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UNHOLY GHOST

Name: UNHOLY GHOST
Author: Nell Casey
ISBN: 0-688-17031-5

WRITERS ON DEPRESSION

edited by Nell Casey ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 7, 2001

Administer in small doses at sensible intervals—or expect a serious side-effect: depression.

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An uneven collection of 22 essays and excerpts on the subject of depression by a wide assortment of writers.

Mental-health journalist Casey has assembled quite an array of luminaries—from the quasars (William Styron, Larry McMurtry, Ann Beattie) to the lesser-known, and (in some sad cases) feebler lights. Among them they manage to cast considerable light on this dark disease, revealing vast dimensions that far surpass the ability of a single word to encompass it. Many confess they have no real idea of the source of their disease. (David Karp concludes that it “arises out of an enormously complicated, constantly shifting, elusive concatenation of circumstance, temperament, and biochemistry.”) Some are grateful for anti-depressant drugs; others rail against them. Some rage against psychiatric hospitals and grave treatments (like electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT), but Martha Manning calls ECT “the tractor that pulled me out of the mud.” Not unexpectedly, the principal adornments are those supplied by Russell Banks (who writes with compassion and eloquence about his wife’s depression), Larry McMurtry (whose personal experiences chronicled here appeared in fictional form in his Duane Is Depressed), William Styron (who observes that the illness’ only virtue—if such a sanguine word be apt—is that it can be conquered), and Donald Hall (whose loving words for his late wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, are almost unbearably poignant). Casey has employed an interesting device of juxtaposition: Chase Twichell (wife of Russell Banks) writes about her lifelong loneliness; Styron’s wife writes about her coping with his illness; editor Casey herself writes about her sister’s depression—and then novelist Maud Casey ends her sister’s collection with the observation that, finally, it is practicality that holds her to the earth. There is at times a redundancy to the volume (more than one writer teaches us about serotonin), but there are quiet surprises, too—like Meri Nana-Ama Danquah’s luminous essay about being black, and being depressed.

Administer in small doses at sensible intervals—or expect a serious side-effect: depression.

Pub Date: March 7, 2001

ISBN: 0-688-17031-5

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2001

Categories:

PSYCHOLOGY | SELF-HELP

- BOOK REVIEW
THE JOURNALS OF SPALDING GRAY
by Spalding Gray edited by Nell Casey

- BOOK REVIEW
AN UNCERTAIN INHERITANCE
edited by Nell Casey

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THINKING, FAST AND SLOW

by Daniel Kahneman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2011

Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...

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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

Categories:

BUSINESS | LEADERSHIP, MANAGEMENT & COMMUNICATION | PSYCHOLOGY

- BOOK REVIEW
NOISE
by Daniel Kahneman & Olivier Sibony & Cass R. Sunstein

- IN THE NEWS
Author Daniel Kahneman Dies at 90

- IN THE NEWS
Report: Daniel Kahneman Died by Assisted Suicide

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MASTERY

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...

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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.