Research and Case Studies on the Misunderstood Condition of Compulsive Hoarding

Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things, by Randy Frost & Gail Steketee (Amazon / Book Depository) Chances are you know someone with a hoarding problem. Recent studies of hoarding put the prevalence rate at somewhere between 2 and 5 percent of the population. That means that six million to fifteen million Americans suffer... Continue Reading →

Carmen Maria Machado’s Stylistic, Genre-Bending Memoir of Domestic Abuse

Book review: In the Dream House, by Carmen Maria Machado (Amazon / Book Depository) Author Carmen Maria Machado writes a groundbreaking, stylistic account of an emotionally and mentally abusive lesbian relationship, and underscores the message that domestic abuse in LGBTQ+ relationships are neither the subject of adequate scholarship nor open discussion, nor even, to some... Continue Reading →

Susannah Cahalan Investigates the “Pretenders” of a Groundbreaking Psychiatric Study

Book review: The Great Pretender, by Susannah Cahalan (Amazon / Book Depository) The Great Pretender, Susannah Cahalan's first book since Brain on Fire, her 2012 memoir of a rare, difficult-to-diagnose autoimmune disorder, investigates an infamous and groundbreaking 1973 study carried out by psychiatrist David Rosenhan. Rosenhan sent a group of eight healthy "pseudopatients" into mental institutions... Continue Reading →

How Cooking Made Living Seem Possible

Book review: Midnight Chicken, by Ella Risbridger (Amazon / Book Depository) There is a German word, kummerspeck, that translates literally as 'grief-bacon,' and metaphorically as 'comfort eating'. This book is the grief-bacon book...This is the book I wanted to read when I was sad, but it's also a book for good days. I'm not going... Continue Reading →

Investigating the Extreme of Psychopathy

Book review: The Psychopath Test, by Jon Ronson (Amazon / Book Depository) Journalist Jon Ronson's "journey through the madness industry" begins with a stressful situation in parallel with a mystery dropped in his lap: First, he's tapped to use his journalistic prowess to trace a book that's been sent to prominent academics around the world... Continue Reading →

Scenes from a Panic

Book review: Little Panic, by Amanda Stern (Amazon / Book Depository) I am always in the future somehow, separated from my body, and it’s from there I feel sad for the moment I’m living. Soon this moment will be gone; it will turn into another moment that will go, and I think I must be... Continue Reading →

Taming Agoraphobia, and One’s Twenties

Book review: Agorafabulous! by Sara Benincasa (Amazon / Book Depository) This day was different. This day I woke up, stared at the ceiling, and was gripped by the certain knowledge that, if I left the apartment, something terrible would happen. I did not know what the terrible event was, only that it would occur, and with a fury.... Continue Reading →

Frank Stories of Schizophrenia

Book review: A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise, by Sandra Allen (Amazon / Book Depository) All those fuckers...all of them with their clicking pens and quiet judgment, all of them did not get it. There was something in the sky. This was the best moment of Bob's life so far. This was when he realized that,... Continue Reading →

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑