Reviews (24)

Wonderful Book
I have had problems with anxiety for a few years, and this is definately the most helpful book I have read. It is easy to read and it gets to the point, which I appreciate.

This program honestly works!
I found this book to be very helpful. The first few chapters help you to learn the cause and effect of your anxiety/phobia/panic and coping skills to deal with these issues. The further you read the more you learn how to overcome your issues and REGAIN CONTROL OF YOUR LIFE.
Magnesium can speed up relief of anxiety; please read review
I am very familiar with the pain of anxiety, panic attacks, and agoraphobia for I suffered from these maladies for several decades. During those years of suffering I believed that my problems were purely mental and underwent treatment by psychiatrists, psychologists, and hypnotherapists. I took various prescribed medications and read many books such as this, but experienced little relief. And then something wonderful happened: I began taking a daily supplement of chelated magnesium (for a different ailment) and shortly thereafter experienced a significant diminishment of anxiety in addition to cure of the ailment for which I had originally taken the supplemental magnesium. There seemed to be no explanation for why taking supplemental magnesium caused this wonderful loss of anxiety until the publication in 2003 of the important book The Miracle of Magnesium by Dr. Carolyn Dean. Early in her book Dr. Dean reveals that a major cause of anxiety and panic attacks is deficiency of magnesium and that magnesium deficiency is quite common in the U.S. Therefore, I beg all sufferers of anxiety, panic attacks, and agoraphobia -- whatever else you may do -- please purchase and read The Miracle of Magnesium by Dr. Carolyn Dean and please try the magnesium supplementation which she recommends. It may change your life as has changed mine. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Anxiety    2. Emotions    3. General    4. Psychology    5. Psychopathology - General    6. Relaxation    7. Self-Help    8. Stress (Psychology)    9. Stress Management    10. Therapeutic use    11. Coping with stress    12. Self-Help / Stress Management   

Subjects:  1. Depression    2. Depression, Mental    3. Health/Fitness    4. Psychology    5. Psychopathology - General    6. Treatment    7. Coping with personal problems    8. Psychology & Psychiatry / Psychotherapy   

Reviews (1)

What were they thinking?
To preface: at the time of this writing I am finishing my Master's degree in psychology, and currently enrolled in an Advanced Developmental Psychopathology course using this text.
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Subjects:  1. Child    2. Child Psychology    3. Child development    4. Child psychopathology    5. Developmental - Child    6. Handbooks, manuals, etc    7. Medical    8. Mental Disorders    9. Pathological Psychology    10. Psychology    11. Psychopathology - General    12. Psychotherapy - Child & Adolescent    13. Reference    14. Child & developmental psychology    15. Psychiatry    16. Psychology & Psychiatry / Child Psychology   

Reviews (5)

Add magnesium for success, please read this review
While this book may help some people, an even better book is Dr. Carolyn Dean's book The Miracle of Magnesium. Here is a quote from Dr. Dean's book regarding magnesium in the treatment of depression: "With proper amounts of magnesium, nature makes sufficient serotonin and you experience emotional balance. But when stress depletes magnesium, a vicious cycle spins out of control and depression can occur. The body needs magnesium in order to release and bind adequate amounts of serotonin in the brain. The pharmaceutical industry has focused its research for the treatment of depression on serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) such as Prozac to capitalize on serotonin's chemical effects instead of giving serotonin what it really needs -- magnesium...Magnesium deficiency is a potential cause for every type of depression. All treatment protocols should begin with adequate doses of this valuable mineral." If you are suffering from depression, I beg you to acquire and read Dr. Dean's book and take supplemental magnesium daily as Dr. Dean recommends. You may find that this important nutrient is the solution you have been seeking.

FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIAN BASED THERAPY
This book is written from a Christian perspective.God, church, and fundamental Christian values are an integral part of the therapeutic method.If such an approach is not appropriate for you, DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK.

It Makes You Think...
I was pleasantly surprised by this book.Usually I buy books based on recommendations from others or from Amazon.This book I bought spur-of-the-moment because it was so inexpensive and I was looking for any and all workbooks at the time.I have Bipolar Disorder and, though it does not address mania much, I found this book extremely helpful in picking apart my poor defense mechanisms.It made me realize why I act and react the way I do to certain situations.The questions the book posed really made me think about my depression in ways I had never tried.The only problem I had with the book was the poorly written case stories.As an English major, I just had to accept that the author is a wonderful technical writer but possibly lacks experience in the creative fiction area.However, the quality of the rest of the book was so beneficial that I could overlook these flaws (and it was easy to flip over the short case studies that began each chapter). ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Depression    2. Depression, Mental    3. Popular works    4. Psychology    5. Psychopathology - General    6. Self-Help    7. Self-help techniques    8. Coping with illness    9. Religion / Christian Life   

Reviews (15)

The most helpful book on depression I have ever read
I borrowed this book from my local library before purchasing it to be sure it wasn't just another one of those preachy books encouraging those of us who struggle with depression to just get over it, that it will eventually subside.David Karp is honest about depression as an illness, which is totally on-point considering he suffers from it himself.The words he has written echo through my head each day, and have helped me in a tremendous way.He analogizes depression as a sort of mental arthritis, something we will just have to learn to live with.He doesn't make false promises of overcoming the problems associated with the illness.He is honest, and describes his own experience in ways that I related to immediately.One of the hardest things about depression is a feeling of isolation because not everyone in our immediate circle of friends can understand it if they've never experienced it.The narratives in this book have helped me more than I can put into words here in the mere fact of knowing I am not the only person to feel this way.I highly recommend this book to anyone who suffers with depression.

Beautifully written and profoundly insightful book
David Karp's book on depression is written in beautifully simple prose.His own battle with depression is interwoven throughout the stories of others, and the humanity and gentleness with which he portrays both speaks of a generosity of vision which preserves the sanctity of each person's story.There's no sociological-ese to distract from the stories, which is a delight for someone who- though an academic- tires of its exclusionary language.The courage it took to write this book-- as it is a "coming out" book of sorts-- is extraordinary, and that thought rests in the back of your mind as you read it, gathering inspirational power.As someone who has struggled with depression throughout my life, I felt a "resonance" with the souls represented in this book which at times had me in tears.Highly recommended-- both for those suffering from depression as well as academics.

Academic View of Illness
Karp is a sociologist who examines depression from a cultural point of view.Folks looking for a "quick cure" are not likely to be satisfied with this particular outing.However, folks looking to understand how society views those with depression, how folks with depression view society, and how the illness can also impact family members ... this is the place to go.I read this book as part of a medical anthropology curriculum ... an ethnography of an illness ... and found it to be quite enlightening.I have been in and out of treatment for depression myself over the years, and finding that so many people had similar experiences of reconstructing their self-view as a result of the illness was quite useful.Again, this book is definitely not a "quick fix" or "feel good" kind of book ... it's one that looks at the nitty-gritty of one of the country's most prevalent illnesses and examines the minutiae therein. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. General    2. Medical    3. Psychiatry - General    4. Psychology    5. Psychopathology - General    6. Social Psychology    7. Sociology    8. Gambling addiction    9. Psychiatry    10. Psychology | Clinical    11. Self-Help / Depression   

Editorial Review

Daniel Paul Schreber began Read more

Reviews (4)

What else you should know:
Others who have posted reviews of this book are certainly correct in their assessment -- it's engaging, harrowing, enlightening, etc. HOWEVER, nobody has addressed the actual CAUSE of Schreber's insanity which, of course, is key to the reading of his memoir.The patient in most cases, and certainly in this case, is unable to tell us matter-of-factly what is troubling him.Instead, he tells us of his dreams or his imaginings, or his horrible delusions.It is then the psychiatrist who untangles the web.I can't recommend highly enough, as a companion to Schreber's memoir, the book "Soul Murder: Persecution in the Family," written by the psychiatrist Morton Schatzman. The book is now out of print, but can still be found used.Instead of describing the book,I'll quote from the jacket flap: "Daniel Paul Schreber (1842-1911), an eminent German judge, went mad at the age of 42, recovered, and eight and a half years later, went mad again. It is uncertain if he was ever fully sane, in the ordinary social sense, again. His father, Daniel Gottlieb Moritz Schreber (1808-1861), who supervised his son's upbringing, was a leading German physician and pedagogue, whose studies and writings on child rearing techniques strongly influenced his practices during his life and long after his death. The father thought his age to be morally "soft" and "decayed" owing mainly to laxity in educating and disciplining children at home and school. He proposed to"battle" the "weakness" of his era with an elaborate system aimed at making children obedient and subject to adults. He expected that following his precepts would lead to a better society and "race." The father applied these same basic principals in raising his ownchildren, including Daniel Paul and another son, Daniel Gustav, the elder, who also went mad and committed suicide in his thirties. Psychiatrists consider the case of the former, Daniel Paul, as the classic model of paranoia and schizophrenia, but even Freud and Bleuler (in their analyses of the son's illness) failed to link the strange experiences of Daniel Paul, for which he was thought mad, to his father's totalitarian child-rearing practices. In "Soul Murder," Morton Schatzman does just that -- connects the father's methods with the elements of the son's experience, and vice versa. This is done through a detailed analysis and comparison of Daniel Paul's "Memoirs of My Nervous Illness," a diary written during his second, long confinement, with his father's published and widely read writings on child rearing. The result is a startling and profoundly disturbing study of the nature and origin of mental illness -- a book that calls into question the value of classical models for defining mental illness and suggests the directions that the search for new models might take. As such, the author's findings touch on many domains: education, psychiatry, religion, sociology, politics -- the micro-politics of child-rearing and family life and their relation to the macro-politics of larger human groups." For me, this book shed a great light on "Memoirs of My Nervous Illness."In reading the other reviews, I get the sense that some people have concluded that Daniel (the son) "simply went mad," or "something went wrong," when the truth is that his father was a border-line personality and one sadistic man who inflicted his own brand of insanity on his children.If only we had something to document the father'schildhood . . .

The Poetry of Madness
Shortly after the death of Daniel Paul Schreber, Sigmund Freud used his (Schreber's) memoirs as the basis for a fantasy of his own.Everyday readers are lucky that Schreber wrote down so much of what he saw, heard and felt during his many years in German mental asylums, for his own observations are far more artistic and harrowing than anything Freud ever wrote. A very strange, but profound work
To begin with, the reader should be forewarned that what the author suffers from is not the idiomatic English "nervous illness," or mild neurosis, but a fundamentally different way of seeing the world, stated best by the author at the beginning of Chapter 5:"Apart from normal human language there is also a kind of nerve language of which, as a rule, the healthy human being is not aware."The book's profundity and the author's depth of insight are such that, after reading a few pages of the first chapter, one is reminded of nothing so much as Proust's Remembrance of Things Past: "Souls' greatest happiness lies in continual reveling in pleasure combined with recollections of their human past."....But, after this, the book becomes as disturbing as Proust is essentially soothing. For the author feels himself utterly isolated from other men, not even deigning to recognize them as men at all but as "fleeting-improvised-men" which "creates a feeling in me at times as if I were moving among walking corpses." (Ch. 15)What I found so disturbing about the elaboration of the author's viewpoint and recounting of his tribulations in the asylum is that there is something in his viewpoint that rings essentially true: We do not and can not know even those closest to us on the deep spiritual or "nerve language" level the author exists on in perpetuum.It is this essential truth combined with the author's matter-of-fact, almost cheery, tone that made reading this work such a strange experience for me. For English readers, such characters do exist in fiction (Poe's Usher kept occuring to me, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein), but the tone of such psychically unstable characters and what we would call their nervous disposition are consonant with a mind gone awry and thus not to be taken so seriously.Of Schreber, just the opposite impresses itself upon the reader.It is this dissonance between tone and subject matter that render the book strange.For the view it expresses is essentially a dark one.If one reads closely, a terribly dark one.The only thing comparable to it is the worldview of the Gnostics: That this world is essentially some sort of mistake, and that there may be no way to "fix" it, as it were.The main reason to read the book, to my mind, is that it is a well-written,non-fiction account of a unique state of being (although readers might want to check out Proust as well as The Gnostic Religion by Hans Jonas for similarities.)But, caveat lector, the book is not for the faint of heart.It may keep you up many a night.It did me! ... Read more

Subjects:  1. 1842-1911    2. Biography    3. Case studies    4. Germany    5. Mental Disorders    6. Mental Illness    7. Mental health    8. Paranoia    9. Patients    10. Psychology    11. Schreber, Daniel Paul,    12. Specific Groups - General    13. Abnormal psychology    14. Biography: general    15. Psychology & Psychiatry / General    16. c 1800 to c 1900   

Editorial Review

Freud once said that nobody is "normal," and after reading Read more

Reviews (26)

I have found it very useful
A friend lent me this book in Portuguese, which is my native tongue, and I found it so good and useful that decided to try to find it in English to send to friends I have abroad to whom the informations it contains might be also useful, and help them in their daily life. So I was very glad to find it at Amazon and bought two volumes. I do hope they've enjoyed it as much as I and the friend whom first lent it to me did.

Gave me hope
Psychological problems due to having been developmentally disabled.
Good Explanations of Personality Differences
This book clarifies many aspects of our personalities, helping us to understand why many mental disorders are just one extreme in a continuous range of types, and provides some hints as to why many of those types have advantages and disadvantages that would explain why such a range of personalities ought to exist.
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Subjects:  1. Biological psychiatry    2. Formes frustes (Psychiatry)    3. General    4. Mental Illness    5. Minimal brain dysfunction    6. Popular works    7. Psychology    8. Psychopathology - General    9. Clinical psychology    10. Self-Help / Treatment   

Reviews (19)

Compulsively readable
This is the best written of the books on OCD and it's interesting enough to read through from cover to cover. It hasn't been revised since 1991, so some of the information about medication is out of date and there are no references to WEB sites.
A clear exposition of a poorly understood condition
This book was written back in 1989, nearly twenty years later its case studies may be a little out of date, and new medications may be availiable than the ones the author advocates. However I found it a very interesting read,as it sheds light on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, from the perspective of the patients, their families, and the psychiatrist treating them (primarily the author herself). One point that I found really interesting is that while the field of psychiatry tends to try to shut out religion, the author freely and fairly studies the parallels between OCD and its manifestations in religious context, primarily Catholicism, where it can be seen as scrupulosity. She gives an examination of what scrupulosity is and what the Church has had to say about it in the past few centuries. She also examines in a more limited way the Jewish perspective, delving into rituals for freeing the individual from these thoughts and actions.

A good overview, and very readable
This is a very good overview of the subject of OCD:readable, engaging, and enlightening.The author wisely decided to let her patients speak for themselves about OCD and how it has affected their lives:OCD behavior can appear freakish or ludicrous to an outsider, but it can be debilitating and intensely painful to those who suffer from the disorder, and this book does a great job of conveying that.While some information (e.g., the appendix on drug treatments) is out of date, OCD behavior, and the emotions that accompany it, are -- as the author points out -- notably similar across time and in widely diverse cultural settings, so most of the book is still relevant.
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Subjects:  1. Case studies    2. Obsessive-compulsive disorder    3. Psychology    4. Psychopathology - Compulsive Behavior    5. Psychopathology - General    6. Psychology & Psychiatry / Mental Health   

Subjects:  1. Attachment behavior    2. Human Sexuality    3. Medical    4. Pediatrics    5. Psychology    6. Psychopathology - General    7. Psychotherapy    8. Psychotherapy - Child & Adolescent    9. Teenage sex offenders    10. Psychology & Psychiatry / Forensic Psychology   

Subjects:  1. Case Studies    2. Child Psychology    3. Developmental - Child    4. General    5. Psychology    6. Psychopathology - General    7. Psychotherapy - Child & Adolescent    8. Biography: general    9. Coping with stress    10. Neurology & clinical neurophysiology   

Subjects:  1. Mental Disorders    2. Mental illness    3. Psychiatry - General    4. Psychology    5. Psychopathology - General    6. Psychotherapy    7. Psychotherapy - General    8. Treatment    9. therapy    10. Psychiatry   

Reviews (15)

Scientific without being too hard to understand
Finally - a book on ADD/ADHD that includes scientific/medical information that is informative without being overwhelming. All too often books on ADD/ADHD are written in an overly simplistic manner that almost seems condescending to a reader's personal experience and intelligence. Kudos to Thom Hartmann for writing a comprehensive book that speaks to areader as an equal while raising the reader's awareness to a higher level of understanding.
Good but not Great
The book provides an interesting perspective on ADD as well as ADHD, suggesting that the "disorder" was once an adventagous evolutionary adaptation. He cites a lot of research which does support this idea, but in some parts the book drags a bit. Particlarluy if you already know a good deal about evolution. In some parts Heartman takes his ideas a bit too far and has an almost religious zeal for this topic. Overall the book could have been organised better.
Hartmann can't help but spiral downwards, again & again, into pro-Liberal diatribe...
The author had a clear mission and a refreshing angle on ADHD (which I and my son have). He even went so far at one point to state (not suggest or hint) that ADHDers saved the world 40,000 years ago by being able to come up with solutions to problems caused by the near-simultaneous eruption of three major volcanoes that ushered in an ice age in less than 12 years (so he says!).
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Subjects:  1. Attention in children    2. Attention-deficit hyperactivit    3. Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder    4. Child Psychology    5. Children with Special Needs    6. Cognition Disorders    7. Developmental - Child    8. Divergent thinking    9. Family / Parenting / Childbirth    10. Learning Disabilities    11. Miscellanea    12. Parenting - Hyperactivity    13. Psychology    14. Psychopathology - General    15. Psychotherapy - Child & Adolescent    16. Child & developmental psychology    17. Education / Special Education / Learning Disabled    18. Medical genetics    19. Paediatric medicine    20. Psychotherapy    21. Teaching of learning disabled persons   

Reviews (2)

A reader from the Deep South
I was knowledgeable about Munchausen by proxy before I read this book, but it shed a whole new light on the subject for me.It is clearly the definitive reference in the field.It is readable and filled with summaries and charts that facilitate understanding and practical application.It is not to be missed for any professionals involved in the protection of children.

Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy
A distressing look into how far will some people go to get attention. Through detailed case studies and analysis, the authors take readers into the lives and minds of people whose obsessive craving for attention compels them to fake illness, sometimes to the point of death. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Clinical Psychology    2. General    3. Munchausen syndrome by proxy    4. Psychology    5. Psychopathology - General    6. Social Science    7. Social Work    8. Sociology    9. Psychiatry   

Subjects:  1. Adolescent psychiatry    2. Community mental health servic    3. Community mental health services    4. Evidence-based psychiatry    5. Mental health services    6. Psychiatry - Child & Adolescent    7. Psychotherapy - Child & Adolescent    8. Social Science    9. Social Work    10. Sociology    11. Youth    12. Abnormal psychology    13. Children    14. Counselling    15. Psychotherapy    16. Social Science / Social Work    17. USA   

Editorial Review

Debates concerning the historical and moral significance of Adolf Hitler have gone on since the beginning of his rise to power in Germany. In the decades after his bunker suicide, those debates elevated to arguments over the very nature and existence of evil. An integral part of the arguments has been the ongoing attempt to understand the Read more

Reviews (88)

Great Information, Egghead Writing
The information in this book is excellent. That being said, the prose is at times absolutely outlandish. The introduction gives you a cue of what's to come as the author gives you a "Dennis Milleresque" outline of the facts. After he used the term "Heathcliffian" I knew I may be in over my head. I ended up keeping my Franklin electronic dictionary next to the book to define the plethora of odd synonyms used.
One of the most in-depth and thought-provoking historiographies of Hitler
Written about the history of Hitler studies, Rosenbaum gives a well-written and thoughtful insight into Hitler historians (be they primarily focused on Hitler or some other aspect of the Third Reich/Holocaust - the figure of Hitler always seems to rear his head).Direct interviews with historians gives Rosenbaum insight into who these historians are, and attempts to explain not only what we believe about Hitler but WHY we believe it.Very interesting, and the bible of Hitler historiographies.

The Single Bullet Theory of the Holocaust of WW-II
In this elegantly written, passionate, but (in my view) misdirected and somewhat metaphysical research of Hitler's personal eccentricities, more of the author's deeper psychological needs are explained, than Hitler's.The author seems to forget that since Freud, there are no more secrets. The selective and restrictive vector he uses to probe into Hitler's mind is bi-directional, unerringly and unavoidably, pointing back into the mind of the one doing the probing.
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Subjects:  1. 1889-1945    2. Europe - Germany    3. Family    4. Germany    5. Heads of state    6. History    7. History - General History    8. History: World    9. Hitler, Adolf,    10. Psychology    11. Psychopathology - General    12. Social Psychology    13. Genocide    14. History / Germany    15. The Holocaust   

Reviews (9)

IADC Therapy is Healing Thousands
Induced After Death Communication:A New Therapy for Healing and Trauma, written by Dr. Allan Botkin, Psy.D, scientifically presents the discovery of a controversial new treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, insistent grief, and trauma.Although the title begs for a lengthy and raucous discourse on the after-life, mysticism, the paranormal, or just the blatantly spooky, it is in fact, an in-depth study of a new healing process discovered by Dr. Botkin. He invites you to leave your preconceptions, fears, and judgments at the door as he takes you into the lives and healing therapy of his patients. Wonderful book, Wonderful treatment
I recommend this book to every therapist who wishes to have a method of treatment that can have a profound impact on clients suffering the pain, distress and sadness of grief-related trauma, as well as to the lay person who wishes to explore a remarkably effective approach to healing. Booooooooooring!
After the first few cases all of the rest are the same.So incredibly boring I couldn't even finish it. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Death And Dying (Sociological Aspects)    2. Death, Grief, Bereavement    3. Grief therapy    4. Healing - General    5. Parapsychology - General    6. Post-traumatic stress disorder    7. Psychic trauma    8. Psychology    9. Psychopathology - General    10. Psychotherapy - General    11. Spiritual Healing    12. Spiritualism - General    13. Treatment    14. Psychotherapy   

Subjects:  1. Developmental - Child    2. Manic-depressive illness in ad    3. Manic-depressive illness in adolescence    4. Manic-depressive illness in ch    5. Manic-depressive illness in children    6. Psychology    7. Psychopathology - General    8. Psychotherapy - Child & Adolescent    9. Abnormal psychology    10. Child & developmental psychology    11. Clinical psychology    12. Psychology & Psychiatry / Child Psychology   

Subjects:  1. Abuse - Psychological    2. Assessment, Testing & Measurement    3. Clinical Psychology    4. Diagnosis    5. Neuropsychological tests    6. Post-traumatic stress disorder    7. Psychodiagnostics    8. Psychology    9. Psychopathology - General    10. Neurology & clinical neurophysiology    11. Psychology & Psychiatry / Clinical Psychology   

Subjects:  1. Anthropometry    2. Applied Psychology    3. Assessment, Testing & Measurement    4. Engineering - Industrial    5. Handbooks, manuals, etc    6. Human engineering    7. Industrial Design - General    8. Psychology    9. Psychopathology - General    10. Technology & Industrial Arts    11. Ergonomics    12. Impact of computing & IT on society    13. Technology / Engineering / Industrial   

Reviews (2)

Book Review
Zuckerman's latest work is truly a valuable component to understanding a variety of disorders through a diathesis-stress model.Zuckerman provides the reader with up-to-date prevalence figures and etiological theories forthe disorders covered in the book.For those who are interested inbiological factors related to dysfunction, Zuckerman devotes a largeportion of the text to covering these factors.I read this book lastsemester as part of a graduate course in Psychopathology and feel that itwas an excellent choice on the part of my professor to assign the book aspart of the class readings.

Book Review
Zuckerman's latest work is truly a valuable component to understanding a variety of disorders through a diathesis-stress model.Zuckerman provides the reader with up-to-date prevalence figures and etiological theories forthe disorders covered in the book.For those who are interested inbiological factors related to dysfunction, Zuckerman devotes a largeportion of the text to covering these factors.I read this book lastsemester as part of a graduate course in Psychopathology and feel that itwas an excellent choice on the part of my professor to assign the book aspart of the class readings. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Etiology    2. Mental Disorders    3. Mental Health    4. Mental Illness    5. Pathological Psychology    6. Psychology    7. Psychology, Pathological    8. Psychopathology - General    9. Reference    10. Risk factors    11. Psychiatry    12. The self, ego, identity, personality