Shadow Daughter: A Memoir of Estrangement, by Harriet Brown. Da Capo Press, 2018

Harriet Brown admits she led a pretty good childhood; she was not physically abused (much), she had food and clothing, hers was not a broken home. But her mother was emotionally abusive, tearing Harriet down constantly. No one could praise Harriet without her mother cutting in, and telling them they didn’t know Harriet like she did, that Harriet was in fact a horrible child, self-centered and selfish. Harriet got out of the house as soon as she could, at 16, but it was hard to overcome the drive to stay close to her family. Our society says the family is important, and that you are screwed up if you aren’t close to them. Finally, she had enough, and severed ties with her mother, not just for her benefit but for that of her own daughters.



The author mixes her own story in with those of others, and with psychological research. This isn’t just her complaining; emotional abuse IS abuse, and it can scar a person for the rest of their life, causing them to not trust themselves. I have a couple of dear friends who have/had abusive mothers, and they have both had to cut off communications for the sake of their sanity.



She may have been five thousand miles away when her mother’s funeral took place, but it was for the best. The rest of the family wouldn’t have wanted her there, and it would have been hypocrisy for her to weep and wail. She had already wasted hours, days, weeks of her life trying to appease her mother, trying to get her approval. Now, approval and love would never come.



I think what I found even more chilling than her mother’s treatment of her was her father’s ignoring it. He said to the author that if he didn’t take her mother’s side, she would leave him. He picked his wife over his daughter. After her death, he said he did not want to hear from her for a long time. They are slowly rebuilding a relationship, with him learning to like her, to see her as she really is rather than through the lens of her mother’s hatred.



While there is some repetition in the book, it’s well written. I felt pain for what the author went through. I think this book is an important one for adult children of emotionally abusive parent’s to read.

Also Human: the Inner Lives of Doctors, by Caroline Elton. Basic Books, 2018

Dr. Elton is a vocational psychologist who works with doctors. This has put her in place to have firsthand experience with the mental problems they have. She also obviously does a lot of research on it; she cites studies and statistics fluently.

Doctors have pretty much the hardest training of any occupation. It’s not just the book learning that’s hard; it’s also the long hours, and the helpless feeling when tossed into the hospital and they are suddenly responsible for patients. Everyone knows a doctor or two with a big ego, but there are probably just as many who constantly fear they will not be good enough. As in any profession, they face racism and sexism. There is never time for family or even sleep. They sometimes have patients die. It’s not easy. The book is heavy on the subject of new doctors entering training; I assume this must be the time of the most stress since it’s emphasized. It’s mostly on the NHS system, although she does give some time to the American system.

The book was interesting, but not quite as interesting as I’d hoped. I think I was hoping for more case studies; the book was too heavy on the statistics for me (although I do realize a book like this *had* to have statistics). The chapters seemed to be arbitrarily divided and just sort of blended into each other. Three stars.

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Odd Girl Out: My Extraordinary Autistic Life, by Laura James. Seal Press, 2018

After wondering all her life why she seemed different from other people, in her mid-forties Laura James was diagnosed with both Ehlers-Danlos and Asperger’s (and I suspect she may have synesthesia, too, although she doesn’t say so). Over the course of a year, she learns all she can about these disorders, and things start making sense to her- and to her husband. It’s not that she’s been a failure- she was highly successful, with four children and a career as a journalist. But there had always been situations that caused extreme discomfort, sometimes even leading to a meltdown.  Crowds, uncomfortable clothing, sensory overload- even some colors- are all things she tries to avoid.

Highly intelligent, she and her second husband created a life that allowed her to succeed and still be protected from things that stressed her. Getting her diagnosis explained so much about her, but she’d already gone a long way towards accommodating her problem. The diagnosis meant she could find out how other people dealt with having autism and allowed her to be in contact with people who faced the same problems.

The book follows her over a little over a year’s time, with sections of current time alternating with her past. It’s a really interesting read, but I could never quite get invested in her story. There is a dryness to her prose that seemed somehow stand-offish, even though she talks about some really painful events. Perhaps part of being autistic, perhaps part of being a journalist, used to presenting facts. A four star read; I recommend it to anyone with a person with autism in their circle, because it might really help them to understand that person. 

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Neither of these things influenced my review.

Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8: A Young Man’s Voice From the Silence of Autism, by Naoki Higashida. Translated by KA Yoshida & David Mitchell. Random House, 2017

Higashida is on the spectrum; he was nonverbal for a long time and even today he struggles with expressing himself verbally; he has what he calls restricted speech. He finds it easier many times to use his computer or a spelling board to communicate. When he was thirteen he wrote his first book, ‘The Reason I Jump’ to try and explain some of his actions to neurotypical folks. His new book, written as a 24 year old, takes that further, telling us what it’s like to live in his world. It includes some of his ‘aha’ moments, when he figured out things that most of us take for granted. His is a life of anxiety and distractions coming from his own brain. He absolutely doesn’t feel sorry for himself, though; while he’s unhappy with parts of his life- like his inability to properly express to his mother how grateful he is to her- he is in general upbeat. I found it very interesting that he has obsessions that have to be dealt with to stay calm- as one with OCD myself, I could certainly those, as well as his sensory overload.

The book is written in short chapters; some only a couple of pages long. Many are posts from his blog, so this gives a bit of a disjointed feeling reading the book.  The translators have a child on the spectrum themselves, and I suspect this gave them a special attachment to this project. I recommend this book to anyone with a family member or friend on the spectrum, especially if that person has trouble communicating. Five stars. 

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I received this book free from the Amazon Vine program in return for an unbiased review. 

Neither of these things influenced my review.  

On Being Human: Why Mind Matters, by Jerome Kagan. Yale University Press, 2016

‘On Being Human’ is a collection of essays by retired professor of psychology Jerome Kagan. He goes over issues such as brain scans being relatively useless for finding out where thoughts come from, given that a scanner is not the kind of place a person is usually in when thinking; the fact that neurons and chemicals do not tell us *how* a person things; and that using animals for research into thinking isn’t going to tell us how people think. There’s a lot about how environment shapes the mind and mental abilities, and how that makes for a really uneven playing field in life, which I found one of the most interesting parts of the book. At times, I felt I was reading a book of philosophy rather than psychology.

Kagan assumes his readers are on the same intellectual plane as he is, and writes on that level. I like that better than having someone talk down to me, but…it took me forever to get through this book.  I did read every word. It’s not that he uses arcane words; they are terms found in the average vocabulary. He has a lot of interesting things to say; some I agree with, some not. Did I *enjoy* the book? No. I know it says something bad about my brain, but it was too much work to be enjoyable. I learned things- which is normally fun for me- but I did not do it happily. 

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Changing the Mind, Healing the Body: Eight Case Studies in Transformational Belief-Change Therapy, by Elly Roselle. Ugly Duckling Editions, 2005

The therapy used in these case studies is Core Belief Engineering, a system developed by the author. In it, the therapist speaks with different parts of the client’s psyche; not the Id, Ego, and Superego of Freudianism, nor the archetypes of Jungian therapy, but parts that have evolved, starting in the client’s childhood. They are unique to each patient, both in form and name; for instance, at age 3 the client may have been abused by someone and a piece of their personality breaks off and is the only part of the psyche that deals with abuse issues; it does what it feels will protect the person. If you’ve ever read anything about Multiple Personality Disorder (these days called Dissociative Identity Disorder), it sounds a lot like that, except that these ‘parts’ don’t take over the body and run it with the other parts unaware of it- no losing time, no Three Faces of Eve. The person is functional and always knows what they are doing- they just don’t know *why* they are doing it.

Roselle maintains that many physical ailments are created by personality parts. In this book, she gives us the stories of clients with bulimia, colon cancer, one with a host of neurological and immune system problems including chronic fatigue, HIV, vaginismus, myalgic encephalomyelitis, and sugar addiction. Some of these, like bulimia, have obvious mental components, but others don’t. Therapy cannot cure colon cancer or HIV, but it can improve the immune system and allow the client to survive longer.

I do see how parts of the psyche can decide (from how the person was treated and taught in their childhood) that they deserve to die, or should not enjoy sex, or are better off physically helpless. The part of the book I have trouble with is that she can access the parts of the personality through talk therapy, without something like hypnotic induction. She never says how she leads the client to being able to talk with the parts that are causing the problems. The way it’s written, she just asks the client to talk to the part, and the part replies to the client. And usually the parts are amenable to reason and change. I know if I asked a question of myself, there would be a resounding silence, not some hidden part answering. There must be more to her system, but I guess if she gave it away it would take away business. She does have impressive results and I’d like to know more. The book is easy to read without a lot of technical jargon. 

The above is an affiliate link. If you click through and buy something- anything- Amazon will give me a few cents. This in no way influenced my review.