Answers the question for professionals and patients alike: who is the person playing with your mind? Or is it your soul?
A probing, nuanced look at the culture of psychiatry, with particular emphasis on the dichotomy between the drug cure and the talking cure.
Anthropologist Luhrmann (Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft, 1989) spent some time exploring an aspect of psychological anthropology that required her to examine various cultures with the psychoanalytic theories of Freud in mind. As a result, she found herself drawn to the world of psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, and their patients. What she found after years of observation and immersion (she served briefly as a psychotherapist herself) were two ways of looking at mental illness. One approaches mental disorders as disturbances of the brain, biological anomalies, treatable with psychopharmaceuticals—Prozac, lithium, and the like. The other focuses on what Luhrmann calls disturbances of the mind, distortions of the personality that respond to the many, varying forms of guided exploration of the conscious and unconscious categorized as psychodynamic therapy. Psychiatrists are usually trained in both, but they are often forced to choose one approach or the other, committing themselves as brain doctors or mind doctors. Recently the two camps began to collaborate, agreeing in essence that a combination of medication and psychodynamics is most effective, but managed care put a severe cramp in that prognosis, forcing many hospitals and doctors into the drug McCure, eliminating or curtailing the now 45-minute hour. In chapters that include empathetic exploration of the stresses of medical training, careful examinations of the difficulties of diagnosis, the split between the scientist and the psychoanalyst, and the crisis of managed care, Luhrmann lays out clearly, with anecdote and case history, the ethnography that shapes a psychotherapist.
Answers the question for professionals and patients alike: who is the person playing with your mind? Or is it your soul?Pub Date: April 10, 2000
ISBN: 0-679-42191-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...
Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.
The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.Pub Date: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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