Compassionate and insightful.
McNally (Psychology/Harvard Univ.; Remembering Trauma, 2003, etc.) takes a hard look at statistics that seem to indicate that “[m]adness…is rampant in America.”
At issue are the diagnostic guidelines used to determine what constitutes a “mental disorder.” These are delineated by the American Psychiatric Association and codified in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. (The DSM-V is scheduled to appear in 2013.) As someone who has been directly involved in updating the manual, the author struggles with a thorny question: “Does our system of diagnosing mental disorders fail to distinguish normal human suffering from genuine mental illness? Or are we really getting sicker?” Since the 1980 publication of DSM-III, critics have accused the profession of being self-interested, “expanding the boundaries of mental disorders” to “relatively trivial problems” such as “caffeine-induced sleep disorder” or blurring the difference between shyness and “social phobia.” Yet people do seek psychological help in alleviating suffering, and eligibility for health-insurance coverage is dependent on the diagnosis they receive. While pharmaceutical companies may be charged with encouraging broad definitions of mental illness, the opposite is true of insurers. McNally reviews advances in the field since the publication of DSM-III, examining research in evolutionary psychology, the role of social norms in defining maladaptive behavior and the interplay of genetics and environment. He also points to how nonpsychiatric medicine has shifted the “boundary between health and sickness” by treating people with preventative medication for high blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol. Whether or not—and how—to treat psychological difficulties will remain a problem that individuals, medical professionals and society at large will grapple with, but McNally is optimistic.
Compassionate and insightful.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-674-04649-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Belknap/Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2010
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
A riveting look inside the human brain and its quirks.
Acclaimed British neurologist Sacks (Neurology and Psychiatry/Columbia Univ.; The Mind’s Eye, 2010, etc.) delves into the many different sorts of hallucinations that can be generated by the human mind.
The author assembles a wide range of case studies in hallucinations—seeing, hearing or otherwise perceiving things that aren’t there—and the varying brain quirks and disorders that cause them in patients who are otherwise mentally healthy. In each case, he presents a fascinating condition and then expounds on the neurological causes at work, drawing from his own work as a neurologist, as well as other case studies, letters from patients and even historical records and literature. For example, he tells the story of an elderly blind woman who “saw” strange people and animals in her room, caused by Charles Bonnet Syndrome, a condition in with the parts of the brain responsible for vision draw on memories instead of visual perceptions. In another chapter, Sacks recalls his own experimentation with drugs, describing his auditory hallucinations. He believed he heard his neighbors drop by for breakfast, and he cooked for them, “put their ham and eggs on a tray, walked into the living room—and found it completely empty.” He also tells of hallucinations in people who have undergone prolonged sensory deprivation and in those who suffer from Parkinson’s disease, migraines, epilepsy and narcolepsy, among other conditions. Although this collection of disorders feels somewhat formulaic, it’s a formula that has served Sacks well in several previous books (especially his 1985 bestseller The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat), and it’s still effective—largely because Sacks never turns exploitative, instead sketching out each illness with compassion and thoughtful prose.
A riveting look inside the human brain and its quirks.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-95724-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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