Written with the compassion, verve, and style that are the author's trademark, this book offers an invaluable overview on...
The 1993 publication of Kramer’s Listening to Prozac set off a controversy about the use of mind-altering drugs in the treatment of mental illness that has still to be resolved, a situation the author finds deplorable.
Now, almost a quarter century later, Kramer (Brown Medical School; Freud: Inventor of the Modern Mind, 2006, etc.) explains that he had not intended to debunk the value of antidepressants in the treatment of depression. His book not only became a bestseller, turning him into a minor celebrity, but its catchy title was used in broadsided attacks on antidepressants with which he did not agree—e.g., a 1998 article called “Listening to Prozac but Hearing Placebo.” The author’s concern had been the possibility that the drugs’ mind-altering side effects might be used “to tweak” personality—though he admits to having enjoyed the celebrity status that came with the book’s publication. In his own psychiatric practice, Kramer finds that psychotherapy and antidepressants both have important roles to play in combating depression. The interplay between them is the subject of an ongoing discussion between himself and his patients as they jointly evaluate the success of treatment. “This book is about two influences on medical practice,” he writes, “rigorous trials and clinical encounters.” Kramer worries that overemphasis on rigorous trials and statistical analysis of outcomes is eroding the doctor-patient relationship, not allowing for a more flexible, case-by-case approach to treatment. “A tiny fraction of what doctors do finds direct representation in research,” he writes. While the efficacy of antidepressants combined with psychotherapy is well-established, how long to maintain their use following recovery is still under debate. It is a question of achieving a balance between preventing the recurrence of depression and side effects such as the occurrence of cataracts and lowered calcium absorption.
Written with the compassion, verve, and style that are the author's trademark, this book offers an invaluable overview on the state of treatment and the options available.Pub Date: June 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-374-28067-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
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
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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