A thought-provoking, industry-minded, and polarizing perspective on the neurocircuitry of human desire and compulsion.
An argument against classifying addiction as a chronic “brain disease.”
Armed with scientific data and plenty of case studies, developmental neuroscientist and former addict Lewis (Memoirs of an Addicted Brain: A Neuroscientist Examines His Former Life on Drugs, 2012) enters the ongoing addiction nomenclature debate with an intellectually authoritative yet controversial declaration that substance and behavioral dependencies are swiftly and deeply learned via the “neural circuitry of desire.” The author blames the medical community for developing a disease-model juggernaut derived primarily from clinical data rather than biological and psychological research on brain changes and altered synapses. Lewis believes this conceptualization pegged the affliction as a disease instead of what he deems a “developmental cascade and a detrimental result of habitual behaviors.” As increasing numbers of medical communities have embraced the addiction model this way, he writes, treatment methodologies often become ineffective as well. Lewis further criticizes the Alcoholics Anonymous strategy and its emphasis on an addict’s ability to surrender to their “powerlessness” over a compulsion rather than promoting personal empowerment toward self-sustainability. Once past a somewhat overly clinical neuroscientific discussion on the brain’s plasticity, Lewis introduces biographical testimonies of Americans struggling with addiction that both humanize and reinforce his standpoint. Awash in the separate throes of heroin, methamphetamine, opiates, alcohol, and binge-eating compulsions, the cases are complemented with uplifting updates on their sobriety efforts, which the author prefers to call a “developmental journey” toward recovery. Lewis’ statement that addiction is “uncannily normal” likely stems from his experiences as a former narcotic addict who overcame a decadelong drug habit at age 30. While definite fodder for debate, the author remains firm in his belief that in order to fully process the addiction spectrum, we must “gaze directly at the point where experience and biology meet.”
A thought-provoking, industry-minded, and polarizing perspective on the neurocircuitry of human desire and compulsion.Pub Date: July 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61039-437-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
A demanding if not always well-organized study of why we persist in lying to ourselves. Psychoanalyst Shengold, whose fifth book this is (the best known is Soul Murder, 1989, about children whose parents have emotionally crippled them), develops a kind of phenomenology of such major and common emotional delusions as narcissism, malignant envy, paranoia, and even love (which often involves idealization of the other, accompanied by a suspension of critical judgment). We all are more or less under the sway of such delusions, Shengold observes; in the psychotic they take over the personality, while in the neurotic they coexist with more rational and less grandiose self-conceptions while remaining mentally split off from them. He illustrates the major kinds of delusions with a few case studies and through extensive allusions to and citations from major works of literature, particularly by Sophocles and Shakespeare (there is also a somewhat rambling chapter devoted to Samuel Butler, the misanthropic 19th-century English novelist and essayist). Shengold's basic thesis concerns ``the universal...retentions of delusions as a residue of the earliest mental functioning'' and the claim that delusions ``tie us to our early mental impressions of parents, to whom we cling as indispensable to our existence.'' They are the fruit of the desire to remain parented forever. Shengold has too little to say here about how the psychoanalyst or therapist might most effectively help ``surface'' and work with the patient's delusions. However, this book, which is almost entirely free of the kind of convoluted prose that too often characterizes psychoanalytic writing, will help clinicians focus on their patients' and their own deepest, largely submerged self-myths, and how they contribute to resistance (in both the colloquial and psychotherapeutic senses) to insight and change. Informative and thought-provoking, but of interest largely to clinicians.
Pub Date: July 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-300-06268-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
This readable survey of cosmology (and the astronomical evidence on which it is founded) shows an unusual awareness of the larger philosophical context in which scientific ideas are worked out. Thuan (Astronomy/Univ. of Virginia) is well known in France (where this book first appeared) both for popular science books and for TV appearances. It is easy to see why, if the present volume is a fair sample. He begins with a vivid description of his work at a modern astronomical observatory, where he and his colleagues are more likely to settle down in front of a bank of instruments and computer keyboards than to step outside for a direct view of the sky. Still, the emotional impact of the night sky is at the root of the appeal of astronomy and forms the source of its speculations about the universe we inhabit. Thuan quickly surveys the many ways in which past civilizations have interpreted the findings of astronomy, from the mythological universe of the ancients to the deterministic model of the late 19th century. He outlines the structure of the cosmos as revealed by increasingly more sophisticated instruments and techniques, smoothly explaining such central concepts as the Hubble constant and black holes. Thuan shows a particular willingness to grapple with some of the larger philosophical and religious issues implicit in any discussion of how the universe began and how it may end; his argument for the anthropic principle (that the universe is designed to produce intelligent living creatures) is tantalizing, although the principle itself seems to depend on circular reasoning. Likewise, his willingness to speculate on the ultimate fate of life in the universe sets him apart from many astronomers, who shy away from such questions. Clear, comprehensive, well written (and well translated), this is a fine introduction to the key issues of modern cosmology. (photos, not seen)
Pub Date: July 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-19-507370-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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