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To celebrate 11/11/11, I bring you brief notes on books which I read but, resignedly, realize I will never get around to writing up in full.
Glitter Rose, by Marianne de Pierres. A beautifully designed small hardcover from Twelfth Planet Press of connected short stories about a little Australian island, mostly populated by the decadent and desperate rich, which is infected by spores which mutate the population in strange, subtle ways. Wispy, atmospheric, delicate, like spare prose poems. A bit reminiscent of Lee Killough's Aventine stories, and, in themes but not style, of Tanith Lee. A World Fantasy Con giveaway.
Identity: Unknown (Tall, Dark and Dangerous)
, by Suzanne Brockmann. Amazon has Brockmann's short Navy SEAL romances listed quite cheaply, so I snagged a couple. Navy SEAL Mitchell Shaw is shot and hit over the head while deep undercover, and ends up amnesiac on a horse ranch and convinced that he's a hit man! This doesn't live up to its delicious premise, and suffers enormously from its short length. The romance starts too soon and seems way more about physical chemistry than real interaction, and the heroine seems like a nitwit to be convinced based solely on intuition that he's not a villain. There is missing plutonium that gets mentioned a few times, then forgotten. Read Frisco's Kid (Tall, Dark and Dangerous)
or Harvard's Education (Tall, Dark and Dangerous)
instead.
The Gift of Therapy
, by Irwin Yalom. Brief notes and tips for new therapists, concentrating on the therapist-client relationship, the here-and-now (what's going on in the present moment during therapy), and dreams. Yalom is an existential therapist, and delves into the big questions about fear of death, existential anxiety, the meaning of life, etc. I got a lot out of this, and will undoubtedly refer back to it when I start seeing clients.
Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche
, by Ethan Watters. How American concepts of mental illness and its treatment are exported worldwide, causing changes in how mental illness is perceived, manifests, and is treated. A mixed bag, but very much worth reading. Watters theorizes that symptoms of emotional distress manifest in a manner which one's culture recognizes as messages that something is wrong. In Freud's time, distressed people fainted and had mysterious physical symptoms, and that was culturally recognized as a signal of distress. In our time in the USA, those people would be more likely to complain solely of anxiety and depression.
Watters has some great and little-addressed points which are very much worth taking seriously. However, he has a bias toward the idea that Western therapy and psychiatric medication is overrated and often useless, that it should not be exported to other countries, and that looking at mental illness as biologically-based and treatable by biological means is at best only good for Americans (to whom it's at least culturally appropriate) and even then is stigmatizing.
To bolster these opinions, he makes extensive use of selective evidence. For example, he quotes people with mental illnesses who think that looking at it as a matter of brain chemistry is degrading and erasing, and then suggests that all people with mental illnesses feel that way and it's only the drug manufacturers and the medical establishment who think that the medical/chemical viewpoint can be empowering. This is flat-out untrue, as is his claim that no one ever manifested the current DSM-IV symptoms of PTSD before WWI. (It's true that earlier reports tended to be more somatic, but there are descriptions that do sound very similar to modern Western understandings of PTSD which go back at least to Shakespeare's time. It's a pretty well-researched area.) This makes me wonder how much other parts of the book are similarly carefully selected to make his point, and equally misleading. It's too bad, because his overall thesis has a lot of merit.
Note to commenters: If you want to discuss Watters' book or the ideas therein, please be aware that it's a hot-button topic, and be courteous and sensitive to the different experiences of others.
Glitter Rose, by Marianne de Pierres. A beautifully designed small hardcover from Twelfth Planet Press of connected short stories about a little Australian island, mostly populated by the decadent and desperate rich, which is infected by spores which mutate the population in strange, subtle ways. Wispy, atmospheric, delicate, like spare prose poems. A bit reminiscent of Lee Killough's Aventine stories, and, in themes but not style, of Tanith Lee. A World Fantasy Con giveaway.
Identity: Unknown (Tall, Dark and Dangerous)
, by Suzanne Brockmann. Amazon has Brockmann's short Navy SEAL romances listed quite cheaply, so I snagged a couple. Navy SEAL Mitchell Shaw is shot and hit over the head while deep undercover, and ends up amnesiac on a horse ranch and convinced that he's a hit man! This doesn't live up to its delicious premise, and suffers enormously from its short length. The romance starts too soon and seems way more about physical chemistry than real interaction, and the heroine seems like a nitwit to be convinced based solely on intuition that he's not a villain. There is missing plutonium that gets mentioned a few times, then forgotten. Read Frisco's Kid (Tall, Dark and Dangerous) or Harvard's Education (Tall, Dark and Dangerous) instead. The Gift of Therapy
, by Irwin Yalom. Brief notes and tips for new therapists, concentrating on the therapist-client relationship, the here-and-now (what's going on in the present moment during therapy), and dreams. Yalom is an existential therapist, and delves into the big questions about fear of death, existential anxiety, the meaning of life, etc. I got a lot out of this, and will undoubtedly refer back to it when I start seeing clients.Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche
, by Ethan Watters. How American concepts of mental illness and its treatment are exported worldwide, causing changes in how mental illness is perceived, manifests, and is treated. A mixed bag, but very much worth reading. Watters theorizes that symptoms of emotional distress manifest in a manner which one's culture recognizes as messages that something is wrong. In Freud's time, distressed people fainted and had mysterious physical symptoms, and that was culturally recognized as a signal of distress. In our time in the USA, those people would be more likely to complain solely of anxiety and depression. Watters has some great and little-addressed points which are very much worth taking seriously. However, he has a bias toward the idea that Western therapy and psychiatric medication is overrated and often useless, that it should not be exported to other countries, and that looking at mental illness as biologically-based and treatable by biological means is at best only good for Americans (to whom it's at least culturally appropriate) and even then is stigmatizing.
To bolster these opinions, he makes extensive use of selective evidence. For example, he quotes people with mental illnesses who think that looking at it as a matter of brain chemistry is degrading and erasing, and then suggests that all people with mental illnesses feel that way and it's only the drug manufacturers and the medical establishment who think that the medical/chemical viewpoint can be empowering. This is flat-out untrue, as is his claim that no one ever manifested the current DSM-IV symptoms of PTSD before WWI. (It's true that earlier reports tended to be more somatic, but there are descriptions that do sound very similar to modern Western understandings of PTSD which go back at least to Shakespeare's time. It's a pretty well-researched area.) This makes me wonder how much other parts of the book are similarly carefully selected to make his point, and equally misleading. It's too bad, because his overall thesis has a lot of merit.
Note to commenters: If you want to discuss Watters' book or the ideas therein, please be aware that it's a hot-button topic, and be courteous and sensitive to the different experiences of others.
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I think my rant here can be taken as read. I do not have the spoons to engage with viewpoints like Watters's any more, because these are viewpoints which have the capacity to kill me. In a non-figurative and non-hyberbolic way.
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I am really fascinated by the theory that symptomatology is significantly culturally determined, though, and I think there's really a great deal to that; and it's actually very compatible, in my opinion, with an understanding of mental illness as *fundamentally* based in brain chemistry. Ian Hacking has done some interesting work in that area, and I'm sure there are others.
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Valid point: Not all cultures and people view medical explanations of mental illness as de-stigmatizing.
Point with uncertain validity, given dubious nature of other claims: In some cultures, the medicalization of mental illness has led to increased stigmatization.
False claim: The belief that some or all mental illness has a biological/chemical basis is inherently stigmatizing and dehumanizing, and everyone, including all or most people with mental illness find it so, except for the medical and drug establishment which profits by that belief.
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I do rather like the idea that people manifest their distress in ways that may be culturally determined. Although, I've read some analyses of the malaise suffered by a large number of Victorian women ("sickly" women who "took to their beds" and stayed there) that suggest that these women were suffering from a wide range of debilitating issues, including autoimmune disorders like lupus, and it would be wildly oversimplifying to suggest that they were all depressed.
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I read a book on autism with an excellent cross-cultural perspective once. ("Unstrange Minds.") It noted that in South Korea, kids with autism are typically diagnosed with RAD, instead, and it's all blamed on their mother. (!!!) Bad ideas never die, apparently, they just relocate to torture a new generation of parents.
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Good question. I'd think so, but (in my abundant spare time) I will see if there's any actual research on the subject. Another angle might be whether they gravitate toward occupations with clearly defined rules.
Within US society, there are undoubtedly some cultures and even families which have clearer rules than others.
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My family is also pretty ritual and rule happy, but... We're a pack of ADD/ADHD depressives. Even the most normal in the family is still pretty far towards the fidgety bouncy short attention span theatre end of normal. And so it takes rather a lot for a rule or ritual to really stick.
I think for people who emotionally need rules, Catholicism is a pretty appealing religion. I know that's a big factor in my mom's conversion. For my partner's mom, Anglicanism serves a similar need. So an orderly, rule based religion can also be a coping tool.
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Hmm. I know there are books sort of like that on specific mental illnesses (ie, PTSD in Achilles in Vietnam
Re: Victorian malaise: Yes, some seemingly psychosomatic illnesses were largely or completely somatic. But on the flip side, there really is a tendency in modern American culture to assume that everything is biological/medical, and it isn't always.
Or, at least, it's more complicated than either/or. For instance, I have legit physical nerve damage to my back caused by a car crash. When I get stressed out, or think of disturbing things, or think about the nerve damage, it can often cause my back to suddenly start hurting when it didn't before. Disturbing thoughts cause muscle tension which activates the damaged area? Disturbing thoughts activate brain pathways to send pain signals? Either way, it's both somatic and psychosomatic.
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You should!
Disturbing thoughts cause muscle tension which activates the damaged area? Disturbing thoughts activate brain pathways to send pain signals? Either way, it's both somatic and psychosomatic.
Haha, that's similar to panic attacks for me. Just thinking about the symptoms can start to bring one on if I'm already tense. Some doctors have asked me to describe panic attacks and I'm all "No, if I do that I might HAVE one, sorry."
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...wait, veins go to the heart, not from it, so the same amount of blood is going to both hands...
...and I never had the numbness sensation again.
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Navy SEAL Mitchell Shaw is shot and hit over the head while deep undercover, and ends up amnesiac on a horse ranch and convinced that he's a hit man! This doesn't live up to its delicious premise
How could it possibly! Except for the horse ranch -- you'll sadly have to substitute in the Riviera, Geneva, Paris, and various other glam locations -- you have Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Identity on your hands. Which like a lot of spy thrillers is total flimflam, but it's flimflam with a heroine who's an international finance expert (and a Canadian!) rather than a nitwit.
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But it's also a spy thriller that makes sense, and exciting and occasionally funny. Very angsty, what with the misinformed surmises about amnesia. It came out in the era when Ludlum was still writing his own stuff (I think he went to ghostwriter some time in the 80s, and is still writing today, though quite dead), and it's got a reasonably interesting sense of milieu. It's especially good on the intricacies of paranoid life, how Bourne always has a lie on the tip of his tongue and how he uses clues to allow him to fit into a scenario.
So I liked it. I probably liked it more when I was 15, but as spy novels go, it's sturdy.
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The biological-versus-not debate aside, it is interesting how widespread the Americanized point of view and treatment of mental illness has become. I'm definitely curious about that aspect of it. How different cultures approach various issues, when we're all biologically identical for the most part, is fascinating to me. I need to read more non-fiction anyway.