Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness - Hardcover

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Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1439181551 ISBN 13: 9781439181553

Publisher: Clearway Phase 1, 2014

Synopsis

What if you woke up with the alarming suspicion that you were being watched?

One day in 2003, a patient unlike any other that Dr. Joel Gold had seen before was admitted to his unit at Bellevue Hospital. This man claimed he was being filmed constantly and that his life was being broadcast around the world like The Truman Show--the 1998 film depicting a man who is unknowingly living out his life as the star of a popular soap opera. Over the next few years, Dr. Gold saw a number of patients suffering from what he and his brother, Dr. Ian Gold, began calling the "Truman Show delusion," launching them on a quest to understand the nature of this particular phenomenon, of delusions more generally, and of madness itself.

The current view of delusions is that they are the result of biology gone awry, of neurons in the brain misfiring. In contrast, the Golds argue that delusions are the result of the interaction between the brain and the social world. By exploring the major categories of delusion through fascinating case studies and marshaling the latest research in schizophrenia, the brothers reveal the role of culture and the social world in the development of psychosis--delusions in particular. Suspicious Minds presents a groundbreaking new vision of just how dramatically our surroundings can influence our brains.

About this title

Product Description:

Title: Suspicious Minds( How Culture Shapes Madness) <>Binding: Hardcover <>Author: JoelGold <>Publisher: FreePress

Review:

"This remarkable book isn't just a crash course in delusions, which would be interesting enough. It's a history of psychiatry, a thriller, an expose of dubious brain science, a collection of fascinating and heartbreaking mini-biographies, and a warning about the fragmentation of modern life."--A.J. Jacobs, New York Times bestselling author of The Year of Living Biblically

"A powerful and engaging examination of how insanity is molded by culture. Pithy, insightful, and engrossing."--Danielle Ofri, MD, PhD, author of What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

"An excellent portrayal of delusions and madness, well written, well researched and exciting to read. Written by experts in the field, I highly recommend this book to all those who want a deeper understanding of the mind and how it works."--Benjamin Sadock, MD, Menas S Gregory Professor of Psychiatry, NYU School of Medicine

"A compulsively readable and unexpectedly entertaining book that stands as a needed corrective to a purely biological explanation for mental illness. By emphasizing the cultural vector for madness, the Gold brothers reveal their compassionate understanding of both the sick and the sane--and the surprisingly porous border between those two states."--John Colapinto, author of As Nature Made Him and a staff writer at The New Yorker

"Incisive [and] insightful. . . . [C]lear, witty, and engaging. . . . [T]he brothers Gold propose an intriguing new hypothesis to account for delusions: a malfunctioning "Suspicion System," in which the cognitive system that has evolved to alert us to possible danger breaks down, becoming so overloaded by an abundance of real and perceived external threats that it can no longer discriminate between justifiable wariness and paranoia."--The Boston Globe

"The book amounts to nothing less than a frontal--or perhaps pre-frontal--challenge to the dominant view of modern psychiatry, which looks to neuroscience to explain disorders of the mind. . . . Suspicious Minds comes alive with often-provocative notions. [Joel and Ian Gold] pepper the book with often fascinating case histories of the deluded, which provide more proof that no fantasist can hope to match the wonders--and horrors--of the human mind."--Washington Post

"A dual broadside: against a psychiatric profession that has become infatuated with neuroscience as part of its longstanding attempt to establish itself as 'real medicine, ' and against a culture that has become too networked for its own good."--New York Times Book Review

"Suspicious Minds is an important book. It's sharp, compassionate and incredibly well researched. It gives a window into current psychiatric debates, and it builds toward a theory that is at least plausible and definitely thought provoking."--The Globe and Mail

"Evidently, [the Gold brothers] hypothesize in a droll Oliver Sacksian tone, culture has a great deal of influence on trends in madness."--The Village Voice

"A fascinating and intimate portrait of psychosis."--Scientific American

About this edition

• Publisher: Clearway Phase 1
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1439181551
• ISBN 13: 9781439181553
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 321