5 comments about Second Sight: An Intuitive Psychiatrist Tells Her Extraordinary Story and Shows You How To Tap Your Own Inner Wisdom.

1. I have rarely read a book that has touched me so deeply. This is a story of the journey of one woman who has a gift. She develops this gift slowly, but surely throughout her life. It is the gift of healing, among other things. Judith Orloff takes the reader through her rough teenage years, when she felt like an outcast amongst her peers. She felt her gift made her damaged in some way. Yet she goes through this time with courage and grace.
   
   We already know Judith is a prominent psychiatrist, so I'm giving nothing away by saying that she decided to become one so she could integrate her medical practice with her healing gift. Unfortunately things didn't go exactly as she planned, which she discusses quite aptly in this book.
   
   Her story is unique and her writing is flawless. She teaches us even as she discovers herself through her writing. I learned so much from this book. For one, I learned that everyone has this innate healing ability. I have used it myself and it does work. Judith makes sure the reader realizes that she is not unique in this way. In fact, she encourages others to reach out and try this work for yourself.
   
   I think a lot of people would get a lot out of reading this book. Judith is a courageous woman with much to say about her incredible life and what it has taught her. We see her grow into a very powerful woman and healer. I was hooked by the first few paragraphs, and all the way to the end. She had me mesmerized from the very beginning. Her story is so incredibly unique. I think very few people would regret reading this wonderful story. She is in a league of her own as far as books go. I can't even think of another book that compares to this one. I was highly impressed. Her writing style is unique and you can envision the scenes she paints quite vividly.
   
   I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is even slightly interested in the healing arts.



2. It's like I can take a deep breath and relax now. Someone once asked me "How do you feel when you enter a room where there's a lot of fighting and anger?" My immediate response was: "I recoil and want to run out of there." I thought everybody felt this way. Granted we all feel things up to a certain level, but the notion that I feel more than most never occurred to me. Doesn't everyone? I thought. Learning I was not alone in my experiences was a huge relief and revelation to me. When I read Dr. Orloff's book I felt I had found me. I now knew who I was and could now just simply enjoy what once seemed like a curse. Feeling everything like I have been up to date without understanding it is "crazy making." I now realized no, it's a blessing, I have been given a whole 'nother level of awareness and depth. It is powerful. Hearing Dr. Orloff explain it through sharing her life- it blew the barn doors open. She talks openly about all her experiences as well as how she deeply respects her gifts and how she has combined these with traditional methodologies. Yes, there is a feeling of "safety" that she has credentials when reading this, but for me the true safety comes in how Dr. Orloff has chosen to use her gifts and live her life. She deeply respects what she has and is grateful for it. She does not misuse what she has and adds seriousness and credibility to her spiritual gifts.
   
   I bought a copy of this book for my sister as she feels things on the hyper-sensitive scale as I. My sister gets massive migraines and has been taking medication to manage this. After reading Dr. Orloff's story and learned how she went through a phase of medicating herself to "escape" until she new what to do with what she had been given, I related this to my sister. She opened up to me and told me more things that she had experienced as a child. I now hope that my sister will be able to understand herself an accept and enjoy these gifts she has been given.
   
   As far as I'm concerned Dr. Orloff is opening doors for people and allowing everyone to relax as well as respect a whole arena of the human experience that typically gets shunned, and until very recently even went punished. And the biggest tragedy of all is that these gifts have gone unused, denied and ignored by many and dismissed as sillyness or even crazyness of some kind. With this openess and understanding of what is really going on many can now not waste what they have been blessed with and can live incredibly rich, powerful lives. There's nothing to reject or push away. In fact, this is cause for celebration. Thank you for sharing your story, Dr. Orloff.



3. This book reads like a novel and is filled with wisdom besides. I loved reading about Orloff's adolescence in 1960s Los Angeles and what it was like to be the psychic child of two prominent medical doctors. She helped me be grateful for my own intuition and for this gift in others.



4. Don't walk, run to buy Judith Orloff's book. Judith tells her personal story revealing the developmental stages and steps she took in her "coming out" as an intuitive healer.
   
   The author takes professional and personal risk in revealing her intuitive gifts through her story telling. Judith hid her intuitions behind closed doors during her medical training and practice in an attempt to maintain her professional medical image. Judith was born to physician parents who regarded her intuitive gifts as something to be kept secret. As a young woman Judith took part in research that smacked of "woo woo". After medical training she entered into the more conservative aspects of being a physician attempting to block her own nature and ultimately finding that she could not maintain that stance. For her own good and ultimately for the good of her patients (one of whom attempted suicide but lived)she found the her own unique path to acceptance not only claiming her intuitive gifts but sharing them with others as paths to healing and transformative change.
   
   Mary Alice Long,PhD is a Jungian therapist, Play consultant, writer, and director of Play=Peace.



5. Dr. Judith Orloff's new book Second Sight, is a fascinating memoir of her journey to come to terms with her psychic intuition. From the time young Judith is a child, she is dreaming and foreseeing future events, the illnesses and deaths of relatives and family friends. As a teenager she has a near death experience during a car accident where she enters the tunnel and sees the light.
   
   Always discouraged by her social-conscious mother, Judith is afraid of her own powers until she becomes part of an experimental research teamin L.A. and meets others with developing psychic powers. Each chapter brings more and more insight into her experiences until she recognizes that all humanity has the power now to cultivate new senses.
   
   I was especially drawn to this book as it is in the same genre as my own memoir. What is important about books in this category is that readers get to validate their own experiences. Many of us are out of the closet now in full support of the new era upon which humanity is embarking, which is actually a return to an esoteric age we had lost touch with. Let me quote Dr. Orloff here as her own words are most prophetic:
   
   "We have come full circle. Our earliest ancestors passed on a rich intuitive heritage: prophets, oracles, shamans, healers make up a vital portion of our history. Yet as the Age of Exploration took off and science became revered, what had been considered natural for so many thousands of years was then labeled superstitious nonsense or condemned as the work of the devil. Seers were deemed to be witches and burned at the stake for their so-called crimes. Later, industry and technology--focused always on rational explanation--drove more nails in the coffin of intuition."
   
   This book is a must read for all of us, those who have tapped into their powers, and those who may find these ideas suspect. Dr. Orloff's life study is documentary proof that seers are not charlatans cloaked in turbans gazing into crystal balls, and her argument is that every one of us can develop highly sensitive intuition that will be useful in medicine and the transformation of our society.
   
   Recently a new review of my memoir, The Future That Brought Her Here; Memoir of a Call to Awaken, was posted on Amazon.com. This person, T. Ruth, said "I am so grateful that Deborah had the courage to share her personal story with the world in such a detailed, thoughtful, honest, loving way." This fan emailed me personally on Facebook to say her husband had also read my book and was anxious to begin developing his feminine side, or the feminine way of knowing. In moments like that I feel so blessed to have had the impulse to share my knowledge and research into human esoteric history.
   
   Judith Orloff calls for the same goal that I encourage in my book, an integration of intellect and intuition. I recommend this book with no reservations. It reads like a novel, an adventure story with an encouraging ending.
   ". . . now at the edge of the twenty-first century, there is an increasing movement of people who realize how much of our soul we've sacrificed. That split just isn't necessary. Envision a furture where all of our analystical accomplishments and the intuitive work hand in hand--realizing the best of both worlds. That's where I believe we're headed."
   
   Amen, I say to that. And so it is

5 comments about The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America.

1. The Harvard Psychedelic Club tells how three brilliance scholars and one freshman crossed paths in the early sixties at a Harvard psychedelic-drug research project - and changed American lives and culture. The four explored expanded consciousness and their actions set the stage for the 1960s social and spiritual revolution, with Timothy Leary as the proponent of LSD, Richard Alpert the spiritual seeker, Huston Smith the teacher of world religions, and Andrew Weil the proponent of alternative healing. Any collection strong in American social history and issues needs this.



2. Self-Promotion Pays! Or 'How the Self Promoters Write History'. That might be the title of a book I'll never have time to write.
   
   The four central personages of "The Harvard Psychedelic Club" were and still are among the most ardent self-promoters of modern times, as author Don Lattin sporadically discloses. Huston Smith, whom Lattin calls "the teacher"; Richard Alpert, "the seeker'; Timothy Leary, "the trickster"; and Andrew Weil, "the healer" are all portrayed by Lattin as deeply flawed individuals -- and that's accurate enough -- as highly influential personages -- and that's certainly true, as far as it goes -- and as Shiva-like meldings of destruction and creation. The extent of their megalomania is obvious, but when the original Narcissus stared at his reflection in the still pool, perhaps the face he beheld was truly as handsome as he thought. Lattin himself is of an age, of the `baby boomer' generation, to have been impacted by the activities of all four. In researching this book, he interviewed three of them (Leary is dead), as well as many of their families and associates. He plainly reveres three of them, and keeps a window open for reverence along with disapprobation for the fourth. He doesn't beatify them, however. Given the record of their personal lives, beatification would be utter fantasy.
   
   But there was no "Harvard Psychedelic Club" in an explicit organizational sense. Lattin's use of this disingenuous title for his book is purely an opportunistic publisher's ploy to sensationalize the subject and to cash in on the iconic status of Harvard University in American culture. Really, this is a `group biography' of the four persons mentioned. All of them were active at Harvard in the early 1960s -- I was there also and knew three of them fairly well, especially my classmate Andy Weil -- but les than a third of the book examines their `conjunction' at Harvard. The bulk of the text pursues their much longer later careers, through the decades of the `70s and `80s right up to the present.
   
   In the `Afterword' of the book, Lattin declares: "This book was not about me..." That may be the most inaccurate statement in the whole text. In fact, the whole book is implicitly about Lattin, about his perception of the affect these four men and the `movement' associated with their names had on his life. Lattin is narcissist enough to consider his own life as emblematic of his generation, of the flower children baby boomers now approaching the stage of lif when `memoirs' seem suitable. Like most baby boomers, Lattin sees himself as a `majority' phenomenon, a perspective that limits the authenticity of his research and the perspicacity of his book. He's a journalist; you won't be able to ignore that fact as you read his jaunty pop prose. At his worst, he's glib. His special niche as a journalist is important; he's the `religion' writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. "Spirituality is his bag," as one of his boomer peers might express it. He freely admits as much. He also admits, in his Afterword, his own extensive use of psychedelics and his neverending `search' for spiritual enlightenment, for some kind of vision of a Power controlling human life and afterlife.
   
   It's the "spiritual quests" of his four subjects than intertwines their lives, in Lattin's account of them. A Freudian biographer might have found their diverse sexual quests central, but Lattin treats their misbehaviors as peripheral to the Big Quest. With these four guys, he may be right. Where he goes amiss or amok, in my opinion, is when he defines his entire generation in the same terms, as spiritually restless and needy. Undoubtably, a portion of the generation - a cadre of hippydom - were `seekers' ready to tread in the footprints of Alpert or Smith, but they were not even a plurality. Remember the film "Forrest Gump"? The `retarded' Gump represented his generation's obsessions in his serial adventures. Civil rights, anti-war, sexual freedom, non-conformity, `healthy' living, and environmentalism were all formidable obsessions of the generation, but they are scarcely mentioned amid Lattin's account of the religious hunger that he considers the initiation rite into his Psychedelic Club.
   
   I'm not a baby boomer. I'm a few years too old, born before Pearl Harbor. Really, Mr. Lattin, all of us who entered Harvard in 1960 were too old to be boomers or hippies. If we arrived at Harvard Yard with any counter-culture predilections, they were based on the Beats and the Beach Boys, on Jack Kerouac in particular, and on the hedonistic rebelliousness of California. Kerouac isn't mentioned in "The Harvard Psychedelic Club." Neither are the Beach Boys or, for that matter, any of `rock `n roll'. By Lattin's account, everything began with The Jefferson Airplane. The California cohort at Harvard in the years 1960-1964 came with more experience of mescaline and peyote than Tim Leary at the time. Many of "us' had already discarded drug-fueld mysticism for the more earnest struggle to `fix' our society. Harvard in the early `60s was afire with social protest, with demonstrations against HUAC and lingering McCarthyism, with freedom-riding and lunch-counter sit-ins, with resistance to thecolonialist boycott of Cuba and the limitation of passport freeodms, above all with opposition to the shameful Cold War `business' in Vietnam and the Draft. I was part of all those movements during my Harvard years, and I still consider them the defining experiences of my class ('64). Leary and Alpert? We all knew about them, and considered them a minor diversion. Andy Weil? One of those self-important Crimson editors. Weil's reportage in the Crimson did indeed contribute to the expulsion of Leary and Alpert from their faculty positions in 1963, but believe me, that was `on the docket' anyway. Weil's lifelong `guilt' about his role in the downfall of the (non-existant) Harvard Psychedelic Club is a bit ludicrous; as usual, Weil exaggerates his own importance.
   
   There were most certainly drugs available at Harvard in the 1960s - marijuana, hashish, peyote, laboratory mescaline - though they were used by only a small percentage of the undergraduates. Alcohol was the mind-blower of choice for most. Those drugs were all available at the high school in California from which I happened to graduate (I attended that school very briefly, one of seven high schools I passed through, in four different states). It was the California cohort of my class that brought the Beat Generation to Harvard, and the mind-altering drugs along with it. Allen Ginsburg was there, hanging out with Tim Leary at times, but I'm the guy who brought Kerouac to Harvard. Literally. In the flesh. I staged his two public readings at Memorial Hall. I sat with him at Lowell House High Table, the snooty bastion of Boston Brahminism, and interpreted his chaotic comments to Headmaster Elliot Perkins.
   
   I mention all this in reference to the principal shortcoming of Dan Lattin's literary effort: its partiality to a `post hoc ergo propter hoc' assessment of the milieu, and its dishonesty by omissions. Notice please the subtitle of Lattin's book: "How Timoth Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America." Sorry, Dan. That's not the whole story after all.



3. Very easy and enjoyable book. Gives reader an idea of what went on behind the scenes during the drug revolution.



4. Lattin's view of the events surrounding the birth of the psychedelic adventure in contemporary america is pretty parochial. Better to go to the source and read Leary's autobiography Flashbacks. It's funny and extremely engaged in the story...on the ground as it were.



5. When I first saw The Harvard Psychedelic Club by Don Lattin., I thought, "OH, NO! Not another reshash of old hash. Give us a break!" The "club" or course, was not an actual social organization, but Lattin's metaphor for how his four main characters interwove their lives.
   
   
   
   However, I was greatly surprised, informed, and entertained by Club. Lattin is a lively, skilled story-teller and adds details, especially interpersonal ones, that have been missing so far as I know. His four members of the club are Ram Dass, Leary, Andrew Weil, and Huston Smith. While Smith was not so active in the club as the other three, thanks to his international renown, his Cleansing the Doors of Perception: The Religious Significance of Entheogenic Plants and Chemicals may turn out to be the most influential psychedelic book in religion. Including Smith may show Lattin's interest as a former religion writer too.
   
   
   
   This quartet, according to Lattin, "did nothing less than inspire a generation of Americans to redefine the nature of reality" (p. 214) and their historical importance "is not so much any particular vision, but the very process of envisioning: (p. 215).
   
   
   
   Lattin is clear that he "recreates" his numerous dialogues, and in the front matter says when possible he checked his reconstructions with at least one person who took part in the various conversations.
   
   
   
   I do strongly recommend The Harvard Psychedelic Club as a window into personality sketches of four significant people of the times, their interactions, and their continuing influence into this century.
   
   
   
   Tom Roberts
   (Ed)Psychedelic Medicine Psychedelic Medicine [Two Volumes]: New Evidence for Hallucinogenic Substances as Treatments
   Psychedelic Horizons Psychedelic Horizons (Societas)
   Psychoactive Sacramentals: Essays on Entheogens and Religion (The Csp Entheogen Project Series, 3)

5 comments about Thinking in Pictures, Expanded Edition: My Life with Autism.

1. Enlightening both for insight into how the author's mind works and into animal behavior & motivation.



2. A penetrating and insightful look into the world of the autistic person. Temple Grandin has done much to de-mystify the world of autism. What she has accomplished should be food for thought for us all.



3. Offers great insight into the world of autism, which is important to me since I have an 8-year old autistic son. Has definitely added value to the way the whole family relates with him.



4. If you have any questions about Asperger's or high functioning autism, read this book. Temple Grandin provides an insight that I have never thought about before. Her squeeze machine is amazing and her understanding of animals was revolutionary to the cattle industry.
   
   A great book!



5. This is important work and should be read by anyone who has an autistic person in their life, even if just a peripheral friend or relative.
   
   We waste far too much talent using labels that seem to stigmatize intelligent, but 'different' kids.
   Historically many of our most brilliant artists and scientists would today be labeled Aspergers or High functioning Autistic.
   Our educational system can do much more to help prepare these kids for a productive, useful life.

5 comments about Memories, Dreams, Reflections.

1. At one point in the largely fascinating hodgepodge of his remiscences, musings, and summings-up of his life and work, aka "Memories, Dreams, Reflections," Jung makes a startling admission, the implications of which, if he notices at all, go unremarked upon. That is, Jung describes the development of his psychoanalytic system as driven by his desire to fit his own experiences--many of them unconventional, inexplicable, if not downright paranormal--into some order of normality. "I may be insane," he might well be saying, "but if I can fit my experiences into a coherent template and demonstrate that a lot of other people's experiences can also be explained thereby, then I am perfectly sane."
   
   This attitude doesn't invalidate Jung at all; it merely honestly affirms the solipsistic basis of all our so-called rational thought. We use reason to rationalize how we intrinsically are the way a lawyer uses argument to defend a murderer. Nothing wrong with that...especially when someone is brilliant enough to come up with an explanation that rationalizes--and thereby normalizes--a good deal of the rest of us in the process.
   
   This celebrated book is not so much an autobiography, it's not even completely written by Jung, but sort of cobbled together from a variety of source material, some of it by Jung, some of it transcriptions of what Jung said, all of it, we're assured, overseen by Jung and given his imprimatur of approval. Jung himself makes it clear that this book isnt to be taken as strictly biographical inasmuch as he believed, quite rightly, that autobiography inevitably becomes either hagiography or apologia.
   
   By way of contrast, what Jung does here is give an account of the major events of his life, (including his psychic life--the dreams, visions, etc) that shaped his work. As a result, "Memories, Deams, Reflections" is a curious blend of intimacy and impersonality. Jung divulges the content of some of his most harrowing dreams, but at the same time he manages to give away almost nothing of his personal life with family, friends, lovers, etc.
   
   I find it puzzling that where psychoanalysis is still considered seriously at all, it's dealt with in almost strictly Freudian terms, as if Freud's bacon hasnt already been fried and refried, his water carried and carried back, enough times already. Jung is saying something entirely different than Freud, something, it would seem, far more cogent to our times than Freud's reductionist psychological materialism, which seems now so much a product of the late 19th century. Is the relative marginalization of Jung a judgment passed by the academic elite that Jung, always abundantly more popular, especially among New Age types, is considered a bit of a crackpot, a pseudo-scientific fabulist akin to a Tolkein or a C.S. Lewis, a mystico-literary curiosity suited more for artists and occultists, and not for serious-minded medical men?
   
   Jung is often derided as a god-obsessed, would-be prophet of the New Aeon (as opposed to Freud's scientific atheism), but a careful reading of Jung's reflections in this book shows the matter to be quite different. What Jung tried to point out is that the "god-need" in our psyche is real, even if god, per se, is not. Human beings have a need for "religion" almost as desperate as their need for air. And if it isnt Judaism or Islam or Christianity that satisfies this need it'll be something else, like Marxism, Fascism, Scientology, Environmentalism, Statism, Satanism or any one of the ten-thousand-and-one "self-evident truths" that people will cook up in order to provide a transcendent meaning to their lives. One look at the rabidity of some radical green activists, for instance, is enough to convince you that worship of God has been replaced in their minds by worship of Mother Earth, and the violent fanaticism that led to Inquisitions and Crusades in the one instance is never far from the surface in the other. Our age has its sacred cows just like any other and those who dont worship them are subject to ridicule and ostracism just like they've always been.
   
   Wherever one god is overturned, another rushes in to claim his place. The throne is never left empty for long. Our psyche, it seems, abhors a god-vacuum.
   
   This is an important insight into liberating ourselves from the notion that we now stand liberated from the need for god. That notion, perhaps more than any other, has led to some of the worst atrocities of the 20th century.
   
   What Jung points out more than anything else is the limits of reason, boundary beyond which science cannot go. The psyche, he argues, has its own reality and its own needs and they cannot always be squared with what is reasonable or scientific. During a period of intellectual history in which we've been led to believe that science could provide us with verifiable answers to all our questions if only we were clever enough to understand them, Jung's insistence that there exists a class of "truth" that cannot be categorically proven-- except, perhaps, by gathering evidence of its traces in what is common in our dreams, histories, and cultural artifacts--must almost by the definition of "science" be regarded as a form of mystification.
   
   Thus, Jung's rather ill-deserved reputation as a "mystic," "prophet," and "sage." If he were any of those things, it was only incidentally. As "Memories, Dreams, Reflections" amply points out, Jung approached his project with intellectual and scientific rigor, even to the point beyond which science, and to some extent, intellect itself, could not go. At that point, he rather courageously refused to dismiss what could only be limned darkly and sought instead "proof" that it might well exist in the abiding need we have for it to exist. Jung is something of an archaelogist of the psyche. He searches for traces at the bottoms of consciousness, he reconstructs the bones of giants (the Archetypes), and he identifies their evolutionary descendants in our own shifting times.
   
   If god were a brontosaurus long extinct, he's left his tracks in the ossified mud of the lower layers of our brain. No one may ever have seen a brontosaurus in the flesh, but something left those tracks, something left those bones, something Big.
   
   If Jung is a "Christian" as he's often maligned to be, than he's the sort of Christian who would have been burned at the stake. Jung's idea of "Christianity" is one of perpetual heresy, of a "god" in a constant state of development--an idea that he took a lot of heat for in his book "Answer to Job." Jung's notion of religion was always, first-and-foremost, one that demanded an on-going personal relationship between the individual and whatever he might conceive as "god." In the absence of such a relationship, man's connection with god withers; when god stops growing and religion stops developing than Christianity (in this case) ossifies and dies, just like any other mythology
   
   Well, Im in Florida at the moment, in a hotel room, lying next to my boyfriend--its nearly 6pm and we've been out all day. I think I'll give him a massage; altho he might have drifted off to sleep, in which case, I'll let him nap for a while. Anyway, while I'm off taking care of that, I really think you should begin reading "Memories, Dreams, Reflections"--its gotten me back into Jung and reminded me of why I used to love him so much. I've started drawing mandalas; I'm whistling a happy tune; even my coffee tastes fresher. Thank you Carl Gustav Jung!
   
   
   
   
   



2. Memories, Dreams, Reflections will no doubt stand as one of the most influential books I've ever read (and I've been reading a long time). I read an article in the New York Times about Jung's Red Book, which said he used much of the material that came forth during the time of its writing and illustration to co-author his autobiography (Dreams...). So since the Red Book wasn't yet published, and since it was $200 compared to $10 something for Dreams..., I purchased Dreams...Each day of reading this magnificent book was a splendid journey, a meditative circumambulation around one of Jung's (and our collective) mandalas.



3. This "mythical" (Jung's word) book on Jung's life is certainly a beloved "bible" of many Jungian analysts and devoted fans, many claimed to have re-read this book once every year or so (so as to have a closer touch with the psyche of the guru). Fair to say the book is rich in metaphysical speculations, Jung's web-of-dreams as demonstration of his mythical (alchemical?) life goal in understanding human psyche (his own individuation), his famous or infamous encounter with his own unconscious (the raw data as recorded in the Red Book has been an embarrassment of his descendants for many years), near-death experience (rich speculative materials for New Age mediators), and his life-after-death speculation has given rationalization for some current Jungian shrinks to treat patients based on the belief of a trauma happened in one's previous life....not to mention his UFO mention.
   
   Yet, Jung had categorically maintained that his analytical psychology belonged to the realm of natural science and that he himself was a scientist. As such, he never proclaimed the physical existence of metaphysical entities, though he didn't deny the possibility of such physical existence. This position is quite different from some current Jungian psychologists and new age fans of Jung. And Jung made this (him being a scientist) quite clear in the book. For example, concerning the "loud report in the bookcase" (p. 155) that Jung described as having meaning (i.e."synchronized" with or even caused by his psyche), Jung gave the readers a fair view of Freud's scientific argument in Freud own words. I shall quote as length here because it shows the true character of Jung (p 361): "At first I was inclined to ascribe some meaning to it if the noise we heard so frequently when you were here were never heard again after your departure. But since then it has happened over and over again, yet never in connection with my thoughts and never when I was considering you or your special problem. (Not now, either, I add by way of challenge). The phenomenon was soon deprived of all significance for me by something else." Jung didn't refute Freud's argument in his book.
   
   In summary, a book with excellent materials to study Jung from different perspectives. Highly recommended.



4. I read this book twice, but years ago. It is the best introduction to Jung and his World. Jung is a spiritual Bridge from modern mans consciousness to ancient and premodern spiritual world views. Having recently gone back to read his work, I believe I am closer to grasping the archetypes that he describes, and what they represent. In a preliterate time, mans approach to explaining himself in the world was much more visual and more purely symbolic. We still have no end of the essential urge to place ourselves into the great mysteries. Jung provides the guiding hand through these dangerous waters.
   The idea of the collective unconscious is one that is hard for modern minds to grasp. It revolts against our reductive scientific perspective and does not (yet) allow of verifiable measurement. Something implicate in our symbolic cultural inheritance comes and jars our secure sense of daily self. We have become experts at ignoring these signs, or we drown them out with electronic media and its own symbol creating machines. And yet these themes or archetypes have a persistent life of their own, as they come as a direct psychic inheritance.
   Man has always sought a method for spiritual and moral ascendency, and has always struggled with the great dichotomies of life which make that a perennial challenge. Jung teaches us that it is an everpresent and meaningful challenge. As individuals we are subjects of and representatives of a great psychic web streching from the past to the future. It is our goal and challenge to negotiate this adventure and to survive as spiritually evolving beings.
   Jung's own adventure is here.



5. I love this book because it goes beyond just personality catagorizations and static psychology formulas to show Jung's understanding of the complexity of the phenomenon that is the human being and how much larger our existence is than just the material or mental worlds. Although he was a true empirical scientist of his time, he also was quite aware and affected by spiritual and psychic experiences and mysterious energetic forces that, to me, validates a universal intelligence that is not well acknowledged in Western philosophy. In fact his empirical process led him to not be able to dismiss his experiences because he could not disprove them, and he seemed singularly self-possessed and courageous in this way. He was prepared to delve into the greater forces at work that affect the psyche, beyond just what has been experienced and suppressed. It is a fascinating and deeply thoughtful and insightful book, but it will take a flexible and open mind to appreciate it.

5 comments about Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets.

1. This book follows a young graduate student from the University of Chicago as he naively wanders into a housing project on Chicago's South Side, and a chance meeting with an up-and-coming gang leader, J.T., gives him almost unlimited access to one of the largest crack cocaine dealing gangs in Chicago.
   
   It is fascinating to watch Sudhir become entangled and embedded with the tenants and gangs, despite warnings and recommendations for his professors to not get emotionally attached. How could he not? I found myself unable to put this book down. My heart broke with the plans to demolish the Robert Taylor Homes. Even though they weren't very safe and certainly weren't acceptable living conditions, the tenants and gangs established a give-and-take, sometimes ruled by fear, but a way to survive.
   
   The writing style is clear, and gives the reader a chronological summary of what it was like to practically live in the Robert Taylor projects for the better part of a decade. Time moves quickly, and Sudhir gains access to more and more people throughout the course of the book. I was both amazed and saddened at the way of life, the way to make it day to day in the housing projects. This book sheds light on the extortion and corruption of everyone who lives there, each one justifying what they do to make it another day. An excellent and quick read.



2. Gang Leader for a Day is certainly an entertaining, captivating and quick read. It's a page-turner, I'll give it that. But, it left my stomach churning.
   
   This book is a written account of Venkatesh's doctoral work at the University of Chicago's Department of Sociology (a legendary program). Yet, anyone familiar with social science research will be left befuddled upon reading this book. Venkatesh skirts the explicit ethical requirements of social research throughout his project, to an amazing and sickening degree. He exploits the already-marginalized population of poor Blacks for his personal gain - lying to them throughout his project, deceiving them of his purpose, and knowingly placing certain persons in harms way. For me, this book was an exercise in ego and exploitation, and a prime example of what NOT to do in research.
   
   If it were simply a personal account of someone who hung out with gang members for the heck of it, it would still be an example of exploitation and entitlement - but it would end there. Unfortunately, it is the account of a successful sociologist who knowingly violated professional ethics and exploited an impoverished community for the betterment of his career. (for a more technical/academic explanation, see: Puff the Magic Sociologist from the Tenured Radical)
   
   Read? Sure. But do so with a critical eye and some basic knowledge on the ethical obligations of social researchers.



3. A very interesting piece of urban sociology / anthropology (although ignore the "Rogue Sociologist" nonsense in the title) , which brings to life a hidden, closed community in the Chicago projects, largely ignored by the outside world and run on a basis of fear, petty corruption and intimidation by the local gang, local police, and local power brokers. The comparison with "Gomorrah" for any who have read that, is striking.
   Reading this there are a couple of points that struck me; firstly in a distorted way in the absence of any other form of authority its not surprising that the gangs fill the vacuum and act as some form of community organisation even if the principle source of income is in selling crack to its own community. Secondly how poor communities will always prey on each other. Thirdly how all of this could be solved or at least made better, by a sensible drug policy (rather than head in sand prohibition) that took away the gang's profit motive - for, as stated in the book, revenues from prostitution, extortion and other illegal activities are relatively small beer and not enough to attract many to "thug life". And fourthly, how the richest country in the world can effectively abandon some of its most vulnerable citizens to their fate
   But this is highly recommended as a light on what for me anyway was a dark and hidden world



4. While I wasn't much of a fan of Freakonomics as a whole, the chapter giving an economic analysis of drug gangs was an interesting take on a well-worn subject. When I heard that the chapter had been expanded into an entire book, I made a point to get my hands on a copy, the next time I was in the US.
   
   However, the book fell short, and was much less interesting than the shorter take in Freakonomics. Rather than any sort of academic or economic analysis, it felt like more like a collection of anecdotes, perhaps it could have been titled "my crazy life living amongst the project dwellers."
   
   I think the author's outsider perspective is a basic flaw to describing life in an early 90s project - such a book would have been better written by a long-term resident. Additionally, the author isn't a very engaging author, and none of the personalities described felt alive, or like anything more than one-dimensional stereotypes.



5. This book was "riveting" as The New York Times put it. Sudhir's "rogueness" comes from his missteps as a graduate student learning as he was simultaneously in the field. He learned that he should have followed the Internal Review Board I.R.B. procedures in protecting the identities of those he studied only after he began studying them. This is common however, and you just have to hide the identities of those you study by switching names in anything you write. His adventures began right outside his own door near the U of C near Hyde Park in the South-side of Chicago. The same place that we later learned our current President Barack Obama also focused much of his attention on the plight of ordinary Americans caught up in perpetual gang violence and drug infested areas. For many American citizens, it is impossible to think that this can take place in America today, but Sudhir brings to light the fact that this scoial phenomena does in fact take place in urban environments, and now even rural environments with crystal meth - on a daily basis.
   I couldn't help but draw similarities between the Robert Taylor housing tenants and Afghanis. Many people do not want to live under constant stress of gang violence, but must not only participate in its perpetuation, but they must also play active key roles in it in order to survive. To Pierre Bourdieu, this practical mastery of your environment and every day habitus would explain why this sort of lifestyle is perpetuated, manifesting in cost/benefit ratio analysis of each and every person you talk to not knowing if he/she is a "snitch."
   The Taliban hold similar sway over Afghanis today. Once American troops leave, then what? The Taliban will simply bribe local police and officials, work their way into politics, and ultimately corrupt the Afghani government to perpetuate daily practices of the Taliban. Once a gangster = always a gangster.
   I just hope "J.T." was able to put his street smarts to work and go to college. America actually needs people like him in power in order to make our, what seems to be, failing economic system become fruitful again.

5 comments about The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness.

1. Although certain scenes in this memoir were fascinating, ultimately the book as whole was disappointing. It seemed to read as a list of events, "and then this happened, and then this...," instead of pulling everything together into a coherent picture. It also exhibited the two tendencies that I have seen in the several schizophrenic people I've known: extreme self-absorption combined with profound emotional detachment. The self-absorption comes through in the asymmetry between Saks' discussion of others and of herself. Others are described in very shallow terms, always starting with an assessment of their weight and attractiveness, and then categorizing them either as kind and caring (the good ones) or judgmental and unsympathetic (the evil ones). Very little is said about them beyond this. But every detail of every breakdown that Saks suffers is described, and every academic achievement is mentioned, even when they don't add to the story at all.
   
   Yet, combined with this self-fixation is an emotional detachment that made it very difficult for me to empathize or even understand what Saks was going through. Part of the problem here could be due to writing style: as an academic, Saks tends to tell rather than show. For example, a typical scene describing how she works while having delusions: "I began to feel `off' soon after I arrived at my hotel. Once again, I gritted my teeth and narrowed my focus to work and my obligations at the conference, hoping no one would suspect anything was wrong. But the delusions and disorganization accelerated; I was coming apart at the seams." But what does it mean to grit one's teeth? How does that look from the inside? It would have been so much more helpful just to have a scene at the conference, or at any work event, describing how it really feels to have delusions and still work. What does the work feel like? How does one shift one's focus?
   
   I suspect, though, that this is not just a problem of writing style. Over and over Saks recounts the details of her breakdowns, but each time the description is almost completely external. We see a dialogue, with Saks speaking in word salad and her interlocutor reacting, but what is going on in Saks' mind? Does the word salad make sense to her? Or does she have a sense of what she wants to say, but it doesn't come out right? Is it frustrating? Or is there no self there at all, no `I', in those moments? The delusions are also maddeningly vague. Does part of her know it's a delusion while it's happening? How does she relate the delusion to other things she knows? She knows a brain cannot leak through one's ears and drown people, so what happens when she has that delusion? Does she just forget what she knows about physiology, gravity, etc.? Does the delusion crowd everything else out of her mind? But it can't always be that way, because sometimes she's able to grit her teeth and act normally. So what's going through her mind when she does that? Similarly, Saks' descriptions of talk therapy are very external. She says her therapists have helped her see that the delusions protect her from negative feelings, but she does not describe how she has dealt with those negative feelings, or describe much growing self-knowledge. After 13 years of intense therapy with one analyst, one would expect some insight into the constant delusion that "I'm evil, I've killed many people." But it never comes.
   
   In sum, this reads like a book written by someone who either has not come to terms with her illness, or who wants to keep the reader at arm's length. The latter is certainly understandable, but it makes for a disappointing reading experience.



2. Elyn Saks begins to experience symptoms of schizophrenia as a teen. She battles with this worsening illness while at college. Somehow she manages to graduate from Vanderbilt, Oxford, and Yale while in the throes of her psychosis. Her story is fascinating and illuminating. Saks allows us to see schizophrenia from the inside. Her take on the use of restraints in mental hospitals was horrifying. Saks' honesty allows us to understand the disease more fully. Apart from that, the story itself is good and can stand on its own.



3. This book is absolutely amazing - I couldn't put it down! I work in the field with adolescents that have schizophrenia and this book gave me incredible insight and deeper empathy for the clients I work with. Thank you Elyn!



4. This is a well-written, very interesting book about one woman's struggle with schizophrenia. Elyn Saks, a professor of law at the University of Southern California, ia a brilliant, talented achiever with what can only be described as a mild case of schizophrenia. Why do I say mild? Because amidst delusions and breakdowns, Prof. Saks manages to graduate valedictorian of her undergraduate insitution (Vanderbilt), win a Marshall Scholarship to Oxford, get accepted into Yale Law School, become a full professor at USC, and train to be a psychoanalyst. Whew! Even assuming Saks has an exceptional intellect, most schizophrenics I know or know about have a hard time just getting through the day. So I gave this four stars instead of five because I don't think this book fairly describes the experience of the average schizophrenic. (cf "The Quiet Room"). Still, the book is quite interesting and offers insight into what it's like to be gripped by delusions. Worth the read.



5. There's no doubt that The Center Cannot Hold by Elyn R. Saks is a compelling read, a page turner. She describes her life and illness in painstaking detail and the story is vivid and real. It's very interesting to read about a successful intellect who thrives in her career despite a crippling mental illness.
   
   That said, I find there are components missing... The author's relationship with her parents is an odd, unnerving one and I can't help but think they contribute to the illness. Toward the end of the book, the mother doesn't even come out to help plan her daughter's wedding and then later when another potential illness strikes the parents don't fly out to support her. There are comments and parentheticals throughout the book about her parents (her dad's strong personality, etc.) that lead me to think there's more than meets the eye in terms of her family and disease, but she simply doesn't go there. At points, I started to view her disease as a way to get attention, especially from her friend Steve, as well as various therapists. Her constant desire to taper off meds was alarming and frustrating, to say the least.
   
   However, if you're interested in reading about mental illness, schizophrenia in particular, this book is a first person account of someone who's been through it all and who has a good sense of storytelling.

5 comments about Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness.

1. 
   Clinical depression is a condition that is extremely difficult to describe properly to someone that has never experienced it. For one thing, a person in a depressive state has notoriously poor memory, so it is literally difficult to gauge exactly how you are feeling from the "normal" point of view. For another thing, once a depressive state is over it is difficult, without taking notes, even to remember what it was like in its entirety (if you have undertaken cognitive behavioural therapy, with copious note-taking, you'll know what I mean).
   
   Styron underwent an episode of depression in the 1980s that was acute in severity but relatively limited in time. Writer that he was, he wrote this short pamphlet describing what it was like. Styron's writing is surprisingly light and lively in tone, but he reveals fully the depths of despair that the condition forms. His description of his black paralysis, like a poisonous fog, incapacitating him and lasting almost the entire day, is quoted in psychology textbooks.
   
   This book is ideal for anyone who is curious about what it is actually like to be clinically depressed. Depression is a condition that is insufficiently understood by the public (as Styron points out). On the other hand, it is merely a medical condition; and Styron's retrospective look at the event, detailed yet totally detached, emphasises that there is hope for the depressive and that happiness can come again.



2. The book was recommended by a speaker at a recent meeting I attended for Family Physicians. It was a good insight into what goes through the mind of someone who is profoundly depressed. It is a fairly short book- I should have looked for it in the library rather than buying it, though. Not a book I plan to keep in my personal library.



3. I read this book when it was first published, in 1990, and have revisited it many times. William Styron was my favorite author at the time, and so reading about his suffering and depression was very gripping for me.
   
   As a psychotherapist, I have found few more compelling accounts of the journey through deep depression. Styron pulls few punches, and invites the reader to share his experience of great darkness.
   
   As a reader of literature, I found this book fascinating, as it explains a great deal about Mr. Styron's ability to create compelling characters. He has lived through great pain and great joy, and infuses this wisdom in his characters.
   
   Thank you, Mr. Styron, for sharing your story with us.



4. My therapist reccommended this book. I read it in a couple of days, I was amazed how someone could have put in words what it is when you are depressed. I gave it to my husband because I wanted for him to see how depression, the illness, it is not just a decision on feeling sad, the last thing a person that hits such a low wants is to actually be that low. He told me he could have never imagined that was how I felt and now he totally understood the meaning of such an illness.



5. "Darkness Visible" is an 85 page essay about Mr. Styron's experience with depression, a condition that nearly killed him, as it has so many writers and artists and others. His little book is stark and pragmatic, deeply informed and feeling, without a hint of self pity, and indeed, with no small measure of hope. As someone who's felt this particular woe, I found the topic resonant and grievous, and a call to arms, to recognise depression as serious a disease as any other, one that we cannot always explain or treat, and most of all, to stop treating suicide as shameful blameful acts.

5 comments about Thinking In Pictures: and Other Reports from My Life with Autism.

1. This woman is absolutely amazing! Her writing has a little different rythm to it at times due to her autism, but her intelligence, breadth of knowledge, and ability to express herself and describe some of the experiences of autism change your whole understanding of the disorder, and brain organization in general. I would highly recommend anything she has written, and am excited that HBO has made a movie about her!



2. This is my favorite book by Temple. It's a must read for any "parent" and anyone wanting to understand autism. Temple is the defining voice of autism. True, she may not represent all forms, but she speaks to all of them through her journey of being diagnosed severe and then her progression to a high-functioning adult. It is her dual gifted-ness that distinguishes her and allows her to explain in personal, specific and in user-friendly scientific details the machinations of the enigmatic autistic brain.(Apple doesn't fall too far from the tree.) She is simply one of the most fascinating individuals, and how she has used autism to share and explain her world is extraordinary. This book and hearing her speak early on in my personal parental autism journey were essential beacons that greatly aided how I chose to maneuver this tricky path. Read it!



3. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in autism. Whether you have a child with autism, work with people with autism, or are just interested in autism, this book has a very unique perspective on the disease as well as the person inside.



4. I read this book years ago and it has stayed with me, shaping the way I think about how I and others think and view the world. It has helped me personally gain a sense of understanding of people with autism. I have recommended it many times to others.



5. I have an 11 year old daughter with Asperger's Syndrome. This book has helped me understand her in ways I never thought possible. Little things from the importance of consistent predictable consequences to my daughter's love for animals. I have always thought that Aspergers is a gift and now I am sure it is! Temple Grandin is my hero!

5 comments about Rule Number Two: Lessons I Learned in a Combat Hospital.

1. The minute I got this book I had such a hard time putting it down that I finished it in no time flat. Dr. Heidi Kraft's book is at times thought provoking, poignant, bittersweet and sometimes has a tinge of dark humor to it. The narrative is often heart breaking and more than once I found myself teary eyed but it is also a powerful rendering of what we ask of others in our name.



2. I am finding most of this book fascinating and very well written. Really is holding my interest.



3. This is an extraordinary book. One should rarely put much stock in praise found on a book's own dust cover but Gen. Anthony Zini is right on target when he writes that "Kraft has given us a rare, insightful look into today's battlefield [which is] personal, emotional, and unique." Kraft is uncommonly open and honest about her own fears and feelings; the reader experiences her fears of incoming shells, awful insects, ungodly wounds on her patients and inhuman suffering of "her" Marines. I join Gen. Zini is saying that "Every American needs to read this [book]."



4. The stories are astonishing. Honestly, I'm still processing them. She may not have been out there fighting, but she was doing her work at the point of conflict, running on adrenaline, compassion, determination, and nothing resembling normal sleep. Plenty of others here have discussed one or another tragic, traumatic, challenging situation, so I won't do that here (though so much of what she wrote is unforgettable).
   
   I think this is a great book for anybody who wishes to help vets in a sophisticated way. We'll NEVER be able to understand what our troops go through during war, though this book paints an extraordinarily poignant picture. With her stories, the author clues us into a world of well-meaning attitudes and strategies -- some that she found were helpful and some that decidedly were not.
   
   I bought this book out of sheer interest (the esteemed alum gave a talk to SDSU while I was teaching there; she used to work at the VA hospital in La Jolla), and out of my own desire to be a better therapist for vets. I think the book will help therapists better understand their clients' experiences in combat. Moreover, it shares the rare perspective of a deployed psychologist. Kraft had all the standard cognitive-behavioral training and experience, but found that the research-based, textbook approach didn't give her what she needed to do her best amidst the chaos. Her "case load" was huge and cut deeply into her psyche. If nothing else, this book will help one understand the "traumatic transference" that therapists can experience. The mere exposure (albeit second or third hand) is part of what makes this book a gem. (This paragraph is such an understatement...)
   
   Highly recommended.
   
   Another book that I'm finding helpful with vets is "Strategies for Managing Stress After War: Veteran's Workbook and Guide to Wellness" by Whealin, DeCarvalho and Vega. (It is an educational text for vets, not a collection of stories...)



5. This book is an amazing, personal insight into the experiences of a wonderful mental health care professional serving in the Iraq war caring for US Marines. It is completely unpolitical, and never loses focus on the personal stories of incredible human beings, including the author herself. This book left me with tremendous respect for mental health care professionals and soldiers alike.

5 comments about The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life.

1. I had first resisted buying this book. It was recommended by a "success coach". As I recollected how many people's lives were profoundly impacted by the revelations and changes taking place IN the seminars the coach had taught, I realized there might be a reason for this book to be required reading. Half way through, I found stories of people whose life challenges, trials and tribulations helped me clarify answers and understandings I myself had been searching for, for nearly two decades. Take a risk and buy this book, there may be something for you in there.



2. If Twist had billed the book as an autobiography, it could have worked. This is not about money but about Lynne Twist's spiritual view of the world.



3. that money had less power over your life? Thsi book is a certain guide to breaking emotional and metal molds in one of life's touchiest areas. Lynne Twist's exploration of the spiritual side of money adn wealth is a heartening introduction to a way of thinking that can change the way the world does business. Her insights are that powerful.



4. I will keep this very brief as I don't want to waste your time like the way I wasted mine by reading this book.
   Key Points of the author:
   - Align your transactions with your morals
   - Scarcity is not real. Believe in sufficiency
   - Focus on the qualitative aspects of life, like relationships
   
   That is pretty much it. The book is a VERY touchy-feely book filled with her real life examples of volunteering with Third World countries and how deep down in peoples' souls is where fulfillment lies, not in materialistic goods. Some of the things she says and suggests borders on socialist doctrine.
   
   If you are looking for a way to better understand yourself, happiness, and the role money plays, I suggest you look into the field of positive psychology. Money has diminishing marginal returns...in other words, the guy who earns $500,000 is not 10X happier than the guy who earns $50,000. With that said, remove yourself from the rat race, be content with the things around you, don't focus so much on tomorrow, and dedicate yourself (career/volunteer) to something you believe in. That simple equation is more valid and will transform your life more than this entire book.



5. Lynne Twist has written a very inspiring book that can totally tranform one's relationship with money and self.