Review of Being mentally ill (2nd ed.).

Reviews the book, Being mentally ill (2nd ed.) by Thomas J. Scheff (1984). In this 2nd edition, Scheff uses sociological theory to examine the stigma of mental illnesses in some very original ways. It is certainly an important reading for all those interested in understanding better the social reality of severe mental illnesses—or, indeed, of any type of severe disability. It can be best used to stimulate much-needed thinking about the context of living for mentally ill people. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The Psychopathology of Women.

Reviews the book, The Psychopathology of Women by Ihsan Al-Issa (1980). The Psychopathology of Women, is a comprehensive examination of how Western culture influences the experience, expression and treatment of psychopathology in men and women. The chapters examine the major DSM - III categories in light of Dr. Al-Issa's premise that the diagnosis, experience and treatment of mental illness are related to sex roles. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Review of Pure types are rare": Comment on book review.

My book Pure types are rare: Myths and meanings of madness (see record 2007-08930-001) may have piqued some members of the mental health community; thus I was not entirely surprised by the caustic review that appeared in the January 1985 issue of Canadian Psychology, nor do I wish to engage the polemics or the personal asides therein. I am impelled, however, to respond to the allegation of "repeated failure of professional scholarship." The reviewer provides three substantive examples. In the first, he objects to the citation following my statement that post-mortem studies have failed to find neurological correlates of senile dementia, and implies that the study cited did find such correlates. Actually, the study was inadequate for the question inasmuch as statistics were not presented for senile dementia exclusive of other conditions, and normal controls were not used. The second maintains that I underestimated the significance of a concordance rate of 53% for the diagnosis of schizophrenia between two psychiatrists examining the same patient, and says it should actually be "somewhere beyond even the .00000001 level." My point, however, was that in vivo, where more than 50% of mental patients are diagnosed schizophrenic, a 53% concordance rate represents chance. Third, Professor Burd relates several sentences of mine to make it appear that I questioned the validity of the co-twin data on genetic factors in schizophrenia on the "curious grounds" that similar data have been obtained for a variety of behavioural and personality traits. I will comment on the statement "There are but a dozen references to articles in established professional journals." I did not attempt to deduce the criteria for "established," nor did I count journals, but I did ascertain that there were 112 citations in the text, comprising 80 separate sources. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Madhouse and The Lobotomist.

Reviews the books, Madhouse: A Tragic Tale of Megalomania and Modern Medicine by Andrew Scull (see record 2005-06776-000); and The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness by Jack El-Hai (see record 2005-02343-000). In both books, the history of experimental clinical psychiatry is laid bare with devastating accounts of the efforts to conquer mental illness by any means necessary. Both books are fascinating reading and may illuminate our current context in which the biological avenues for treating mental disorders continue to traffic in hopes of a one-size-fits-all cure, while psychoanalysis ambivalently struggles with how to conduct rigorous research to demonstrate the efficacy of our treatment. Andrew Scull's book Madhouse offers a well-documented historical account of a bizarre episode in American psychiatric history. The centerpiece of Scull's investigative work is Henry Cotton, MD, the superintendent of the Trenton State Hospital in Trenton, New Jersey, from 1907-1930. Once Cotton arrived at Trenton, he was appalled by the conditions he found and instituted reforms such as eliminating the culture of violence by attendants, removing over 700 pieces of restraining equipment from the hospital, and introducing occupational therapy. Jack El-Hai gives us the next segment of psychiatric surgery in his book The Lobotomist, a biography of the neurologist, turned surgical outlaw, Walter Freeman, MD. Walter Freeman was a neurologist fascinated with science and experimentation. Settling into work at St. Elizabeth's hospital in Washington, DC, in 1924, Freeman eventually joined the faculty of George Washington University where he remained until 1954. At that time neurosyphilis was the scourge of mental hospitals producing thousands of victims who were totally disabled by the neurological sequellae of tertiary illness. Thus lobotomy became an efficient outpatient procedure that could be applied to a larger patient population. Both of these books are important reading. Of all the great medical advances of the last century, surely the one that stands out as perhaps the greatest is the Nuremberg Code of 1947, which requires a competent patient giving informed consent to treatment and to research efforts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Industrial conflict.

The subject of industrial conflict is so broad that one would hope for its treatment to be lengthy, interdisciplinary, and to encompass many specific topics and viewpoints. As such, this book, written under the sponsorship of SPSSI, meets all one's expectations. It sets out with the ambitious purposes of analyzing the determining factors and conditions which give rise to industrial conflict and of assessing various efforts of solution. The book is divided into five main parts: (a) basic issues concerning industrial conflict; (b) roots of industrial conflict (motivational analysis, organization and leadership of groups in conflict, social and economic influences); (c) dealing with industrial conflict (accommodating to conflict, efforts to remove sources of conflict, social control of industrial conflict); (d) industrial conflict in other societies, and (e) Industrial conflict, present and future. Thirty-nine different authors, including academicians, writers, labor leaders, and industrial representatives, have contributed to the book's forty chapters. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Creativity, mental illness and crime.

Reviews the book, Creativity, mental illness and crime by R. Eisenman (see record 2007-11163-000). By combining published research findings, data from official sources such as the United States Department of Justice National Crime Victimization Study, a certain amount of data from his own research, and the knowledge of many years experience, the author reflects upon issues such as drug and sex education in schools, school-sanctioned violence against children, the desirability of the death penalty, and mistreatment of the mentally ill in a prison treatment program, to give a few examples. Unfortunately, however, such topics are not linked by a genuine unified theme or a systematic attack on the issues mentioned in the title, and the book is really a set of loosely linked statements on issues broadly connected with socially disapproved behavior, and treatment of criminals and those who, more generally, do not "fit in". The secret to profiting from reading it is not to treat it as another standard academic book. The author draws attention to often neglected issues in a very direct way, getting straight to the heart of the matter, and adopting a clear position. In doing so, he risks censure for adopting politically incorrect positions such as emphasizing the viciousness and lack of remorse of many young offenders, pointing out that those students who report greatest availability of drugs in their school receive the least drug education, or even concluding that the death penalty is something that society needs. What the author has to say is short and to the point, unequivocal, clearly stated in highly readable English, and often thought provoking. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The mental hospital. A study of institutional participation in psychiatric illness and treatment.

Reviews the book, The mental hospital. A study of institutional participation in psychiatric illness and treatment by Alfred H. Stanton and Morris S. Schwartz (see record 2005-02933-000). This is a rich and rewarding book. It is a report of research, conducted in collaboration by a psychiatrist and a sociologist, into the social organization of a psychiatric hospital and into the effects of this social organization on the behavior of patients. Although it is primarily intended as a contribution to administrative psychiatry, it is also a major contribution to the general literature of social science and, in particular, to the broad area of personality and social structure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Psycho-chirurgie et fonctions mentales.

Reviews the book, "Psycho-chirurgie et Fonctions Mentales" (1954), by J. Le Beau. Written by one of France's leading brain surgeons, the book deals with the general topic of psychosurgery from many angles. The author treats all the anatomical, physiological, clinical, and psychological principles involved, as well as different surgical techniques, particularly those related to selective ablations, medical complications, and postoperative treatment. Much space is given over to the results of psychosurgery in the treatment of neuroses, psychoses, mental disorders associated with epilepsy, the mental difficulties of children, and intractable pain. To the psychologist, the main contribution of the book will center in the later chapters dealing with the psychological aftereffects of different types of operation. By tracing out the detailed behavioral aftereffects of operations involving different parts of the cortex, and relating these changes to personality dimensions identified in terms of factor analysis, Le Beau has given us extremely interesting hypotheses, linking such factors as extraversion, neuroticism, etc., with definite Brodmann areas. The reviewer hopes that this book will be widely read and translated into English. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Challenging the therapeutic state: Critical perspectives on psychiatry and the mental health system.

Reviews the special issue of The Journal of Mind and Behavior, Challenging the therapeutic state: Critical perspectives on psychiatry and the mental health system, edited by D. Cohen (1990). This special issue serves as an update on the critique of the medical model in psychiatry. In editing this volume, Cohen has assembled a collection of work from authors in many disciplines—including some laypersons—who are concerned with what they see as the frightening power of the "Therapeutic State." While the work of Thomas Szasz is a guiding light for several of these authors, they certainly are not all associated with his work. In fact, some of them explicitly disavow what they see as Szasz's overly simple stance toward madness. Moreover, the ideas in this volume expand the critique of the medical model far beyond the range of Szasz's work. Disagreements among authors are for the most part confined to a few footnotes in this volume. The book's purpose is to expose the problem before exploring solutions to it. When the volume is at its best, the papers are united by their contention that the medical model in psychiatry is disastrous both for individuals who are victimized by its institutions and practices, and for the society that embraces its disempowering philosophy. There is little, if any, brand new material in this book. Virtually all of the articles contain research and ideas tat the authors have already published elsewhere. The virtue of the book is in bringing together a diversity of work across disciplines that would not ordinarily appear between the same two covers. The common element running through all of these articles is one that the authors almost never state in so many words, but it gives a cumulative force to their very different treatments of psychiatry's problems. Each of these papers, in its own way, reveals aspects of the irrationality implicit in psychiatric orthodoxy. Psychiatry stands at the fringe of medical science, and the fringe of any science is where the inadequacies of its paradigm are most obvious. The attempt to make the medical model fit the problem of madness has not succeeded, but orthodox psychiatry continues to pursue it. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The body and psychology.

Reviews the book, The body and psychology by Henderikus J. Stam (see record 1998-06784-000). Considering this collection as a whole, it is striking how many of the authors, some of whom have been proponents of social constructionist thinking, feel social constructionism is unable to articulate an adequate theory of the psychological body. This refreshingly critical edge will no doubt lead to more sophisticated debates on the psychological body. Overall, this book is probably best read by graduate students and scholars who have some familiarity with social constructionist theory (e.g., Harré), as well as poststructuralism (e.g., Derrida, Lacan) and social theory (e.g., Bourdieu). Moreover, since the authors rely on other disciplinary discourses, this will be an excellent text for graduate courses on the body in cultural studies and sociology. Teaching this book would be interesting as it contains some analytical contrasts; for example, one could turn Malone and Bayer on Baerveldt and Voestermans, Parlee on Kempen, or the thematic analysis of Frank on the book itself. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Psychological Diagnosis In Clinical Practice.

Reviews the book, Psychological Diagnosis In Clinical Practice by Benjamin Pope and Winfield H. Scott (1967). The aim of this book according to the authors, is to demonstrate how the clinical psychologist transforms data obtained from tests into diagnostic formulations. They address the book to a wide audience including student psychologists, teachers, social workers, nurses, counselors, and lawyers. While one might like to see such interest, it is difficult to imagine student nurses ploughing through the intricacies of interpreting Card 4 of the Rorschach. Likewise, while one might feel that law students ought to have a smattering of psychology behind them before being turned loose on the public, it is doubtful if this book provides the best source. While the theoretical portion of this book brings together in a useful fashion some of the more recent findings in the psychometric area, there is very little evidence that the authors have permitted this information to affect their actual practice in the clinical situation. Their approach to diagnostic problems appears virtually unchanged from that which was being advocated a quarter of a century ago. As such they sire unwittingly likely to realize the dual aims of discouraging the "better" more critical student from taking clinical psychology seriously, while at the same time providing further ammunition for those individuals within the discipline who are critical of diagnostic testing in general. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Biomedical Explanations of Psychopathology, the DSM , and Essential Necessities for Advancement of Diagnostic Classification: An Essay Review.

The two books reviewed demonstrate convincingly that the etiology of mental disorders calls for the inclusion of multiple networks of causal factors in which psychological and sociocultural influences play a prominent part. Further, the books demonstrate that historic efforts to describe and construct categories that encompass these difficulties rest on false assumptions and are embedded in erroneous and distorting conceptual systems. Numerous enlightened alternatives to the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) system are articulated in both books. Comments and extended suggestions are made on proposals the reviewer judges as providing especially incisive critiques or creative innovations. A framework for building a scientific foundation for integrating psychopathology and psychotherapy also is recommended. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The link between childhood trauma and mental illness.

Reviews the book, The link between childhood trauma and mental illness by Barbara Everett and Ruth Gallop (see record 2000-16130-000). This is a very useful book, particularly for novice practitioners and front-line workers who may not have had a supervised experience dealing with abused individuals. The authors set out to provide a practical guide to the care of individuals who have experienced abuse (both sexual and physical) as children, and who present themselves as adults to mental health practitioners, in particular to those who are not practicing in specialized trauma clinics. I believe they have succeeded in their goal. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Le vieillissement.

Reviews the book, Le vieillissement by Brian L. Mishara and Robert G. Riedel. In Ageing, Mishara and Riedel offer an excellent summary of principal research and theories relative to gerontology. The authors study the the complex play of physical, psychological, social, cultural influences on ageing and examine various theories bearing on the influence of social, environmental, physical and psychological maturation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The Psychological Assessment of Mental and Physical Handicaps.

Reviews the book, The Psychological Assessment of Mental and Physical Handicaps by Peter Mittler (see record 1971-06406-000). A single book on the psychological assessment of mental and physical handicaps of both adults and children ought, on the face of it, to be impossible. However, this book was written by thirty individuals who live and work within close proximity to one another. While an uncomfortable degree of uniformity of approach has resulted, so has a good degree of internal consistency. Thus, the book holds together quite well and presents a viewpoint which is sometimes overlooked in Canada in the face of the deluge of United States textbooks. Mittler's encyclopaedic chapters range from the very weak to the very strong. While the book is too expensive for individual purchase, in most cases, it does make a valuable library reference. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The Psychological Foundations of Culture.

In this article, I review the book by Crandall and Schaller (see record 2003-88101-000), which seeks to reveal how culture is influenced by processes operating at the individual level (e.g., cognitions, goals, information processing strategies) as well as at the interpersonal level (e.g., communication, social influence). The book draws together authors from a number of cognate disciplines to address the issue of behaviour-culture relationships, with an emphasis on how the former might allow us to better understand the origin, development, and distribution of the latter. While the book does deal with the "flip side" of culture-behaviour relationships, it is not unique in doing so; in my view, the field already has a better sense of balance than this book claims. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Alcohol and the family: Research and clinical perspectives.

Reviews the book, Alcohol and the family: Research and clinical perspectives, edited by R. Lorraine Collins, Kenneth E. Leonard, and John Searles (see record 1990-97558-000). Alcohol and the family is divided into three parts. Part I describes the research on genetic influences that may determine whether someone develops a problem with alcohol. Part II focuses on family processes as they influence drinking behavior. Part III discusses various aspects of family-oriented treatment. Although this book does not purport to be a clinician's handbook, parts II and III provide a well-written, concise, and helpful discussion both of the role of family processes in the development and maintenance of drinking problems and of family approaches to their treatment. This book is "intended for both researchers and clinicians who have an interest in alcoholism and/or family related issues. [The editors] hope that the issues raised in the chapters in this volume will stimulate further developments in research and clinical endeavors on alcohol and the family." Indeed they will. This is a book worth reading by those with such interests, despite a few minor shortcomings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Expressed emotion in families: Its significance for mental illness.

Reviews the book, Expressed emotion in families: Its significance for mental illness by Julian Leff and Christine Vaughn (1985). The authors, Leff & Vaughn, along with George Brown, the originator of the "expressed emotion" concept provide an opportunity to observe their minds at work. In presenting the origins and clinical, theoretical, and research developments focused on the initial observations that high levels of expressed emotions in the families of schizophrenic patients can be debilitating, the volume not only provides a wealth of significant information about schizophrenia and how research ideas are formulated, tested, refined, and retested but also provides significant insights into the thought processes--the intuitions, doubts, and confidences--of the researchers every step of the way. The book is a landmark study of the role of emotional attitudes and their expression by family members in the course and outcome of schizophrenia. From its British origins, the research has sparked heuristic cross-cultural replication and innovations. While the book should be essential reading for every family psychologist and psychotherapist, its main audience will probably be researchers interested in family processes and schizophrenia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)