Shadow Syndromes

Zusatztext Identify the hidden timebombs in your personality...featuring proven treatments and strategies that can change your life. Informationen zum Autor John J. Ratey, M.D., and Catherine Johnson, Ph.D. Klappentext Are you living under a shadow? Do you or someone you love suffer from: Chronic sadness Obsessiveness Outbursts of anger The inability to finish tasks Acute anxiety Disabling discomfort in social situations These are the "shadow syndromes" of major mental disorders that limit the lives, productivity, and happiness of millions of people. Drawing on cutting-edge research, Drs. Ratey and Johnson challenge the most basic beliefs of our mental health professionals by uncovering the biological factors that often determine our personalities. They use real-life case studies to illustrate how shadow syndromes affect our everyday lives and how they can be treated--often dramatically--with diet, exercise, psychotherapy, and medication. Shadow Syndromes is the revolutionary theory that sheds light on our life-limiting behaviors and offers the essential tools for changing them. This book will liberate you and those you love.Neuropsychiatry is now discovering that a great deal of what we thought was due to (poor) upbringing in fact is heavily influenced by the genetics, structure, and neurochemistry of the brain. Every one of the troublesome personalities made famous by our popular press likely has its roots in an unsuspected brain difference: the Peter Pan syndrome, the Cinderella complex, the women who love too much, the men who can't love, the codependent--the list goes on. All of these people are doubtless going to turn out to have brain differences that contribute to their Peter Pan-ness or their Cinderella-ness or their codependentness. Of course, differences in the brain cut both ways: as studies of artists with manic-depressive illness have shown, a brain difference that handicaps us in one realm may also endow us with greater capacities in another. Our purpose in writing this book is not to pathologize every nook and cranny of everyday life, but to offer help for those areas in which our brain differences do hurt more than help. Until now there has been no biologically based help for the difficult personalities among us because no one has suspected that their problems might have biological facets. That is the purpose of this book: to look again at the biology of everyday life one hundred years later--this time from the vantage point of twentieth-century neuropsychiatry. Our question in this book is: when we--or someone we love--are behaving at our worst, or simply behaving irrationally, what role does biology play? And: how do genuine problems in life, problems like a difficult childhood or a parent who drinks, interact with our biology to create the character traits and flaws that are not just written into our characters but into our neurons as well? In order to take a second look at normal "craziness," we can learn from the kinds of craziness that are not so normal. When we speak of schizophrenia or severe manic-depression, there is no question in anyone's mind that the person is ill. And it is easy enough for us to believe that these illnesses are biological in origin (though it was not so long ago that these illnesses, too, were blamed upon bad parents). The confusion begins when one sees patients who do not fit the classic categories, but who nevertheless have very real difficulties in life. Are these difficulties due entirely to upbringing and environment, or do they, too, have some basis in the brain's biology? Modern psychiatry has been struggling to make sense of these people for fifty years. Doctors diagnose their patients according to the syndromes described in DSM-IV, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fourth Edition. A syndrome is a set of behaviors that consiste...

Autorentext

John J. Ratey, M.D., and Catherine Johnson, Ph.D.

Klappentext

Are you living under a shadow?

Do you or someone you love suffer from:

Chronic sadness
Obsessiveness
Outbursts of anger
The inability to finish tasks
Acute anxiety
Disabling discomfort in social situations

These are the "shadow syndromes" of major mental disorders that limit the lives, productivity, and happiness of millions of people.

Drawing on cutting-edge research, Drs. Ratey and Johnson challenge the most basic beliefs of our mental health professionals by uncovering the biological factors that often determine our personalities. They use real-life case studies to illustrate how shadow syndromes affect our everyday lives and how they can be treated--often dramatically--with diet, exercise, psychotherapy, and medication.

Shadow Syndromes is the revolutionary theory that sheds light on our life-limiting behaviors and offers the essential tools for changing them. This book will liberate you and those you love.

Leseprobe
Neuropsychiatry is now discovering that a great deal of what we thought was due to (poor) upbringing in fact is heavily influenced by the genetics, structure, and neurochemistry of the brain.  Every one of the troublesome personalities made famous by our popular press likely has its roots in an unsuspected brain difference: the Peter Pan syndrome, the Cinderella complex, the women who love too much, the men who can't love, the codependent--the list goes on.  All of these people are doubtless going to turn out to have brain differences that contribute to their Peter Pan-ness or their Cinderella-ness or their codependentness.  Of course, differences in the brain cut both ways: as studies of artists with manic-depressive illness have shown, a brain difference that handicaps us in one realm may also endow us with greater capacities in another.  Our purpose in writing this book is not to pathologize every nook and cranny of everyday life, but to offer help for those areas in which our brain differences do hurt more than help.  Until now there has been no biologically based help for the difficult personalities among us because no one has suspected that their problems might have biological facets.

That is the purpose of this book: to look again at the biology of everyday life one hundred years later--this time from the vantage point of twentieth-century neuropsychiatry.  Our question in this book is: when we--or someone we love--are behaving at our worst, or simply behaving irrationally, what role does biology play? And: how do genuine problems in life, problems like a difficult childhood or a parent who drinks, interact with our biology to create the character traits and flaws that are not just written into our characters but into our neurons as well?

In order to take a second look at normal "craziness," we can learn from the kinds of craziness that are not so normal.  When we speak of schizophrenia or severe manic-depression, there is no question in anyone's mind that the person is ill.  And it is easy enough for us to believe that these illnesses are biological in origin (though it was not so long ago that these illnesses, too, were blamed upon bad parents).

The confusion begins when one sees patients who do not fit the classic categories, but who nevertheless have very real difficulties in life.  Are these difficulties due entirely to upbringing and environment, or do they, too, have some basis in the brain's biology? Modern psychiatry has been struggling to make sense of these people for fifty years.  Doctors diagnose their patients according to the syndromes described in DSM-IV, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fourth Edition.  A syndrome is a set of behaviors that consistently appear together: a set of behaviors the patient, the doctor, or the patient's friends and family can observe and describe.  A syndrome is not, at this point, a physical mar…