A well written manuscript which described psychologically challenged (although they ...
582695
A well written manuscript which described psychologically challenged (although they would deny it) perfectly.  Finding the answers on how to overcome their destructive hold on someone is a challenge.
1299114
I enjoyed the book and it was written well but I found some of the subject matter quite difficult.
4128457
Written by a Christian Psychologist who bought into, but now regrets, his part in promoting the false Memory Syndrome, also known as Recovered/Repressed Memory.  The doctor also addresses the diagnosis of Multiple Personality Disorder, also known as Dissociative Identity Disorder.  This book is an excellent reference for those who may be victims of this 'therapy', may be family members of a 'victim', may be a practicing therapist of this dangerous & unbiblical practice, or simply interested in hysterias in history.
2953748
This book, while very interesting, is very hard to read unless you are a student of neurology or psychology.  There are numerous references to other sources, which upon further investigation, clarified some of the confusion I felt when reading this book.  The title makes it seem like a fun book.  It's a college level text, not light reading!
1827293
Few psychiatrists have spoken out against the oppression of people diagnosed with schizophrenia or manic-depression. The psychiatric establishment uses the "biomedical model" as an excuse to continue its torture and oppression of psychiatric patients.
Dr. Breggin has the wisdom and compassion to mistrust the psychiatric establishment. Instead, he lets himself be guided by the patients' own authentic experience.
Instead of judging and ridiculing patients, Dr. Breggin approaches them as worthy paricipants in the human condition. He views them as fully human beings with human dignity whose lives have meaning and value.
Dr. Breggin discusses the biomedical model expounded by neuroleptic drug manufacturers and psychiatry. He mentions some family "advocacy" groups which depend on drug manufacturer largesse.
There are now forced drugging laws in almost every state in the U.S. These groups, along with their drug company sponsors, have been the main lobbyists for legislation forcing (by court order) peaceful, law-abiding citizens to submit to painful, degrading, debilitating, potentially fatal "treatment."
In the first chapter of this book, Dr. Breggin tells of his experience volunteering at a mental ward when he was an undergrad at Harvard. He and his fellow students caused dismay among the administrators of the hospital when they asked permission to take some patients on walks or a short trip. The students wanted to do this on a one-to-one basis. The students suspected that the "mentally ill" patients' main problem was the "treatment" they were receiving at the hospital. Unfortunately, those students' suspicions were confirmed.
Dr. Breggin suggested to one of the administrators that it was neither humane nor healthy to have the temperature so low in the patients' ward. The administrator replied, "Schizophrenics don't feel temperature like the rest of us do."
The Harvard undergrads finally did get permission to work with individual patients. The undergrads worked with fourteen patients, all of whom eventually left the hospital to live on their own. Only two or three returned.
These particular patients had been at the ward for decades. Hospital administrators thought of them as hopeless.
Dr. Breggin's undergrad experience was an obvious refutation of the biomedical model.
What bothers me the most about the biomedical model, though, is that, even if it were well-grounded in scientific evidence---which it is not---it still would not justify torture.
I have known the great privilege of having a family member who has a diagnosis of schizophrenia. She is not "sick." She does not have a "neurobiological brain disorder."
If she had a neurobiological brain disorder, neurologists, not psychiatrists, would be treating it.
She is a warm, gifted, sensitive, highly intelligent young woman with special problems which make life unusually difficult for her. This difficulty has been magnified and exacerbated a thousand-fold by society's scapegoating and psychiatry's degradation and cruelty.
1267311
A well written memoir of a woman with a brain injury resulting from a fall from a horse.  The details are often painful to read and must have been
painful to endure.  But with the aid of a tremendous will to keep going and an tough inner strength she went through a twenty-year
therapy process involving rehab, riding lessons, dog agility lessons, fitness and strength training, and the process of writing a book.
She often had help from helpers whom she would seek out or who appeared in her life. She stresses that helping the brain to recover and
to make new neural pathways is a process of years and of will and effort.
HelenVee
3048878
Parts of this book are helpful and interesting, but there are also some challenges which should be addressed.

On the positive side, the book makes it very clear that many so-called character flaws or behavioral issues are actually physiological issues of the brain. The author states many times that it is inappropriate to shame or place blame on an individual who has difficulty concentrating, is depressed or anxious, etc.  A clear case is made for the physiological differences in the brain between the "normal" brain and a brain with over- or under-performing sections.  For the most part, the treatments prescribed would be considered normal, healthy living: eating a good diet, drinking plenty of water, exercising, therapy, meditation, etc.

Dr. Daniel Amen reportedly asked Dr. Jesse Payne to adapt his (Dr. Amen's) original book, "Change Your Brain, Change Your Life" due to Dr. Payne's "ability to communicate with young people."  And that's a significant problem: the writing is very uneven. I was struggling to guess the audience for this edition.  Mostly it reads like a book designed for adults-- perhaps the parents of individuals under 25.  Yet the title implies it's for the under-25 audience by using the term "your."  Every now and then attempts are made to write for a young audience.  Phrases like "pissed off" appear in the otherwise staid/medical writing style and are jarring to the reader.  The book reads like someone went through the original text and tried to insert phrases or partially rewrite sentences which might appeal to a younger audience. In my opinion, to truly appeal to younger readers, it should have been completely rewritten, not just edited.  More illustrations should be provided, and the text probably cut in half.  The overall tone is definitely for adults.

Some of the information seems adapted from non-credited sources, such as the "ANTS"-- automatic negative thoughts.  This concept stems from the work of Aaron Beck, Albert Ellis, and David Burns-- cognitive-behavioral and/or rational-emotive therapy.  Mentioning these resources would have been helpful to the readers.  Dr. Burns' book "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy" would provide invaluable (and much more in-depth) assistance to those dealing with anxiety and depression issues.

Another concern is that much more space is devoted to identifying the brain parts responsible for the problems, and analyzing how those problems might play out in life, but the solutions were rather limited.

I was pleased that the book limited the references to Dr. Amen's clinics and his use of SPECT imaging for diagnosis, which is controversial due to a lack of research backing up some of his conclusions.  Sometimes Dr. Amen's programs (like his PBS special) seem more like advertisements for his clinic than anything else.  Quackwatch and other sites will provide more information about the medical profession's concern about his work.  That said, this book did not delve deeply into this area and also did not promote prescription medications, or Dr. Amen's clinic,  as a panacea.

So-- interesting research, excellent attitude about not shaming those with medical conditions, and basic solutions.  I would say it's a good book, but not great.  If you're struggling with depression/anxiety, check Dr. David Burns' book.
1663794
The book was heavily written in and there were pages glued together.
354465
The gist of this book is a contrast between what the author terms 'the medical model' (which claims that mental illnesses are biologically caused) and the 'emotional pain model' (which states that the causes of mental illnesses are to be found in emotional trauma and pain).
The first part of the book is a sound and detailed critique and repudiation of 'the medical model', while the rest of the book is devoted to an in-depth exposition of the 'emotional pain model'.
To me, it is really no great mystery why the psychiatric profession and society at large have chosen to believe that all mental illnesses are organic illnesses (i..e biologically caused), for that gives the simple and comforting illusion that these otherwise so perplexing and uncontrollable diseases have been understood and can be managed.
It's just another case of the apparently basic abhorrence of the human mind for uncertainty and lack of control.
Nevertheless, despite the (for so many) great and obvious appeal of the biological model, I think it is high time that we as individuals and as a society move away from it towards a sounder understanding of the causes of mental illness.
For the biological model IS an illusion, make no mistake about that! (as the author does an excellent job of demonstrating in the first part of the book).
While I do not believe that the emotional pain model can fully account for all mental disorders, I definitely think it is a huge step in the right direction.
As someone who has carried the label of 'chronic schizophrenic' for nearly ten years now, this book has been a real eye-opener for me, and has resulted in a much broader and more sensible understanding of the sources of my troubles than biopsychiatry can offer.
Highly recommended!
1488340
This book is a compilation by Dr. Conrad Baars' daughter and her colleague in their counseling offices.  It includes pamphlets and journal articles that are no longer in print and some articles that have never been published before.  Dr. Baars is a Dutch American psychiatrist.  During WWII he was imprisoned in Buchenwald Concentration Camp for his work with the French underground.  After the war he finished his psychiatric training and was able to immigrate to the US.  Along with his colleague, Anna Terruwe, Ph. D., MD, he has served as a consultant to the Vatican on problems in the priesthood.  Some of these articles in this book are based on his consultant reports to the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.  Dr. Baars also gave many conferences to religious on psychology and the spiritual life. It is wonderful to see these pamphlets and articles back in print and to have them in one very helpful and hopeful book.
457764
This is a well written document of the crimes of 93 men - all men - who were executed for their crimes. I'm not a history buff but I found the descriptions of a wide variety of characters fascinating. It's a  book that forces the reader to think about such topics as evil, perpetrated by liars, thiefs, and murderers, about sadistic revenge, perpetrated by some of their jailors, and about the ethics, morality and efficacy of capital punishment. It made this reader think about the nature of mental illness, and drug and alcohol addiction and their possible relationship to heinous crimes.
  I wish this book had been available 50 years ago when I took a course in criminology. We we were assigned an excellent text, "The Crime Problem," by Walter C. Reckless. But "Folsom's 93," while not overly academic, would have made excellent supplementary reading. I imagine it will now fulfill that purpose for many students of criminology, history,and sociology, besides being fascinating reading for the layman.
4074063
I loved the way the writer approached his subject and tried to help the reader understand what may have occurred in Eugenia's life to explain "how" the person came to be.  It is a good rendering of attitudes towards people who struggled with gender identity issues in a time when such things were basically unheard of.  Eugenia was not a particularly likeable person in many ways, but this is tempered by the struggle she daily wrestled with.  I found this to be a fascinating tale of the human condition.
2066213
A combination of psychology text and novel. The lives of Harold and Erica are followed from birth to death and their actions are explained in terms of developmental and social psychology. If you find the book entertaining then it's a good introduction to a lot of social psychology and intellectual history, but if  you find yourself, as I did at times, having to plough through it, then you might be better off with a history of philosophy and a textbook of psychology.
  The main defect, I felt, was that the views of the psychologists and social scientists mentioned are quoted uncritically. We get a lot of "John Doe of Ivyclad University has shown" without analysis of how valid John Doe's studies were. Brooks is at his best when he is skeptical, for example about management theories.
  If, for example, you've never ever heard of Bowlby or Ainsworth this will tell you what they said but not in what ways their experiments were flawed. The jacket copy speaks of changes in the last thirty years, but many of the experiments and sources described are quite old. (Bowlby and Ainsworth were working in the thirties and forties.) The central message is that we are largely motivated by unconscious forces determined by our environment, but I don't think that is a new discovery of the last thirty years.
3592851
It is admirable that the author challenges parents to avoid imposing their negative view of the world and fears on their children. Parenting certainly involves the psychological as well as the spiritual.  I feel the author moved away from the more personable approach that he used in the beginning of the book to engage the reader.  Citing more personable examples of  the "ah-ha" moments that he encountered in his parenting journey would have  persuaded more believers to adopt his philosophy.
4349008
The title essay of this book well describes a far too common problem among gifted (intellectually, artistically, or emotionally) children.  Because of their quick perceptions and sensitivity, they are deeply attuned to others' wishes, needs, and expectations, and tend to structure their lives around those rather than following the guidance of their "true selves."  From my own experience, I completely agree with Miller's description of the problem, and of what in the child's psychological makeup leads to its occurrence.  But I part company with her when she places the blame for the child's problems solely on "narcissistic parents."  While such parents undoubtedly exist, I think that most parents are sincerely trying to do what's right for their children;  they do harm out of ignorance or misguided beliefs rather than deliberate cruelty.  For instance, a gifted child may be taught to belittle his/her gifts because the parent believes "humility" is important, not because he/she is selfishly trying to crush the child's spirit.  Rather than blaming parents, I think it's more productive to acknowledge their desire to raise their children right, and educate them about the ways in which they may be unconsciously causing harm.  And it's far more positive for an adult who recognizes this problem in him/herself to take action to honor the "true self," rather than getting hung up on "what my parents did wrong" and sinking into a victim mentality.
4127558
The novel which seems to be a kind of underground classic is a study in abnormal psychology.  You are in the mind of a seriously disturbed person throughout--an uncomfortable place to be.  What is interesting is that the man in question is an artist, and the novel is suggestive about the relation of artist to audience and artistic subject to life.  The writing is fine, the translation equally so, and I read it in one sitting--a good sign.
14695
More meaningful and psychological than it appears from the first twenty pages.  Very well written, with a rich vocabulary and syntax.