5 comments about The Outsider: A Journey into My Father's Struggle with Madness.

1. As a trained mental health professional, I wanted to read the book for purely academic and research reasons. However, I found myself going on a personal journey of exploration into the relationship between myself and my father with schizophrenia. This book was amazing to me on multiple levels.



2. Unfortunately, most readers of this book, as well as the author of the book, even if he is his son, are misinformed. I've spent a lot of time around mentally ill people who really do seem to have something dead wrong in their brain/body biochemistry, as well as imbalances of all sorts. Charles Lachenmeyer, the Outsider, was not crazy, except for the extremely stressful situations that he was forced into from OUTSIDE ( pun intended ) sources. He was no fool, he had a PhD in sociology and was a University professor of the same. A man doesn't just go from that kind of being to a homeless guy sleeping in a puddle of his own urine on a park bench in -0 degree weather. His books are still in the sociology section of Borders and Barnes n' Noble bookstores. What happened was that Charles came up with a multi-million dollar idea as to how to revolutionarily re-structure society in a much more efficient way. However, he refused to share his idea with his colleagues, thusly with the government. Charles wanted full credit for his own idea, and rightly so. So his colleagues teamed up with various government and probably military agencies to try to ruin his life, basically to torment him into sharing his breakthrough idea of sociology. Anyone who is naive enough to doubt that various agencies are well-versed in mind-control technology and psychological warfare, needs to seriously deprogram themselves from their own mental conditioning. MK ULTRA, MAJIC, OPERATION MIND CONTROL, etc. as well as other operations are no mere conspiracy stories, even the agencies themselves willingly admit that they did these operations now, being that so much time has passed. Unfortunately, Mr. Charles Lachenmeyer was subject to their torture devices. His embarrassing dreams at night were, in turn, reenacted the following days in braod daylight public view to humiliate him by " strangers ". His family life was sabotaged away from him, leaving him all alone except for his comanion, his dog. Of course, then, the dog was kidnapped away from him, leaving him emotionally bankrupt and spent. He was then subjected to the final part of the plan, which was to make him seem like some crazy " schizophrenic " spouting off conspiracy stories, and unfortunately, even his son Nathaniel, bought into this. The whole time Charles was homeless, he was writing, more and more he was expanding on his breakthrough, as well as exposing the mind-control that he was subjected to, probably naming important names in his book. Charles was ultimately killed, and " his papers were mysteriously lost in a flood in his apartment " ( how convenient to lose all of the evidence ) All in all I think Nathaniel did well to honor his dad in this book, and I do believe that his intentions were good. The book is excellent, and I read it back to back 3 times in a row. But .... Seem like he was simply a brilliant man that became schizophrenic? Well let me pat you on the back, that's exactly what they want you to think.



3. I truly believe this book should be read by everyone, not just people that are going into the mental health field. I was required to ready it for a Social Work class I am currently taking at the undergraduate level; however, I can say without a doubt it is by far the best book I have ever read! Lachenmeyer really brings home the stigma and heartache that is experienced by people and their loved ones suffering from such a debilitating mental illness. Most people are unaware of the devastating effects mental illness can have on a person and their family. This book highlights so many issues concerning mental health as to responsibilities of people in the system, stigma, prejudice, and the tolerance of society in general to someone suffering from mental illness. Moreover, this book was really an awakening that this could happen to anyone at any time. I wish everyone could read this book as it really teaches a lesson on humanity!!



4. THE OUTSIDER brought the pain and the struggles of Charles Lachenmeyer to life. Charles was a brillant sociology professor who gradually was transformed into a victim of paranoid schizophrenia. Even at his lowest points, he kept trying, and he kept believing in humanity. In one letter to the author, he wrote, "No matter how adverse the circumstances--and mine have been adverse--there is never any reason to give up . . ."
   
   This book breathes life into a person with mental illness, and it brings understanding. It left me in tears and with a deep respect for Charles.



5. I found the Outsider to be a fascinating book, one that really opened my eyes to the problems encountered by those suffereing from mental illness and schizophrenia. The son's journey to understand the father and piece together the last few years of his life is heart-wrenching and the reader truly sympathizes with his pain and anguish. A terrific book that I heartily recommend.

5 comments about My American Life: From Rage to Entitlement.

1. Dr. Price Cobbs has made important contributions to American society in a number of ways: as a physician to his patients, as the articulator of major sociological insights in Black Rage, Cracking the Corporate Code: The Revealing Success Stories of 32 African-American Executives, as consultant / teacher / coach for leaders and managers in major corporate organizations, and as a model of integrity, achievement, energy and fun for family and friends fortunate enough to know him.
   
   In this book he shares his personal journey in an engaging and readable fashion, chronicling his life and the forces that helped shape him over the last 80 years in America. Readers of all races can find this to be a book of great interest, and perhaps they will go on to discover further Dr. Cobbs' insights into how we grew up, how that affected our self image and our views of others, and how we can move beyond our individual and societal programming to become healthier, better, more effective human beings.



2. A single correction in response to the representation of the book on this site: the excerpt from page 56 alludes to the absence of German and Italian internment camps during WW II. This is the enduring public impression, but not actual fact. People of European origin were interned. See, for example the historic record of Crystal City, Texas for a better understanding of that time period.
   
   Note: my response is to the excerpt, and not to the rest of the book, which I have not read, thus the above 1 star rating is posted only so I can gain release from this Review section...



3. For those of us who know and are friends/colleagues of Price Cobbs, and speaking for myself as a writer, being objective will not be easy...like Mom saying how terrific her son is. But I'll try objectivity.
   
   This book really ought to be entitled, "READ THIS BOOK !!" - bold, underscored and 2 exclamation points. As a long-time friend of Price and his family, there were no differences - well, perhaps a few, but to the point that differences are and should be treasured. So here I am in 2006 discovering a whole other Price Cobbs I thought I knew. And for the reader who has no personal knowledge of the author, it will be an adventure, an eye opener. In a word - riveting. His writing has evolved from the "Black Rage" days - it's crystal clear, concise and slam dunk. He writes eloquently yet simply and straight forward. His life is our lives if you think about it.
   
   So. READ THIS BOOK. Whether you are a young white liberal or old white ultra-conservative, an upwardly mobile black, Hispanic, Asian or whomever, or a stay-at-home parent - you will relate - and most likely be deeply touched by passages that ring true, that perhaps are on a par with your own experiences in this life.
   There is, or should be, great kinship in the human experience, and if more of us would adopt that mantra, the world as it is today would turn into a more peaceful place.
   
   Once, back in the 1960s when I headed public relations and media for Esalen Institute, Price asked me how I had managed to be this open, tolerant, understanding and relatively non-prejudiced person. I answered, "well, number one, I've always admired and been fascinated by other cultures since at least first grade; but number two, I do have prejudices. I hate cauliflower and bigots."
   
   But even coming out of the civil rights years, the Esalen racial confrontation experiences, this new book brings a whole new perspective about others'(and Price's in particular) pain and rage in dealing with the hurtful actions of others toward their fellow man. Like many readers, I would think, I get tired of all the "me me me" books out there today - growth, get rich, and other do-it books, and so I tend to read less and less. However, "My American Life" was one I could not put down. It has all the makings of a literary prize winner, and many of my friends and I feel strongly that it has the makings of a darned good feature length movie.
   So, strongly recommended; great reading.



4. Did Cobbs forget Freud's Admonition about the value of self-Analysis?
   
   While it is true that Mr. Cobbs is the same guy full of rage in the 60s, who helped change the way America looked at racism, it is also true from these pages, that all along we had misunderstood the true nature of Mr.Cobbs' rage, and of his real life quest. Apparently, it was not the same cause as that of most oppressed people. A careful review of this book will reveal that Mr. Cobbs' goal all along was the same as that of the racist whites who had been oppressing him and us: the goal of entitlement.
   
   Most of us never saw, nor have we been pursuing, entitlement as the ultimate object of our freedom and independence - and even if we had been, few of us would have been so brazen to openly admit it. For no matter how artfully it is re-defined, entitlement has been, and remains the primary tool of those who continue to oppress the weak, the disenfranchised, the marginal, and those who have no one to speak for them -- in our increasingly mean-spirited and mismanaged "democratic society."
   
   Undoubtedly, Mr. Cobbs would call that wallowing in one's own victimhood, and in some, but not all cases, he would be correct. However, he seems to have erred on the wrong side of this debate and thereby missed an important fact: there is more than one way to graduate from victimhood.
   
   One way to throw off the yolk of victimhood is that which he has chosen, and which is the object of this book. It is about how some blacks, who have always felt they had a right to the same bankrupt values and entitlements and way of life that racists whites claim exclusively for themselves, have freely chosen "the ways of entitlement" as their life project. Cobbs seems completely unembarrassed by this pursuit to gain the right to unfair advantages, illicitly acquired gains, perks, prerogatives, special privileges and access, covenants, the right to exclude others, etc. -- all of which were used against him as a young man.
   
   All along it seems that Mr. Cobbs has been nothing but a closet elitist, wanting nothing more than to become a member of the "its WHO you know rather than WHAT you know club." Mr. Cobbs' fight for freedom has been little more than a disguised fight to become a mean-spirited honorary white, and nothing more. Apparently, like Jessie Lee Peterson, he has achieved this goal and is justifiable proud of it. And wants to pass it own as his most important legacy.
   
   Touché to Dr. Cobbs!
   
   But Dr. Cobbs is not the only one who has given up his victimhood. There are others of us who have done so as well, perhaps in much less creative ways. But most of us did not turn in our victimhood card for the right only to use the same old Billy club once used to keep us in our "place." We did not graduate from being a victim only to assume the posture of the oppressor. Few of us ever saw adopting the values of "entitled whites (racists or not) as a virtue." If a sense of entitlement was wrong when used against Cobbs as a young man, it is surely just as wrong when Cobbs and other members of his so called "Talented Tenth," seek to use it against others.
   
   However, from the book one can see that Cobbs acquired this pedigree honestly, and not from his father, who was a hard working Doctor not in search of such entitlements. His father was an exemplary example of a servant to the people he administered medicine to. No, Cobbs admits that he acquired this unholy penchant from his mother. Who through her own pain and rage "over-learned" the petty ways of the white racists who oppressed her. She learned how to transform self-hatred into a sense of entitlement, and through social osmosis past it unerringly on to her son who was anointed "the Bishop," at birth.
   
   Having read Black Rage when it first appeared in print, I was anxious to see what one of the authors had to say a generation later. And although I am by now used to "so called" successful blacks reciting their bios as if it is some kind of Holy Grail for the rest of us, I was greatly disappointed it what Cobbs had to say.
   
   He after all is a Psychiatrist. But apparently is one similar to the bus driver who never took a bus trip. Rather incongruously, he alluded to the "Stockholm syndrome" without being aware that it aptly applies to his own life of seven decades of sublimated rage and pain. Cobbs apparently lacks the vision and awareness to see that his dreams have finally matured from the incubator of his rage. But instead of taking on a fully adult form, they have been taken over and commandeered by those who caused him so much pain as a young man, and while he would readily see this kind of transformation in others, he has failed to see that his own mind has been slowly but inexorably colonized. This book is nothing if not a roadmap into Cobbs own subconscious--his desperate attempt to escape the pain, fear and rage acquired from seven decades of racism. What we see behind the screen is less rage, but still much pain, and many unfulfilled yearnings.
   
   Like Uncle C. Thomas and Aunt C. Rice, unconsciously and ever-so-slowly, Dr. Cobbs has redefined the parameters of his humanity and his worldview so that they are now in perfect alignment with the racist values that oppressed him as a young man. He refuses to see this transformation for what it is - a slow generational process of cooptation. Never once did he try to impose his terms and values on the world, because slowly, they were wrung out of him through his pain and rage and - through a social lobotomy, in situ - were replaced with the oppressor's own values. With this mental substitution, the reality across the Bay Bridge, which is everyday equal to the devastation in New Orleans, or anything we, or Cobbs saw in the deep segregated South, can no longer be seen. Cobbs is wilfully and morally blind to it. In Cobbs' mind Oakland is not there.
   
   From the safety of the high (and dry) ground on Nobb Hill in San Francisco, which in social distance, is as far away from Oakland as it is from New Orleans, Dr. Cobbs has learned what side of his bread is buttered. He knows how to give great undue weight to the mostly cosmetic changes made since the Civil Rights Movement and since he wrote Black Rage. Yes, yes, we all know about Rosa Parks and MLK, but that an buck fifty will not get you a cup of coffee at Fishersman's Wharf. He obviously has not been across the Oakland Bay Bridge lately to talk with its ex-Mayor Jerry Brown.
   
   Cobbs' success is sad and pyrrhic: Like Bush in Iraq, he has had his head in the sand and has declared a private and mostly unconscious victory for himself and his mom, while Rome burns both inside and all around him. He too will be "shocked and awed" when the real war in American society, which is all but inevitable, begins. He has used a now well-worn tactic for black success: When you can't defeat the bankrupt values that oppress you, adopt them as your own and call it a lifetime victory. Patty Hearst would reconize that for what it is: The Stockholm syndrome.
   
   Cobbs' goal all along was not to defeat racist oppression, but to get in bed with it. It is like Jews wanting nothing more than to try on an SS uniform. Cobbs has gone from rage in the 60s to being comfortable today in the uniform of the oppressor, and calling his version of entitlement "giving up victimhood." "If only all those victims would voluntarily give up their victimhood, how nice could America really become?" Can an authentic Black man actually be saying such as this?
   
   Now "the Bishop" has the rarified vantage point he always sought: consorting in the boardrooms high above the "wretched of the Earth," with an adopted set of bankrupt values that he can pretend are his own. From that perch, he can lord over "the new wretched of the Earth" in the same way that the racists whites lorded over him in the 60s. I guess,in a grotesque sort of way that is a kind of success. His mother would be proud. Two stars.



5. As a black and white couple married for over 45 years, we are fortunate to experience the very excellently articulated story, "My American Life," by Dr. Cobbs. He has provided us with a better understanding of our rage and the importance of entitlement in our lives. It is truly a book to be read by all Americans.
   
   Byron and Ann Barker

No comments about Robert Guthrie--The Pku Story: Crusade Against Mental Retardation.

1 comments about I Wish I'd Made You Angry Earlier: Essays on Science, Scientists, and Humanity.

1. Perutz is not only a biochemist and a Nobel Laureate physicist, but a witty and graceful writer to boot, and readers will be in for a treat. But more than the character sketches of great scientific minds like Szilard and Monod, I appreciated two startling stories in particular, one of which is told in more fascinating detail than I'd encountered before, and the other, which is shocking and, if true, deserving of wider publicity. The first story details the work of Nobel prize-winning chemist Fritz Haber, whose synthesis of ammonia enabled Germany to sustain its military effort in WWI. Haber, a gentle man of tremendous culture and erudition, was also ambitious. Perutz describes in more detail than is readily available elsewhere Haber's efforts to sustain chemical warfare experiments after the war under the guise of agricultural research. Tragically, he supervised the development of Zyklon B, a deadly gas that would later be used to exterminate millions of people of Jewish descent, including some of Haber's own relatives. Fortunately for him, Haber died in exile before learning the full extent, and horror, of his folly. More startling to me was the story of Albert Schatz who, Perutz contends, is the real discoverer of streptomycin. Schatz, writes Perutz, "was the son of poor Jewish farmers in Connecticut and had studied soil microbiology to find ways of increasing the yields on his father's unproductive farm. He embarked on the search for antibiotics only because Waksman made it a condition of his meager offer of $40 a month to work in his laboratory; but then Schatz threw himself into the research, testing hundreds of different soil micro-organisms for antibacterial activity." Perutz claims that Schatz displayed all the initiative and effort warranted for a Nobel Prize, and that Waksman did nothing more than sit in his office while the experiments were going on. Later, claims Perutz, Waksman denied Schatz the recognition he so richly deserved. Unless I missed something, I wonder why Perutz is telling us this only now? Wouldn't it have been better for this information to have been revealed when Waksman was alive to defend himself? And can we expect forthcoming reference books to take note and set the record straight?

1 comments about The Psychology of B F Skinner.

1. A great summary. But read Dr. Vargas' comments carefully and refer back to them. Makes a nice balance. If you are new to Skinner, read this first then dive into his own work.

No comments about Medical Aphorisms: Treatises 6-9 (The Medical Works of Moses Maimonides).

No comments about Clara Barton (Young Reader's Christian Library).

2 comments about Milton H Erickson (Key Figures in Counselling and Psychotherapy series).

1. This book is so well written and the information is so useful, that it is easy to read. Great job.



2. This volume in a series of key figures in counseling and psychotherapy features the work of Milton H. Erickson. Readers are blessed with the writing of Jeffrey Zeig and W. Michael Munion. It is at once: engaging without hype, informative without being boring, and challenging to the imagination. The work is divided into five chapters covering Erickson's life, contributions, technical orientations, criticisms with rebuttals, and overall influence. There is also a very helpful bibliography of Erickson and Erickson-inspired books which can be useful for planning a library. This is an honest, mature work that successfully balances facts and creativity and is one of the best introductions to and overview of M. H. Erickson's work I have ever read.

No comments about R.D. Laing: A Divided Self : A Biography.

3 comments about Other Side of the Rainbow: A Patient's Perspective of Experimental Medicine.

1. I have read the book and absoultly loved it. I passed it on to other friends and it is so inspirational that you want people to know what she has been through. I know her personally and have to say, I don't know anyone as strong willed as her. She has a 13 year old daughter (a miricle from God) and does her best to see that she doesn't miss a thing of her growing up.
   Gina gives much hope to others that anything can be overcome by the Grace of God. She has bad days and needs to rest reguraly but some of the things she is able to do inspires me myself.
   Her husband is a God send to her and is so good to and for her.
   People need to read this book and know that things that look so uncurable can be. I love her as a friend and sometimes envy her. This story tells of a brave little girl and a strong family, Christian family and what the power of prayer and strong will can do. Put this book out where people can see it and want to read it. It's a wonderful read.
   Cheryle Griffith



2. The book takes the reader through the experiences only a patient could have endured, I was moved by the emotional highs and lows not only Gina experienced but her family as well. I have had friends and family go through the trials that Cancer and its treatment put them through but seeing them through the eyes of the patient brings an in depth understanding you could find nowhere else. I would recommend the book for anyone, dealing with an illness or not, if only to get a better perspective on the family's ability to pull together.



3. If you want to read about a young woman with true courage, then read this book. A great autobiography.