Part1 - Part2

My Book List - part 3 of 3

From: metaphor@usaor.net (Stewart/sna)
Newsgroups: alt.support.depression,alt.answers,news.answers
Subject: My Book List (alt.support.depression) - part 3 of 3
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Date: 21 Jun 1999 12:22:54 GMT
Organization: here @ home
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References: <alt-support-depression/My-Book-List/part1_929967412@rtfm.mit.edu>
Summary: This list collects information on books that I consider
	to have been of some value to me as I recover from my own
	personal life-crisis/depression.
X-Last-Updated: 1999/03/30

Archive-name: alt-support-depression/My-Book-List/part3
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Last-modified: 1999/3/29
Maintainer: Stewart/sna <metaphor@usaor.net>

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   BOOKS I HAVE SEEN UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL, BUT HAVE NOT READ All THE WAY
THROUGH

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Author: Edited by Katherine Hancock Ragsdale
Title: Boundary wars: Intimacy and distance in healing relationships.
Publisher:  The Pilgrim Press, 1996
ISBN: 0-8298-1118-4
Comments: Each chapter in this book was by a different author.  Some of
them were reasonably interesting to me, but most of them had a "feminist"
perspective that was of little interest to me, or they had a
religious/spiritual perspective that was too thick for my tastes.  Still,
it was interesting to skim through it.

Author: Jane Wanklin
Title: Let me make it good.  A chronicle of my life with borderline
personality disorder.
Publisher: Mosaic Press, 1997
ISBN: 0-0-88962-627-8
Comments: This was an interesting book to me.  I couldn't read the whole
thing tho.  As the title suggests, I found it to be much more of a
"chronicle" than a "narrative".  Somehow, it sort of reminds me of
Elizabeth Wurtzel's book "Prozac Nation".  But I found this book much more
"troubling" in some way..  Maybe in the same way that I found "Prozac
Nation" to be more "raw and real" compared with William Styron's "Darkness
Visible", so I found this book to be more "raw and real" than "Prozac
Nation".  The problem is, that I think the raw realism comes at the expense
of something.  It's an interesting "high wire act" trade off.  One thing I
really liked about the book was the last chapter.  The author talked about
her interaction with different usenet newsgroups, and she even mentioned
ASD.  Her posts in various newsgroups can be found using DejaNews, and
compared to her descriptions of them in the book.  I think it's pretty damn
incredible to have been through all that she describes and to be able to
write about it and get it published.  I wish her the best of luck.

Author: D. W. Winnicott
Title: Playing and reality
Publisher: Tavistock publications, 1982
ISBN: 0-422-73740-2
Comments: This guy gets quoted a lot, and someone on ASD suggested that
this was an "approachable" book.  If that is true, then I am glad I started
with this book and not one of his other books!!!  It was way out of my
general interest.  Too much mention of feces and other very Freudian
concepts.  But there were parts that I really liked.  "Psychotherapy takes
place in the overlap of two areas of playing, that of the patient and that
of the therapist.  Psychotherapy has to do with two people playing
together.  The corollary of this is that where playing is not possible,
then the work done by the therapist is directed towards bringing the
patient from a state of not being able to play into a state of being able
to play."  I suspect that it is actually work on BOTH sides of the equation.

Author: Lynn Sharon Schwartz
Title: Acquainted with the night.  And other stories.
Publisher: Harper and Row, 1984
ISBN: 0-06-015307-5
Comments: The author is apparently a psychologist, but she writes "novels".
Nothing about depression per se.  But still, her sense of inner life comes
through her plots.  This is a book of her short stories.  I didn't read
them all, but the ones I read I liked a lot.

Author: Richard Bandler and John Gardner
Title: Frogs into princes.  Neuro Linguistic Programing.
Publisher: Real People Press, 1979
ISBN: 0-911226-19-2
Comments: This is a sort of loosely based transcription of one of their
"seminars".  A bit too "motivationally hucksterish" for me.  While I
thought a lot of what they were talking about was really very interesting,
I couldn't help feeling like I was waiting for the Ginzu knives.  One thing
I did like was their description that what they do is "model".  They do not
ever mean to suggest that their models get one closer to "reality", but
rather that one model may work better at approximating the limited
situation it is designed to model.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Also the
idea that a therapist should enter into the world of their patient, and
once there try to "reframe" the patients model.  Rather than the other way
around, of asking the patient to enter into the world of the therapist so
that their world view can then be remodeled.

Author: Laura Epstein Rosen, Ph.D. and Xavier Francisco Amador, Ph.D.
Title: When someone you love is depressed; How to help your loved one
without losing yourself.
Publisher: The Free Press, 1996
ISBN: 0-684-82407-8
Comments: I think this book probably has an important place and role to
play for many people who have a "significant" relationship (be it a parent,
child, colleague, spouse, friend, etcetera) with someone they think either
is, or might be, depressed.  Of course, my concern about the book is that
it might be most useful for "codependents" who prefer to deal with their
own emotions and depression by "overfunctioning", and who are in search of
an "identified patient" to "help".  Part of the message to the prospective
"loved one of the depressed" is that having a significant relationship with
someone who is depressed is likely to affect your life, and that you are
likely to be affecting the life, and thus depression, of your SO.  (No shit
Sherlock, that is kind of the definition of a "significant" relationship
isn't it?  I wonder if it is possible semantically to have a "significant
relationship where neither party is affected by the other, or to have a
TOTALLY one-sided "significant" relationship.).  Another part of the
message is that the other person's depression is not your "fault", and not
something that you can "fix".  While this is all well and good, the basic
premise of the book is also that you can (and by implication should), try
to determine if the other person is depressed, and then what you can (and
by implication should), do to help them.  It is kind of hard for me
personally to reconcile those conflicting messages.

Author: William Glasser, M.D.
Title: Choice theory;  A new psychology of personal freedom.
Publisher: HarperCollins, 1998
ISBN: 0-06-019109-0
Comments: Wow, this author is even more pompous and self possessed than the
author of "The Highly Sensitive Person".  Of course, he has more reason to
be.  He has an MD and he heads his own institute, etcetera.  Anyway, I just
stumbled upon this book in the library.  I snapped it up because for some
time now I have been really interested in the question of what we can and
cannot control.  Unfortunately, I think this is a really poorly written
book.  I found it totally disorganized.  It was not only that I think the
author's basic philosophy places the cart before the horse, but also that
in presenting his philosophy he totally mixes everything up.  Putting some
of the horse in front of the cart, and some of the horse behind the cart.
The basic philosophy seems to be that we are always able to choose how we
think, feel and act, either directly or indirectly.  And as soon as we
understand this we will be able to put it into action and feel more free
and in control of our lives, and we will be more happy and the whole world
will be more happy.  The author contrasts "external control theory" (where
we try to control others and try to force or coerce others to change), with
"choice theory" (where we take control of ourselves by making ourselves the
masters of the only things we can actually control.  ie. our own thoughts,
feelings, and actions).  Like the next book in the list, most of the time
here is spent trying to convince us that these constructs are "real" and
that they are important ways to look at ourselves and the world.  In the
end, I think the whole thing works in a circularly illogical way.  For
instance, this guy has dedicated his life to teaching others his own
personal view of "reality".  (He apparently is the author of a book called
"reality therapy" and his institute was apparently first named "The
Institute for Reality Therapy" until he decided that he could help people
find him and his work more easily if he renamed his institute "The William
Glasser Institute".  Bawhahahahaha  Oh right - yeesh.)  Anyway, he
apparently believes that one has control over oneself, and that one only
has control over oneself, and he doesn't believe in the coercion involved
in "external control" approaches.  Yet he spends all of his life trying to
get others to accept his way of seeing things.  Taken all together, it does
not sound to me like a man who believes he should control/coerce/influence
only himself and that "trying to get others to change" is not a good way to
live your life or focus your energy.  This does not sound to me like a guy
who will feel all warm and fuzzy knowing that everyone else is practicing
"choice theory", and thus everyone knows they have nothing to gain by
trying to use "external control theory" to help him see that he is full of
shit.  But then, I suppose if he doesn't like how that makes him feel, he
can use "choice theory" to feel better about himself and to ignore everyone
else without trying to change them!!!      :-)

Author: Elaine N. Aron, Ph.D.
Title: The highly sensitive person:  How to thrive when the world
overwhelms you.
Publisher: Broadway Books, 1997
ISBN: 0-553-06218-2
Comments: I really wanted to like this book.  It has been the topic of
several threads on ASD and a number of people liked it.  Here the term
"sensitive" is not meant to be limited to people who are more sensitive,
attuned or empathetic with other people.  But rather that some people are
more (or less) "sensitive" to their surrounding, or more easily "aroused"
in a general physiological (not sexual) sense by their environment.  I
think this seems obvious.  We all live on a continuous scale, no matter
what the measure.  For example, the autistic author Donna Williams (Nobody,
nowhere;  Somebody, somewhere;  and Like color to the blind) might well
describe herself as a "highly sensitive person".  I like the idea of
thinking about this, but I just don't think the emphasis of this book was
where I wanted it.  It seemed to spend way too much time trying to convince
me that there is such a thing as a "highly sensitive person",  that I am
one of them, and how I should value my sensitive nature more.  I would have
liked to have seen it approached more like how Peter Kramer (Listening to
Prozac) approaches his subjects.  Take some personal examples, roll them
around a little, examine them, toss them up and down, etcetera.  I simply
found this book WAY too self aggrandizing.  The author talks over and over
again about how you feel, and how she can help you to deal more effectively
with your sensitive nature, and how her research shows this and that, and
on and on.  Of course, she has an obligatory little section saying how she
is "one of the sensitive people too" and how she is not "talking down to
you", etcetera.  But for me, there is a literary concept called "show don't
tell".  That is, don't *tell* me "I am one of you", but rather *show* me
how you are, and let me be the judge.  There simply was too much "telling"
here for me.  And what it told me was that this author has a very deep
need.  I am not that interested in her needs unless she can show them to
me.  But then, maybe I am just "sensitive" to this issue.

Author: Frederic F. Flach, M.D.
Title: The secret strength of depression
Publisher: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1974
ISBN: 0-397-01031-1
Comments: This is pretty good in that I like it "conceptually".  But it is
kind of dated to the early 70's, and it was just too hard for me to slog
though it.  It is just basically not my "style".  But aside from some
pretty outdated "medical model" information, some of the rest of it seemed
pretty ahead of it's time and conceptually useful to me.

Author: Susan McMahon, Ph.D.
Title: The portable therapist
Publisher: Dell Publishing, 1994
ISBN: 0-44-50603-4
Comments: This is a nice little paperback written in FAQ style.  It tries
to answer some general and specific questions about therapy.  Like the next
book, this one can get a little too "this is how it is" for my tastes, and
that coupled with the FAQ style structure meant I skipped around a lot.
Thus I got some really good things out of it without actually reading the
whole thing.  For instance, I really liked the "Why don't self-help books
work for me?" section.  "The second reason most self-help books fail is
that they begin with the premise of change.  ...  What is missing here is
the understanding of the concept of acceptance.  The paradox is that in
order to change you must first accept yourself.  ...  Acceptance provides
the foundation for change.  The very nature of most self-help books is to
imply before you begin that you must change in order to accept yourself."

Author: Janet G. Woititz
Title: Struggle for intimacy
Publisher: Health Communications, Inc., 1985
ISBN: 0-932194-25-7
Comments: This book is written mainly to "adult children of alcoholics",
which is not really surprising since the author also wrote a best selling
book with that exact title.  But this book also has a lot to say to
everyone in general I think.  An opening statement sums it up; "To be
intimate, to be close, to be vulnerable, contradicts all the survival
skills learned by children of alcoholics when they were very young."
Except I suppose when such children grow up learning to play the
"co-dependent" role of helping their parent which may sound a lot like
intimacy in some circles.  Anyway, this is a really thin book and a good
one.  It just has a kind of FAQ style, or "here's an ACOA myth, and here is
why it is wrong" style that made it hard for me to read it linearly cover
to cover.  Hence it is in this section of the book list, when it otherwise
would be in the "read all the way through" section.

Author: Jean-Paul Sartre
Title: Being and nothingness;  A phenomenological essay on ontology.
Publisher: Pocket Books, Simon and Schuster, 1966
ISBN: 0-671-49606-9
Comments: Someone on alt.support.depression suggested that I read something
more substantial than the usual "stories of personal drivel" that I tend to
be reading these days.  They suggested this "being and nothingness", and
since I have always been interested in taking a look at it, I did.  Yikes.
I'd need a lot more energy and focus than I have, to even crack this
sucker, let alone really digest it.

Author: Temple Grandin
Title: Thinking in pictures, and other reports from my life with autism.
Publisher: Doubleday, 1995
ISBN: 0-385-47792-9
Comments: I think this is a really good book for someone who wants to know
more about autism.  It is not as "personal" a story from someone who is
autistic as the 3 books by Donna Williams (nobody, nowhere, somebody,
somewhere, and like color to the blind).  But Temple's book is more
"informative" in a way.  For instance, this book references many other
related books, including Donna's, whereas Donna references no other books.
I thought Donna's books were more interesting to read, but if I had a
clinical or personal interest in autism as such, then I would not want to
miss this book as well.

Author: Anne Puryear
Title: Stephen Lives!  My son Stephen, his life, his suicide, and afterlife.
Publisher: Pocket Books, 1992, 1996
ISBN: 0-671-53663-X
Comments: Yikes.  I feel sorry for the things this family had to endure,
but I found this book very troubling to me personally.  To *me* this was
the story of a horribly enmeshed family (particularly this mother and son)
with very problematic boundaries of self.  I mean look at the extreme to
which it goes.  Even after his death, the mother still believes that she
knows her son so well that he has dictated parts of the book to her "from
the other side" so that he and she might help others.  Talk about a lack of
boundaries and problems of self definition.  Mom cannot distinguish what is
her talking to herself and what is "outside" of her.  Hmmm, I wonder if
that isn't really part of the essence of psychosis.  Hearing voices is a
problem of "self-other" differentiation.  It's all a continuum.  Talking
with God, even talking with yourself, could be viewed as somewhere on that
continuum.

Author: Gene Stone
Title: Little girl fly away
Publisher: Simon and Schuster, 1994
ISBN: 0-671-78085-9
Comments: This seems like a really well written book.  It is about a woman
in Kansas who was abused/assaulted as a child, and who then later in life
undergoes a second "dissociation".  The book is about uncovering it all
through therapy.  Probably very difficult to read for anyone who has been
close to this place.  Personally I am just getting tired of the "childhood
abuse -> adult problems" theme.  Not that this is a stupid theme or
anything.  But only that I have gotten it a lot, and it is not really *my*
personal theme.

Author: James F. Masterson, M.D.
Title: The search for the real self.  Unmasking the personality disorders
of out age.
Publisher: The Free Press, Macmillan Inc., 1988
ISBN: 0-02-920291-4
Comments: This is a relatively "academically" oriented book, and this guy
was apparently into "borderline personality disorders" from way back.  Such
a claim to fame.  I personally could only stomach the "this is so"
presentation style for just so long before I gave up on it.  Made it
through about 1 or 2 chapters.  When he kept telling me what babies think
and feel at 3 months, and then at 6 months, etcetera, it made me wonder
just how he knows so much about what babies think and feel.  Perhaps he is
really the one who is stuck at that developmental stage.

Author: Letters from the inside
Title: John Marsden
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1994
ISBN: 0-395-68985-6
Comments: Two teenage girls become pen pals.  I picked this up from a table
of "books for teenagers" at the local library.  The title caught my eye,
and a quick look revealed that it was written totally in a "letters back
and forth" format.  Sort of like ASD, so I was interested to see what it
was like.  It didn't really sustain my interest, tho it might be much more
interesting to a teenage girl.  However, the ending, where one of the two
writers suddenly disappears, was VERY reminiscent of what sometimes happens
on ASD when people go MIA (Missing In Action).

Author: Wanting everything - the art of happiness
Title: Dorothy Rowe
Publisher: Harper Collins, 1991
ISBN: 0-00-637430-1
Comments: I cannot put my finger on it, but there is something that I
really do not like about this author's writing.  She seems to be talking a
lot, but as near as I can tell, she is talking to herself, or to someone
else, but not to me.  The premise of the book can (I think) be boiled down
to the idea that if we understand ourselves better, then we will be
happier.  While I am certainly all for understanding myself better, I do
not think it will make me happier.  I think that is it basically.  I think
this book "tastes" to me like cognitive therapy.  If you just understand
how we are like abc, and how x leads to y, then you will be happier.  If
that works for you, more power to ya.  It's a crock of shit to me tho.

Author: Questions and answers about depression and it's treatment
Title: Ivan K. Goldberg, MD
Publisher: The Charles Press, 1993
ISBN: 0-914783-68-8
Comments: Ivan Goldberg has been an early, important, and pervasive
presence on the Internet (if not also a tad overbearing and pompous as
well).  The book is arranged like a usenet newsgroup FAQ (Frequently Asked
Questions), but it is somehow a little different than the usual usenet FAQ.
For instance, many of the questions seem overly complicated, and at times
they are even longer than the answers.  It seems to me that the more
complex the question, the less likely that it is really "frequently asked".
The author's personal bias often shows through in other subtle ways, and
while "author bias" is to be expected, the author unfortunately takes pains
to present the questions and answers as though both are highly "objective".
For instance, while the author extols cognitive and interpersonal
therapies, and provides addresses of institutes specializing in these
therapies, he provides no such address for any institute of psychoanalysis.
In addition, he says "whereas psychoanalytic psychotherapy concentrates on
the past, interpersonal and cognitive therapies focus on helping the
patient find ways to improve the present and future".  While it may be true
that psychoanalytic psychotherapy concentrates on the past, it's goal is
presumably the same as all other therapies.  That is, to help the patient
find ways to improve the present and future.  I personally think the first
place to start is with the ASD Depression FAQ (to which Dr. Goldberg was an
important contributor).  If you like that FAQ, and you want more questions
and answers, then I think this book may be a great resource.

Author: Daniel N. Stern
Title: The interpersonal world of the infant; A view from psychoanalysis
and developmental psychology
Publisher: Basic Books Inc., 1985
ISBN: 0-465-03403-9
Comments: I think this is probably a pretty good book.  But to the extent
that it is academically oriented, it is also outdated.  I just didn't
really have the patience for it.  There were just too many other books that
I thought might be more interesting to read.

Author: Dorothy Rowe
Title: The construction of life and death
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, 1982
ISBN: 0-471-10064-1
Comments: The author writes that the ideas depressed people "espoused had
led them inevitably to the prison of depression".  While I think our
thoughts have profound affects on our moods and emotions, I personally do
not believe that they "initiate" our moods and emotions (rather, I think it
is the other way around).  Although I found this book to be somewhat
unfocused and rambling, I think it's main premise is that we can all just
simply think our way out of depression.  Bawhahahahahaha  Go ahead.  Make
me laugh.

Title: I and thou
Author: Martin Buber (translation by Walter Kaufmann)
Publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970
ISBN: 684-71725-5
Comments: I think this is really prototypical Hasidic Jewish writing.  It
is contorted, painful, and mysterious to read.  It reads very much like the
Chinese philosopher Lao Tsu.  The prologue by Walter Kaufmann makes it all
perhaps a little more accessible.  None-the-less, the idea of dyad word
pairs like "I-it", "I-them", "I-you" etcetera are fundamentally interesting
to me.  It just struck me that my "what is about me, and what is about you"
approach to so much these days, is kind of an I-thou/me-you kind of
question.

Title: Judith's pavilion, the haunting memories of a neurosurgeon
Author: Marc Flitter, M.D.
Publisher: Steerforth Press, 1997
ISBN: 1-883642-31-0
Comments: The subtitle says essentially what the book is all about.  I
found the prose a little thick, a little meandering, and a little too
referenced to the technical and business sides of a neurosurgeon's work.
It also dealt more with the death of patients at the hand of a surgeon than
I might have expected it would.  But then, that is apparently what haunts
this particular neurosurgeon, and he is quiet able to haunt you with it as
well should you be at all inclined.  It is similar to, but not really an
"Oliver Sacks" type of book.  Less about the oddities that neurological
patients exhibit and what they might mean to mankind, and more about this
particular surgeon and how he feels.  A good book, I just didn't have the
patience to finish it.

Title: Home is where we start from, essays from a psychoanalyst
Author: D. W. Winnicott (edited by Clare Winnicott et al.)
Publisher: W. W. Norton and Company, 1986
ISBN: 0-393-01866-0
Comments: This book is a compilation of 10-20 short essays, or summaries of
talks, given by the widely quoted psychotherapist D. W. Winnicott.  I was
really looking for more of a summary of his work and thoughts, and this
book is really more of a hodgepodge that might be more interesting to
someone who is more familiar with the essence of the author.  There were
two ideas expressed in the first essay that I really liked tho.  One was
that psychoanalysis is more like science than religion.  In that the
scientist/psychoanalyst is more interested in questions and is more able to
hold uncertainty, while the firm religious believer holds more strongly to
answers and certainty first.  Of course the scientist/psychoanalyst must
also have a sort of faith, and of course the true religious believer must
be driven to his firm beliefs out of his own (only apparently
contradictory) lack of faith.  The other idea I liked was that a "mental
illness" can be a way of carrying on when more ordinary defenses fail to
deal adequately with the natural and inherent tensions of being alive.

Title: The psychology of separation and loss....
Author: Jonathan and Sally Bloom-Feshbach
Publisher: Jossey-Bass, 1987
ISBN: 1-55542-040-0
Comments: This is another academic tome.  To me, it reads like a review of
autorepair manuals.  I tried, but I couldn't even find a path into it.  I
suppose it could be a good book if you are interested in models of human
behavior pretty much for their own sake.

Author: Vamik D. Volkan, M.D. and Gabriele Ast, M.D.
Title: Siblings in the unconscious and psychopathology
Publisher: International Universities Press, Inc, 1997
ISBN: 0-8236-6067-2
Comments: This book was a little too "academic" for me.  But I really have
no idea if it is any good, or even what it is really about, or what it is
really like.  I didn't really read any of it at all.  I took it out from
the library, but was too tired from reading other books to even attempt to
get into this one before it was due back.

Authors: Jack Hoffman and Daniel Simon
Title: Run, Run, Run: The Lives of Abbie Hoffman
Publisher: Putnam, 1994
ISBN: 0-87477-760-7
Comments: Abbie Hoffman's life and struggle with manic depression, written
from his brother Jack's viewpoint.  Excellent reading about key events of
the 1960s and 1970s, and also about manic depression.  I stole (of course)
Abbie Hoffman's "Steal this book" when I was in high school.  I loved it.
I only read the very last chapter of this biography.  Really very
interesting reading of his life and death in both the historical
perspective, and also with the perspective of him as really very troubled
in later years by manic depression.

Author: Michael D. Yapko, Ph.D.
Title: Breaking the patterns of depression
Publisher: Doubleday, 1997
ISBN: 0-385-48044-X
Comments: I really tried to read this one, but I just could not get very
far into it.  I think that for the "self-help, proscriptive,
cognitive/behavioral" genre, this is probably a very good book.  It
integrated "case studies" with "learning by doing" exercises.  But I just
happened (go figure) to find several other books at the same time that were
written in more my style.  Maybe I will get back to this one some other
time.

Author: John Bradshaw
Title: Bradshaw on:  The Family.  A revolutionary way of self-discovery.
Publisher: Health Communications, 1988
ISBN: 0-932194-54-0
Comments: Apparently the author had a "popular PBS Series" on TV with the
same name as this book.  It is probably a reasonable introduction to the
field of Family Systems Theory.  However, I could not read it due to the
presentation style.  I felt talked down to, and handed a line.  Save the
"revolution" rhetoric.  It sounds to me as more of the authors need to feel
important, than it does my need to learn something that may or may not be
new to me.  I personally much preferred "The Dance of Intimacy" by Harriet
Lerner.

Author: John Bradshaw
Title: Family Secrets.  The path to self-acceptance and reunion.
Publisher: Bantam Books, 1995
ISBN: 0-553-37498-2
Comments: Again, like his other book "Bradshaw on: The Family", this book
was just too much talking *at* me.  It was interesting to see him share how
he is learning new things on his path, how he notes that his thoughts have
changed over time from his previous books.  But still, he retains this
"your father's dark secrets", and the *I* will help you find
self-acceptance kind of attitude.  It is probably a good book in terms of
ideas that he presents.  I just can't stomach the presentation style.

Author: Daniel J. Levinson
Title: The seasons of a man's life
Publisher: Ballantine Books, 1986
ISBN: 0-345-33901-0
Comments: Probably a very good book, but I could barely open it.  I can't
stand the thought of my life reduced to a set of expected feelings given my
age.  Nor the idea that if I don't follow the format for life defined by
this book, then I have somehow not lived my life fully or correctly.  Bah
humbug.

Author: Edited by Sheldon Sacks
Title: On Metaphor
Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1978 and 1981
ISBN: 0-226-73334-3
Comments: Some interesting lecture summaries from a meeting about metaphor.
Pretty philosophical in general, but close to what I was looking for in a
way.

Author: M. Scott Peck, M.D.
Title: The road less traveled.  A new psychology of love, traditional
values and spiritual growth.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster, 1990
ISBN: 0-671-25067-1
Comments: This book has a lot of good stuff in it, but it is a little
"dense" for me.  In addition, I found the tone to be one of being "talked
at".  Handed down "the way it is" so-to-speak.  Personally, as far as I am
concerned, he can walk his less traveled road himself.  I would probably
prefer his road to that of the general mass of humanity, but in the end, I
much prefer my own thank you very much.

Author: Charles L. Whitfield M.D.
Title: Boundaries and Relationships
Publisher: 1993
Comments: I thought this book would have a lot of promise for me, but it
did not speak to my "inner child" very well.  This book might be pretty
good for someone dealing with childhood trauma.  Personally, I liked The
Dance of Anger, Intimacy, and Deception by Harriet Lerner much better.

Author: Arno Gruen
Title: The Betrayal of the Self, The Fear of Autonomy in Men and Women
Publisher: Grove Press, 1986
Comments: This could have been a really good book, but it was a little to
sociological/political and not personal enough for me, and I could not
stomach the "this is so" tone.

Author: Barry R. Berkley, M.D.
Title: Halfway Through the Tunnel
Publisher: Philosophical Library, 1972
Comments: A woman in individual and group psychotherapy talks *to* her
therapist.  We hear *ONLY* her voice, which really wore on me after a
while.  I liked the introduction and the concept of the book tho.  Do any
of us ever make it more than "halfway through the tunnel"?

Author: Archibald D. Hart
Title: Feeling Free
Publisher: Fleming Revell Co., 1979
Comments: Not quite what I was looking for.

Author: Dr. Manfred Clynes
Title: Sentics, The Touch of Emotions
Publisher: Doubleday, 1977
Comments: How to measure "emotions" using electrodes.  Sorry, but I just
don't buy it.  I am sure you can measure many physical correlates to
emotions, but not emotions.

Author: Willard Gaylin, M.D.
Title: Feelings, Our Vital Signs
Publisher: Harper and Row, 1979
Comments: Not quite what I was looking for.

Author: Peter Breggin
Title: Talking Back to Prozac
Publisher: St. Martins Press, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-11486-9
Comments:  I could feel Breggin's ax grinding on my head.  Because of that,
I could not read it.

Author: David Burns, M.D.
Title: The Feeling Good Handbook
Publisher: Plume, 1989
ISBN: 0-452-26174-0
Comments: While I appreciate the utility of this approach for many, and the
possible validity of it in theory, I just cannot stomach cognitive therapy.
This sort of "self-help" pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps approach makes
me want to puke.

Author: Rollo May
Title: The Meaning of Anxiety
Publisher: 1950, Revised edition by WW Norton and Co., 1977
Comments: This is a really thick and dense "academic type" treatment of the
subject.  History, physiology, psychology, how different "thinkers" have
viewed the subject, synthesis of ideas, etcetera.  I would be surprised if
even non-depressed people could actually read this whole book.  Still, it
did have parts that I found interesting and that resonated with me.

Author: Kurt Vonnegut
Title: Fates Worse Than Death
Publisher: 1991
Comments: Some of Vonneguts essays and articles from the 1980s.  Includes
his thoughts on mental illness, and his experiences with depression.  I
found it sort of rambling, like many of his other books.

Author: First, Michael B. M.D.
Title: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth
Edition (DSM IV)
Publisher: American Psychiatric Association, 1994
ISBN: 0-89042-061-0 (Hard) 0-89042-062-9 (Paper)
Comments: Lists all mental illnesses and diagnostic criteria and assigns a
coding system. Fascinating reading. (unknown)  I looked up my own diagnosis
of dysthymia, and compared it with other similar diagnosis.  I think if you
are not in this book somewhere, then you are probably dead.

Author: Ronald K. Siegel
Title: Fire in the Brain: Clinical Tales of Hallucinations
Publisher: E.P. Dutton, NY; 1992
Comments: Siegel is a professor at UCLA School of Medicine's Department of
Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.  Clinical tales told in a spirit
similar to "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat" by Oliver Sacks.  I
found it easy and enjoyable to read.  Good if you are interested in
hallucinations.  I was a little disappointed in that it did not really
focus on schizophrenia or the emotional aspects of hallucinations.

Author: Debra Elfenbein, editor
Title: Living with prozac (and other selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors)
Publisher: HarperCollins, 1995
ISBN: 0-06-251206-4
Comments: This is a collection of short (1-4 page) personal descriptions of
people's expereinces with depression and antidepressants like prozac.
There is also a similar book by the same editor on tricyclic
antidepressants.  If you can't find yourself in some of these stories, then
you are probably living on another planet.  I read some of them "off the
shelf" in the bookstore, but I just couldn't get myself to spend the cash
for the whole book.  Still, it looked like a good book.  Kinda like a whole
lot of ASD "newbie delurk" posts, but without any interaction or threaded
responses of any kind.