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eubI'm not doing either at present, but isn't that a great title? There's a real need for a book with that title. This particular instance doesn't do it for me. It's half a self-help book for people asking themselves that excellent question, and half a polemic for his flavor of spiritually-enriched psychotherapy.
As a self-help book, I think it does a so-so job at one key goal, of helping people judge what their experiences mean to their mental health and spiritual life. What I'd like here is communication of how schizophrenia feels to the person experiencing it, how a kundalini awakening feels, so I can compare. He gets this mostly indirectly, in the course of tales of his exploits with such and such client. But I think it works out. First, mental illnesses and other experiences just don't overlap all that much. (He does mention, in passing, a patient whose spiritual practice triggered a psychotic break. No mention of, say, temporal lobe epilepsy.) Second, he does hit what I think is the main point: if you're functioning fine, you don't need to be treated. In the end, I don't know how well someone who's acutely psychotic is going to do at judging that of themself, whatever books they read, so the goal here is to reassure sane people that weird experiences are only a problem if they're a problem.
As a polemic, I think he's got a good point: first, that a lot of psych practitioners probably treat more experiences as signs of mental illness than they need to, and second, that they ought to work with people on a spiritual level appropriate for them. Well, I added that bit about "appropriate". No doubt he's great for some people. But I get this creepy feeling that he maybe drops casual mentions of Sathya Sai Baba as often in therapy as he does in his book. And personally, if I went to him with a paranormal experience, I would not want him to enter enthusiastically into a belief that it translates literally into consensus reality. I just want him to believe that it happened to me.
The man believes everything he meets. I don't just mean paranormal everything -- he grievously overstates biological psychiatry's understanding of mental illnesses. For example, he attributes schizophrenia to when "a small part of the brain has abnormal metabolism of the neurotransmitter dopamine." Which small part is that, and abnormal metabolism how? More misleading than what he says is what he omits: involvement of NMDA, sigma receptors, folate metabolism, etc. He doesn't check basic facts: in a passage about how rich Sanskrit is for talking about consciousness, he suggests perhaps this is because "Western language is linear. [...] Eastern languages (like Sanskrit, Chinese, and Japanese) are written in symbols, not in a sequential, linear structure." Sanskrit, as it happens, is alphabetic (with a beautifully regular alphabet). By the time he's talking about poltergeists, he's blown his credibility with me.
But I have to admit, I wonder how much of my resistance here is that I just don't like the guy. He happened to hit one of my biggest peeves dead-on, with "[...] I chant my mantra, or listen to NPR (National Public Radio), the country-western station, the classical station, some classic rock. Always looking for a song that I like, no matter what the style." Oh, you wide-ranging explorer you. And he's just... not of my people. Where Peter Kramer referenced Walker Percy, Gersten references Rescue 911. This should not taint the substance of what he's saying.
He's got some sensible exercises, like of the "write down answers to these questions, and think about them" kind, and I'm a bit annoyed that I can't take them seriously. My responsibility.
As a self-help book, I think it does a so-so job at one key goal, of helping people judge what their experiences mean to their mental health and spiritual life. What I'd like here is communication of how schizophrenia feels to the person experiencing it, how a kundalini awakening feels, so I can compare. He gets this mostly indirectly, in the course of tales of his exploits with such and such client. But I think it works out. First, mental illnesses and other experiences just don't overlap all that much. (He does mention, in passing, a patient whose spiritual practice triggered a psychotic break. No mention of, say, temporal lobe epilepsy.) Second, he does hit what I think is the main point: if you're functioning fine, you don't need to be treated. In the end, I don't know how well someone who's acutely psychotic is going to do at judging that of themself, whatever books they read, so the goal here is to reassure sane people that weird experiences are only a problem if they're a problem.
As a polemic, I think he's got a good point: first, that a lot of psych practitioners probably treat more experiences as signs of mental illness than they need to, and second, that they ought to work with people on a spiritual level appropriate for them. Well, I added that bit about "appropriate". No doubt he's great for some people. But I get this creepy feeling that he maybe drops casual mentions of Sathya Sai Baba as often in therapy as he does in his book. And personally, if I went to him with a paranormal experience, I would not want him to enter enthusiastically into a belief that it translates literally into consensus reality. I just want him to believe that it happened to me.
The man believes everything he meets. I don't just mean paranormal everything -- he grievously overstates biological psychiatry's understanding of mental illnesses. For example, he attributes schizophrenia to when "a small part of the brain has abnormal metabolism of the neurotransmitter dopamine." Which small part is that, and abnormal metabolism how? More misleading than what he says is what he omits: involvement of NMDA, sigma receptors, folate metabolism, etc. He doesn't check basic facts: in a passage about how rich Sanskrit is for talking about consciousness, he suggests perhaps this is because "Western language is linear. [...] Eastern languages (like Sanskrit, Chinese, and Japanese) are written in symbols, not in a sequential, linear structure." Sanskrit, as it happens, is alphabetic (with a beautifully regular alphabet). By the time he's talking about poltergeists, he's blown his credibility with me.
But I have to admit, I wonder how much of my resistance here is that I just don't like the guy. He happened to hit one of my biggest peeves dead-on, with "[...] I chant my mantra, or listen to NPR (National Public Radio), the country-western station, the classical station, some classic rock. Always looking for a song that I like, no matter what the style." Oh, you wide-ranging explorer you. And he's just... not of my people. Where Peter Kramer referenced Walker Percy, Gersten references Rescue 911. This should not taint the substance of what he's saying.
He's got some sensible exercises, like of the "write down answers to these questions, and think about them" kind, and I'm a bit annoyed that I can't take them seriously. My responsibility.
