Bean-Bayog granted him a number of interviews, and these are mostly reported as question-and-answer sessions in separate chapters rather than being woven into the narrative. Letting Bean-Bayog explain herself in her own words presents her as the victim in the case, but ultimately doubts about her professionalism remain. An epilogue containing some irrelevant and unflattering material about the patient's family and a compassionate glimpse of Bean- Bayog attempting to get on with her life reveals clearly where Chafetz's sympathies lie. Largely superficial reporting that has the feeling of a pastiche hastily assembled to meet a deadline. (For a more serious examination of the case, see McNamara: Breakdown, below.)
Pub Date: April 13, 1994
ISBN: 0-517-59558-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1994
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
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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