An inspiring, informative affirmation of human potential combined with an overview of historical developments in...
Cognitive psychologist Kaufman (Psychology/New York Univ.; co-author: Mating Intelligence Unleashed: The Role of Mind in Sex, Dating and Love, 2013, etc.) describes how he overcame a learning disability and defied expectations despite doing poorly on IQ tests.
At the age of 3—after finally being cured of a series of ear infections that had impeded his hearing—the author was left with a central auditory processing disorder that slowed his understanding of speech. As a result, Kaufman was set on the special education track, where he remained until middle school, when he convinced his parents and teachers that he could succeed in a normal classroom. The author admits that children with learning disabilities need special help to develop alternative learning strategies and work at their own pace, but he is sharply critical of special ed classes that set the bar too low on achievement and use IQ tests to label children. Kaufman makes a convincing case that stereotyping students is not only unsupported by research, but also discriminatory. He emphasizes how lowered expectations of slow learners causes them to develop low self-esteem, diminishes their motivation and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, magnifying the effects of early learning disabilities—which, with proper education, can be overcome. In Kaufman’s case, cello lessons helped him maintain his self-esteem. The author aligns himself with evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker on the need to redefine intelligence more broadly. Coupling his own experience with that of Temple Grandin and Daniel Tammet, who describe how they think using images, he suggests that the development of expertise, associative thinking and pattern recognition are aspects of creative intelligence not revealed by IQ testing.
An inspiring, informative affirmation of human potential combined with an overview of historical developments in standardized tests, cognitive psychology and current research.Pub Date: June 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-465-02554-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
With a bit of humor and a lot of charity, a therapist shares her unusual experiences with people suffering from crippling phobias, panic attacks, and obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCD) and describes how she helps them. Therapist Dumont practices cognitive/behavioral therapy in real-life settings, which means that she doesn't just sit in an office with her fearful clients; she rides elevators and crosses bridges with them, and even makes house calls to those frightened of leaving home. The heart of this book is a series of case studies of some of her more anxiety-ridden clients, among them Sam, whose snake phobia reached job-threatening levels; Jerry, whose compulsion was to pick up all litter in subway stations; Janet, who felt compelled to search for bodies along the roadside; and Gracie, whose obsession with dirt led her to bathe eight hours a night for over 30 years. Dumont describes the techniques she used to help these and other clients regain control of their lives. In separate sections directed first at those people having anxiety disorders and then at those who live with or care for them, she outlines a step-by-step process in which the sufferer learns to identify the thought that sets off the phobic or obsessive-compulsive response, to test the thought's reality by observing the outside world, and to use carefully planned and documented exposures to the feared situation to assess progress. Various worksheets, charts, and diaries are involved in this process, and these are included in an appendix. Dumont is not averse to medications for OCD, and she includes a brief overview of what's currently available. For the casual reader, a fascinating trip through a world of bizarre behaviors; for the victim of an anxiety disorder or the family of such a victim, reassurance that there is a path out.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-393-03848-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1995
A stringent critique of the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which came into vogue after the Vietnam war. Despite his skeptical subtitle, Young (Anthropology/McGill Univ.) doesn't doubt the existence of PTSD. However, he offers convincing evidence that this diagnosis is of recent vintage- -largely in response to the experiences of Vietnam veterans—and that it is used most imprecisely, ``glued together by the practices, technologies and narratives with which it is diagnosed, studied, treated and represented.'' Young painstakingly traces the evolution of the concept of trauma, from studies of 19th-century victims of railroad accidents who suffered ``traumatic memory'' to the many incidents of ``shell shock'' during WW I to the contemporary idea of PTSD, developed largely during the 1970s and '80s. He notes that this diagnosis is used far more broadly than past formulations. For example, veterans often are labeled as suffering from PTSD not for war-related traumas they have suffered but for recurrent aggressive feelings or guilt deriving from acts they committed against others, even if these feelings developed years after the original acts occurred. Young drives this point home by providing excerpts from group and clinical evaluation sessions at an unnamed VA hospital specializing in PTSD, whose therapists sometimes seem to bandy about the label as freely as some of their colleagues elsewhere do the diagnosis of ``borderline personality disorder.'' Young's work is scientific in the best sense, i.e., clear, precise, and free of jargon and polemics. However, this is also a difficult, even formidable book, which at times digresses to somewhat tangential psychiatric matters. But if it is not for the general reader, Young's work will provide rewarding reading for clinicians, as well as for academics and other specialists interested in PTSD and, more generally, in the nature and pitfalls of contemporary psychiatric diagnosis and treatment. (5 line drawings)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-691-03352-8
Page Count: 327
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1995
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