A provocative, valuable guide for parents, school personnel and medical practitioners who deal with individuals showing...
Respected American Academy of Pediatrics and American Academy of Neurology fellow Saul makes the controversial claim that attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is routinely misdiagnosed.
The author challenges the definition of ADHD as a fundamentally flawed catchall based solely on “symptoms of distractibility and impulsivity [that] are all too real” but may be attributable to “more than twenty medical diagnoses.” Using the analogy of common ailments—e.g., abdominal pain, which may be the result of a variety of problems ranging from indigestion to appendicitis or cancer—Saul makes the point that many different factors can explain a child's disruptive behavior. He makes a convincing case that a diagnosis of ADHD followed by a prescription for a stimulant, such as Ritalin, has become a routine option for pediatricians at the urging of school authorities and parents. Too often, an overlooked, underlying condition is left untreated while the hapless patient suffers from side effects such as insomnia, weight loss and anxiety. The author illustrates his contention with anecdotal material, using case histories accumulated from his more than 50 years of medical practice. He explains that he routinely administers a series of tests before making any recommendations, beginning with a blood work-up in order to eliminate problems such as hyperthyroidism, iron deficiency or hormone imbalance. He describes instances in which a routine eye examination revealed that a child was unable to see the chalkboard and a similar instance of how a hearing problem was the root of a student's inability to follow instructions properly. If none of these are at issue, Saul looks for stress-related psychological problems. Other possibilities range from dyslexia, substance abuse, 20-second epileptic seizures and major psychiatric disorders such as depression. None of these benefit from amphetamine-based medications such as Ritalin.
A provocative, valuable guide for parents, school personnel and medical practitioners who deal with individuals showing symptoms routinely attributed to ADHD.Pub Date: March 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-226673-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harper Wave
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
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
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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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