| Psychology Book Club

Scattershot: My Bipolar Life

I've read a fair number of “hey I had or have a mental illness and it's hard” memoirs and been left emotionally untouched by some of them. My guess is that—for the majority of these books- the memoirs that get published involve extreme peril, extreme situations and extreme illness. Well, or celebrity and possibly substance abuse (which never seems to work too well with major mental illness) . Using a formula of “I did this + this happened = the end” is one way of telling a story, and certainly a valid one, but not easy to relate to. Read more about Scattershot: My Bipolar Life

Widow's Walk

Widows Walk is one of almost a dozen specific widow grief memoirs that have been written by people who lost partners or spouses in the 9/11 attacks. Marian Fontane is the widow of a fireperson who technically shouldn't have even been at the World Trade Center. He was actually off duty and they were supposed to be meeting for their anniversary on the morning of the attack. However, when her husband stopped back to the Park Slope based firehouse and heard about the situation, he volunteered to help out with his engine. Almost their entire company was killed; parts of his body were found in a stair well in one of the towers.

Widows Walk is exceptional not just for a 9/11 tome, but as a memoir in general. So many books came so quickly after the attacks within six months you'd walk into a bookstore there would inevitably be a huge display of memoirs, biographies, and huge photo books. It was like a post traumatic stress disorder trigger party on a shelf.

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Have You Found Her?

An interesting, painful, thought-provoking account

Have You Found Her is a very difficult book to read. It's not difficult in the way that some psychological trauma based memoirs can be difficult. There is no dreadful, self congratulatory or obtuse writing here. The author shows the same amazing talent that was displayed in her best selling GirlBomb: A Halfway Homeless Memoir, as well as some of the same personal difficulties. Read more about Have You Found Her?

What Doesn't Kill Us: A Mini Review

As a consumer (I'm a nurse, but not a mental health professional) I sometimes find it difficult to judge the scientific merit of popular books on positive psychology. This is especially true for a book like What Doesn't Kill Us,. I really want to believe the book's premise; that trauma can lead to growth rather than disorder, but it seems at the same time classically “too good to be true” or too much like mainstream religions that instruct their adherents to accept suffering. Read more about What Doesn't Kill Us: A Mini Review

A Hell of Mercy

by Tim Farrington

There is no question that Tim Farrington's A Hell of Mercy is an accurate depiction of depression. In fact, it is such an accurate depiction of clinical depression it is nigh unto unreadable. But people interested in depression either for either person or professional reason, it's worth getting through, even if it leaves you, well, depressed.

A Hell of Mercy presents depression as a spiritual problem in addition to a mental health difficultly, which is not an uncommon model, really, even in very clinical books. The difference between Harringon's discussion of what the Saints have called “The Dark Night of the Soul” and other discussions of depression as spiritual condition is that Farrington seems aware that the Dark Night of the Soul and severe clinical depression may co-exist and in some cases, in some people may look like or be similar processes, but that they are not necessarily one and the same. This keeps Farrington away from the dangerous victim blaming in many allegedly spiritual texts; as a depression and possibly (it's not clear) suicide survivor, Farrington is all too well aware of how little about depression is choice, is lack of will.

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I'm Grieving as Fast As I Can

(I'm Getting Rid of This Book As Fast As I Can)

I wanted so much to like this book. Even the title speaks to me and to my experience of grief. After all, one of the most frustrating experience of grief is to have folks who haven't been through what you've been through decide that it's time for you to “move on.” It's hurtful not to mention kind of obnoxious. And while this book has potential and parts of it might be helpful (even though it's an older book there are not a lot of similar books out there) the gross homophobia in the book actually made me physically ill. On the three whole pages the author devotes to same sex spouses, she

1. Ignores the fact that same sex widows die from anything other than HIV/AIDS

2. Implies that gay men who die of AIDS are not supported by the community.

3. Says the following "the only positive thing that has come out of the AIDS epidemic is that it has matured and united the gay community. AIDS has taught gays the meaning of commitment to a cause and to relationships." Really? Really? We weren't committed to our relationships before that? Really? Of course, it's the exact opposite of the truth: which is that LGBT are very committed to relationships, a gay relationship is not something you just "fall into."

Feeling Good

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy has been the go-to book on cognitive behaviorial therapy for depression for decades. In Feeling Good: the New Mood Therapy (which,because the book was published so long ago, isn't really “new”) Dr David Burns makes the case that cognitive methods of treating depression are as good or better than antidepressant medication. He spends the first few chapters making the case for this claim with extensive quotes from the research and accounts of multiple studies. The rest of the book is a series of exercises in changing thinking to change mood.

He includes tips and techniques to help recognize what causes mood swings, immediately address negative feelings as soon as they begin, handle other people's hostility, move beyond emotional needs for love and/or approval and build self esteem. Read more about Feeling Good

The Alchemy of Loss by Abigail Carter

I'm a two time widow, so I've read just about every widow memoir that's been published in recent memory. The 9/11 widow memoirs are an interesting study because they represent a distinct subgroup of widows who have a number of factors in common: a sudden loss of a spouse; intense public attention, and (usually) a lack of an intact body to bury/cremate. However, the similarities really end there. For example, Marian Fontana, whose firefighter husband died at Ground Zero wrote Widows Walk, which covers a similar time period as the Abigail Carter's Alchemy of Loss, also a 9/11 widow. Read more about The Alchemy of Loss by Abigail Carter

Courage to Grieve by Judy Tatelbaum

There are many many nonfiction “how to survive” books about grief, with varying degrees of scientific evidence to back up their advice. The most common type is fairly anecdotal in nature, including a combination of the author's experiences, perhaps describing some of their work with grieving people as a therapist, or while working in one variety of helping profession or another.

Courage to Grieve is precisely in this category: Judy Tatelbaum lost her brother at a relatively young age and describes being unable to grieve him “appropriately.” She reported having intrusive symptoms more than than twenty years later, and much of the book addresses what she calls “unexpressed” or “unsuccessful” grief. The book talks more in timelines than any other grief book I've encountered and one wonders what the relationship is between Tatelbaum's interest in “how long it takes” and how long it took for her. Read more about Courage to Grieve by Judy Tatelbaum

Human Self-Deception and Evolution: A Tenuous Link (Or Not One At All)

Author and evolutionary theorist Robert Trivers contrives a link between self-deception and survival.

I’m wary of most attempts to attribute human behavior to evolutionary science, mostly because the relationships are correlative and not actually substantiated in observable evidence. For instance, there’s been a pop culture obsession with male promiscuity being a product of males’ need to propagate the species by “spreading their seed”. I’m hesitant to excuse the kind of male infidelity that seems epidemic lately in the news because of some Cro Magnon subconscious desire to breed a lot. This is the same wariness that I approach a recent article by Thomas Rogers in Salon, an interview with evolutionary theorist Robert Trivers, who recently published his new book The Folly of Fools, on the nature of self-deception, and the importance of it in our evolution. Read more about Human Self-Deception and Evolution: A Tenuous Link (Or Not One At All)