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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 22 January 2017
An excellent book. The title could be very misleading, though. I think it was an unwise choice.
The author shows us that psychosomatic illnesses are real, that the people with them suffer greatly, that they arise from deep in the unconscious and the sufferers do not know anything about the origin of their problems; and cannot escape from them without help. Both public and medical professionals should be unreservedly sympathetic and never ever blame the sufferer.
The book is very well written and the cases described are fascinating. The author tells us that the first step in getting to grips with this huge, important, unexplored area of medicine is for both public and medics to take it seriously and fully believe in it. The second step is for psychiatry to find a way of discovering what lies at the root of each individual sufferer's distress. It seems that very little progress is being made.
I read the book in its entirety, starting at the beginning and skipping nothing. I think that if you did not do that you could seriously misunderstand the case that the author is trying to make. Each chapter tells the story of one individual, and is named after them, but it does more than just that. Embedded is part of a more general discussion of that particular aspect of the problem, or a piece of the history of medical thinking in that area.
One of the chapters is about ME/cfs. Both my wife and one of my daughters are seriously affected by this condition and I have been caring for both of them for 20 years. I think it is fair to say then that I have a great deal of knowledge of the condition. We get the journals of the main charities formed to support sufferers and I read them. I know a lot about ME. The slogan of the ME Association is, "It's Real, It's Physical". There is no doubt at all that the symptoms are real and physical, but I have been gradually feeling more and more that the underlying cause is not physical. This book comes close to confirming that. It is profoundly disappointing that although the lead people in the realm of ME treatment work in the field of psychological medicine, they have not come up with anything that will get at the root causes of sufferers' problems, but instead propose and promote physical activities that they hope will help a bit with the symptoms. It seems that they, unlike the author of this book, believe, deep down, that sufferers really could 'pull themselves together' if they tried. No wonder people get angry.
Please read this book. Properly. Right through.
The author shows us that psychosomatic illnesses are real, that the people with them suffer greatly, that they arise from deep in the unconscious and the sufferers do not know anything about the origin of their problems; and cannot escape from them without help. Both public and medical professionals should be unreservedly sympathetic and never ever blame the sufferer.
The book is very well written and the cases described are fascinating. The author tells us that the first step in getting to grips with this huge, important, unexplored area of medicine is for both public and medics to take it seriously and fully believe in it. The second step is for psychiatry to find a way of discovering what lies at the root of each individual sufferer's distress. It seems that very little progress is being made.
I read the book in its entirety, starting at the beginning and skipping nothing. I think that if you did not do that you could seriously misunderstand the case that the author is trying to make. Each chapter tells the story of one individual, and is named after them, but it does more than just that. Embedded is part of a more general discussion of that particular aspect of the problem, or a piece of the history of medical thinking in that area.
One of the chapters is about ME/cfs. Both my wife and one of my daughters are seriously affected by this condition and I have been caring for both of them for 20 years. I think it is fair to say then that I have a great deal of knowledge of the condition. We get the journals of the main charities formed to support sufferers and I read them. I know a lot about ME. The slogan of the ME Association is, "It's Real, It's Physical". There is no doubt at all that the symptoms are real and physical, but I have been gradually feeling more and more that the underlying cause is not physical. This book comes close to confirming that. It is profoundly disappointing that although the lead people in the realm of ME treatment work in the field of psychological medicine, they have not come up with anything that will get at the root causes of sufferers' problems, but instead propose and promote physical activities that they hope will help a bit with the symptoms. It seems that they, unlike the author of this book, believe, deep down, that sufferers really could 'pull themselves together' if they tried. No wonder people get angry.
Please read this book. Properly. Right through.
