It is strange to find small joys in a book about depression, but there are many in Manning's tale of her descent into hell. Among a spate of recent memoirs about depression, what defines Manning's first book is her own experience as a psychotherapist: She highlights the strange and humiliating duality of being able to heal others but not herself. Yet Manning's narrative is never clinical; the writing is simple and moving and laced with a sly, self-deprecating wit (she describes herself as a ``professional voyeur''). Depression creeps up on Manning little by little, disguised as laziness and sloth, and blindsides her, throwing her overcommitted life (as therapist, teacher, wife and mother, church- choir member) into disarry; finally, thoughts of suicide become inescapable. A sympathetic therapist of her own, an empathetic psychiatrist, and a silver tray full of antidepressants (her daughter, Keara, cleans out the medicine chest before a party) fail to end ``the slow erosion of the self, as insidious as any cancer. And, like cancer, it is essentially a solitary experience. A room in hell with only your name on the door.'' She finally successfully undergoes electroconvulsive therapy, disturbed to find herself on a psychiatric ward with a crazy young woman she had spied in a restaurant a while back. Manning's road back to health is as long and tortuous as the path that led away from it, requiring reconciliation with both herself and God, who she believed had abandoned her. Despite its focus on herself, Manning's narrative is never claustrophobic; it is full of vibrantly depicted family and friends who bring love and strife: a depressed grandmother, an alcoholic sister, a psychotherapist husband who cannot bear his wife's pain, and independent, spirited Keara (``Mints? Nuts? Antidepressants?'' she asks, holding out her tray of drugs). Admirably honest, beautifully written.
Pub Date: March 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-06-251183-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An unwieldy assemblage of information on the varied elements- -from genes to neurotransmitters to early life experiences—that are believed to contribute to personality. Science writer Gallagher (The Power of Place, 1993) has assembled but not digested a huge amount of information on the complementary roles of nature and nurture in forming our individual identities. Her book centers on a woman identified as Monica. Monica was studied from her sensually deprived infancy (when an esophageal defect necessitated tube feeding and a depressed mother neglected her) and on into her unpredictably happy, successful adulthood—a success psychologists say is due to an inborn temperamental gift that we might call charisma. Pursuing this and many other studies (but without sourcing them), Gallagher brings out a particularly interesting point: that research has found nature and nurture to be linked in a two-way relationship. For instance, experience can actually change neurotransmitter patterns in the brain; conversely, our inborn temperament can influence what kinds of experiences we have. But Gallagher lacks a strong framework or point of view; she roams all over the psychological map, from memory to the unconscious to the artistic temperament. Too often, she gives an on-the-one-hand/on-the-other summary of the facts that leads to no conclusion other than the fairly useless one often repeated to her by researchers: We still don't know how much our genes and our environment contribute respectively to our selves. Further, she relies heavily on models that measure temperament on a range of axes, such as extroversion and agreeableness. But while Gallagher protests how complex personality is, this theory sounds like a simplistic building-block approach: Mr. X may have a large dose of extroversion, a touch of irritability, etc. Researchers recently announced the identification of a gene they say influences temperament. Only the future will tell us what Gallagher unfortunately can't.
Pub Date: April 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-43018-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Gilligan (Center for the Study of Violence/Harvard Medical School) zeroes in on the pitch-black emptiness within America's murderers before inexplicably letting his target move out of focus. To stem the contagion of violence, Gilligan believes, America needs to understand both its root causes and the social pathogens that spread it. He points to civilization's patriarchal structure, which entails a code of honor that imposes a crippling burden of shame. When the author confines himself to the murderers he met in the ``underworld,'' or maximum-security prisons (he served as head of mental-health services for the Massachusetts prison system), Gilligan's theories gain strength. For instance, he notes that, despite more shelters for battered women, the proportion of domestic-violence deaths has doubled, because their murderers ``are precisely the men who experience a life-death dependency on their wives and an overwhelming shame because of it.'' He castigates the death penalty not just as cruel but as ineffective, since it feeds a killer's desire for punishment. Moreover, one of his prescriptions—eliminating the illiteracy that fosters many criminals' sense of shame—is practical. However, the effects of Gilligan's subtle studies of killers are lost when he applies his lessons on a broader scale to an America that he says imposes ``structural violence'' on the disadvantaged. Gilligan's call to reform America's socioeconomic structure is less a prescription than a fantasy, and he downplays the fact that most of the lower class never becomes part of the criminal class. This critique has more than a share of the politically correct, as when the author notes that no other nation or culture ``has inflicted more collective violence on its victims than white (or European) Americans have inflicted on both native Americans and African- Americans over the past five centuries.'' A deeply compassionate survey of America's contemporary Desolation Row—but more than one reader will be wishing for a little more tough love. (First serial to Atlantic Monthly)
Pub Date: April 2, 1996
ISBN: 0-399-13979-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1996
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