by Jeffrey Lieberman with Ogi Ogas ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
Vastly edifying and vigorously written—a much-needed update on how far the psychiatric industry has come, both medically and...
An intelligent, encouraging survey of the psychiatric industry.
Though he considers the profession he’s dedicated his life to as the most “distrusted, feared, and denigrated of all medical specialties,” former American Psychiatric Association president Lieberman (Psychiatry/Columbia Univ. College of Physicians and Surgeons) writes with pride of his livelihood in this exuberant and comprehensive dissection of the trade. A profession once “clouded by ideology and dubious science,” the author applauds psychiatry’s grand advancements in the medical world and the progression of modern society’s impressions of it. Lieberman offers a broad historical perspective of how the mental health profession acquired its notoriously pseudoscientific reputation through chapters mining the processes of diagnosis and treatment, including a generous section highlighting the trailblazing career of Sigmund Freud, whose work as “CEO of the psychoanalytical movement” inspired the author to become a psychiatrist. Lieberman also discusses psychiatry’s historic role regarding issues of sexual orientation, the treatment of PTSD and the riddles involved in diagnosing schizophrenia (“sometimes schizophrenia skipped entire generations, only to re-emerge later in the family tree”). The author describes the documented barbarism of psychosurgical lobotomy treatments, insulin-induced comas, chloral sedation, progressive psychopharmacology and electroconvulsive therapy—though Lieberman also documents positive results with ECT performed on patients early in his career. The practice has dramatically outgrown its negative connotations, writes the author, with the implementation of a pluralistic viewpoint toward mental illness. Technological innovations like MRI neuroimaging and advanced genetic testing also paved the way toward a long overdue appreciation of psychiatric clinical practice. Furthermore, a complement of radical, renegade neuroscientists continues to revolutionize and destigmatize psychiatry throughout its modern-day renaissance. Lieberman’s exploration of what he dubs as psychiatry’s “dark comedy of fanciful missteps” optimistically concludes with Hollywood’s evolving interpretation of mental illness through films like The Silver Linings Playbook (2012).
Vastly edifying and vigorously written—a much-needed update on how far the psychiatric industry has come, both medically and from a public perception standpoint.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-27886-7
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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BOOK REVIEW
by Robert Greene ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 13, 2012
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
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by Robert Greene ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1998
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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