FitnessProsBooks.com - The Myth of Sanity: Divided Consciousness and the Promise of Awareness
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List Price: $16.00
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Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 362
EAN: 9780142000557
ISBN: 0142000558
Label: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 272
Publication Date: 2002-02-22
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Studio: Penguin (Non-Classics)
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Clear plain language primer on "dissociative personality disorder" (DID).
Comment: Stout (PhD., worked at Massachusetts' renowned McLean psychiatric hospital, associated to Harvard Medical School) wrote a deep book for the non specialist. It is true what Amazon reviewer says "it tends more to literary descriptions than proving facts scientifically". Like on page 118 on, with its leisurely prose about the John Gielgud's suite at Haiti, the same style for "atmosphere" at the famous mental hospital (p. 135-6), etc.
If you like classic accounts of psychiatry like, say, Olivier Sacks, you'll read this book in a breeze, maybe on a Sunday afternoon, and probably will look for more.
Do you wanted this book summed up in one sentence? Here's one by Daniel Jolley "darkgenius": "One cannot protect oneself (which is basically what dissociation consists of) and live life to the fullest at the same time". As the 3 "spotlight reviewers" attest, this book is useful for "everyday life", not only to understand "psychos as seen on TV" (which she at many occasions deals with, condescendingly, as portraying a misleading image of this disorder, making it more "wacky", consequently not letting us know about the intermediate stages).
She takes a "subjectivist" epistemological view, made explicit at page 122: "we all live inside our own heads". Some may like it, I don't, but she doesn't dwell on this. Her theme on how fear hijacks our brains is more fully explained at her latest book: "The paranoia switch, how terror rewires our brains".
Customer Rating:
Summary: Interesting; but deceptive front cover.
Comment: From the title and cover of the book it is supposed to be about Multiple Personality Disorder, but really she takes it mostly in another direction - that of analyzing the various dissociative states common in people, such as driving to your destination and not even being aware of the drive cause you were deep in thought. As for the cases of Multiple Personality she actually quoted, one she said did not meet the qualifications for Multiple Personality Disorder, and all the ones she quoted the information about them was pretty generalized. In general I found this book to be a disappointment. I have read (much) better books on this subject than this book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Myth of Sanity
Comment: I really liked Martha's other book, The Sociopath next door, but this one was a snoozer. I got as far as her hypnotizing one of her patients it took several pages and was mind numbingly boring she wrote every single word she said to hypnotize her patient like it was a "how to" book. I tried reading a few more pages after that but it didn't improve so I quit. It might have gotten better at some point but I just couldn't get there.
Customer Rating:
Summary: How to integrate your dissociated parts!
Comment: Martha Stout goes into case studies of patients who had a lot of dissociation, but this book also applies to everyone. We all dissociate, it can be simple as going to the movies and getting engrossed in the movie without realizing that 2 hours have flew by. It can also be subtle, like when someone has selective hearing. Stout offers advice and ideas on how to integrate the dissociated parts of ourselves. This is one book of a few that will help you grow!
Customer Rating:
Summary: A valuable guide for ridding youselves of negative behaviour
Comment: Martha stout has produced an essential piece of psychology that everyone should read. For those unfortunate enough to have experienced trauma in early childhood and have kept those events locked away in their subconscious many case studies are presented to assist in how to go about repairing the damage caused. Even if you have survived childhood relatively unscathed, it really highlights just how much of our time is spent in a dissasociative state and what we can do to wake up and take a far more proactive part in our life decisions.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Why does a gifted psychiatrist suddenly begin to torment his own beloved wife? How can a ninety-pound woman carry a massive air conditioner to the second floor of her home, install it in a window unassisted, and then not remember how it got there? Why would a brilliant feminist law student ask her fiancé to treat her like a helpless little girl? How can an ordinary, violence-fearing businessman once have been a gun-packing vigilante prowling the crime districts for a fight?
A startling new study in human consciousness, The Myth of Sanity is a landmark book about forgotten trauma, dissociated mental states, and multiple personality in everyday life. In its groundbreaking analysis of childhood trauma and dissociation and their far-reaching implications in adult life, it reveals that moderate dissociation is a normal mental reaction to pain and that even the most extreme dissociative reaction-multiple personality-is more common than we think. Through astonishing stories of people whose lives have been shattered by trauma and then remade, The Myth of Sanity shows us how to recognize these altered mental states in friends and family, even in ourselves.
"We only think we're sane, says this Harvard psychologist. . . . The befuddled, normally sane masses can learn a lot from the victims of grave psychological abuse." (The Dallas Morning News)
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