Books and Me

by Jamil Zaki (2019) This is a clarion call for maximisation of the very best of human qualities, and given the increasing alienation, unhappiness and general antipathy that ail us, along with the global problems we face, this call doesn't come a moment too soon. It is an essential read - important for everyone - parents, policy makers and leaders of all sorts. Rating 10/10. 

By Jason Fox (2018) This  is a gripping, convincing read for which the actual writer, Matt Allen, should take a lot of  credit, not least because until I got to the acknowledgements right at the end, I had managed to persuade myself that Jason's voice was largely authentically his.   OK, so you could see that the book was beautifully structured and that this sort of level of writing skill isn't something people normally acquire when they've spent their entire adult life busting through doors and shooting the threats that lie behind it, so I guess I should have just got on and accepted this fact - but in some regards, it still sounded like the Jason you hear on  Who Dares Wins,  so I just wanted to believe.  But really, duh, in retrospect what was I thinking! One regular feature of PTSD, to which Jason bravely admits, is that it closes down Broca's area - the part of the brain that is responsible for speech.  It is quite possibl...

by Bessel Van Der Kolk (2015) Where to start?  This book is monumental, being vast in scope, beautifully argued and hugely significant all at once.  It is also deeply humane and potentially healing.  It would have been very easy for Bessel to have turned out an angry diatribe but instead he quietly makes his case, and you only gradually begin to clock, whilst reading between the lines, that his argument represents a huge challenge to current psychiatric, schooling and social services. His argument is that the epidemic of unhappiness which is currently so often attributed to snowflakery/lack of resilience is actually, often as not, a response to deeply traumatic events which for whatever reason, we do not really want to acknowledge or confront. So instead of blaming the victim or imposing deeply cruel methods of treatment (he gently explains why CBT so often fails),  Bessel gets about delineating the effects of trauma upon the mind, brain and body, an...

by Zoe Wybrant (2015) I've been dreading writing a review of this book  for the reason that I really, really don't want to say anything harsh about it.  The author dares to expose her inner soul and in doing so,  provides an abundance of source material that will be very revealing to anyone who encounters the problem of profound and persistent dissatisfaction with appearance.  She also describes the solutions that worked for her in overcoming the problem.  You don't feel right to say anything critical in the face of such honesty and bravery and really most of the problems are just carping.  Zoe isn't really a writer which means that the profundity of some of her assertions may easily be missed which could be a huge shame.  I had to reread the book to pick up on and ram in the take-home messages.  A good editor would have been handy as the content in raw form is all there. Rating 4/10

by Peter Hollins (2019) Well this turned out to be unexpectedly useful.  It's difficult not to assume that you might not get much out of a book if it starts off with the omnipresent Phineas Gage ,  but actually in this instance, after Phineas, there was plenty of information that was completely new to me, most of which was constructive and what's more, most of which chimed very well with my go-to books on how to improve one's mental health, ie: "The Little Book of Stoicism" and "The Chimp Paradox ".  So now we have the complete package, the philosophical take (Stoicism), the psychiatric approach (The Chimp/human paradigm) and now the layman's guide to the neuroscientific angle. It is, for example, satisfying to marry up the powerful chimp versus feeble human paradigm (from the Chimp Paradox) with the neuroscience as described by Hollins when he describes huge proportions of the brain as being swamped with powerful reward-seeking dopamine, wi...

by  Prof Steve Peters (2012) This book on its own could well be a life-changing read, but when read in conjunction with "The Little Book of Stoicism" , you really do have the whole package - ie: both the psychiatric and the philosophical take on how to live well.    "The Little Book of Stoicism" will give you the broad view, ramming the key messages home through the force of rigorously convincing argument, so you really can't forget what to do, even in the heat of the moment and the ethical heft it adds makes the whole exercise seem worth doing. "The Chimp Paradox" describes exactly the same mental model but approaches the subject from a psychiatric point of view.  It is underpinned by the same Stoic idea that one should be realistic about the limits of ones control, and that one should learn to accept the things one cannot control. All the methods for dealing with the chimp brain are prefaced by this knowledge. It is not in the least sur...

by Heather T. Forbes (2010)  Phew, therapy that makes sense!  It sees the problems for what it really are and offers utterly wonderful, compassionate solutions.  It's a peculiar experience - when you finish this book, it all seems so obvious but that's probably because the explanations of the underlying causes of trauma-related behaviour are so right and real that it gives you the impression that it must have been staring you in the face all along. However, clearly this has been a difficult nut to crack and a good chunk of this book describes other nominally therapeutic strategies that are actually no help at all and indeed are often sources of even more trauma for the family. If your young person has been traumatised by something, including past therapy, read this utterly sensible, kind book. Rating: 9/10

By Edward Bullmore (2018) This is a persuasive and exciting read, so exciting in fact, that it's extremely hard not to skip to the end to see how things turn out, but it is worth resisting the urge as there are so many gems along the way.  The author, a professor of Neuroscience and Head of Psychiatry at Cambridge University, is clearly attuned to explaining things in simple language whilst at the same time somehow managing not to seem patronising, and you learn such a lot along the way that you don't mind that you are reading an "Immunology and Medical History for Dummies". In the course of discussing his central hypothesis, (that depression may be caused by inflammation), we find out not only about macrophages, lymphocytes, microglial cells, cytokines, anti-TNF antibodies and the vagal nerve, but he also untangles the theories of Descartes and covers Celsus, Paracelsus, Hippocrates and Darwin to boot, and all this encased in a gripping narrative of med...