Items related to Whispers
Combining the insights of a gifted research scientist with vivid tales that are usually the realm of the novelist, Dr. Ronald Siegel lets his readers experience the suspicion, terror, and rage that possess the mind of the paranoid. This is the first book to investigate the actual experience of paranoia and to demonstrate that under the right conditions -- drugs or deprivation, for example -- anyone can be driven into that state. And indeed, eight million Americans already have been.
The paranoid inhabits a different realm of being, one that tilts the world ever so slightly. The senses detect these differences and sound mental alarms. Delusions and hallucinations feed on each other, flourishing with amazing speed. The paranoid becomes locked in a new mode of thinking -- viewing life as from a cell.
In a dozen case studies, Dr. Siegel follows his patients into the shadow lands where paranoia flourishes -- drug addiction, prison, organized crime, and terrorism. He introduces us to mild cases where there is only a vague sense that something is out there stalking, to those with apocalyptic visions so intense that they shake the foundations of an entire community. We meet the old woman who hears her teeth whispering, the beautiful ballet dancer who falls in love with a shadow, and the cocaine addict for whom the invasion of imaginary bugs was strong enough to kill. This intrepid journey through the mind's dark corridors ends with a reflective coda exploring the suicide of Ernest Hemingway, and there is no better guide than Dr. Ronald Siegel.
The paranoid inhabits a different realm of being, one that tilts the world ever so slightly. The senses detect these differences and sound mental alarms. Delusions and hallucinations feed on each other, flourishing with amazing speed. The paranoid becomes locked in a new mode of thinking -- viewing life as from a cell.
In a dozen case studies, Dr. Siegel follows his patients into the shadow lands where paranoia flourishes -- drug addiction, prison, organized crime, and terrorism. He introduces us to mild cases where there is only a vague sense that something is out there stalking, to those with apocalyptic visions so intense that they shake the foundations of an entire community. We meet the old woman who hears her teeth whispering, the beautiful ballet dancer who falls in love with a shadow, and the cocaine addict for whom the invasion of imaginary bugs was strong enough to kill. This intrepid journey through the mind's dark corridors ends with a reflective coda exploring the suicide of Ernest Hemingway, and there is no better guide than Dr. Ronald Siegel.
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From the Back Cover:
Here are some of the stops on this journey of scientific exploration through the paranoid world of ordinary people:
About the Author:
A UCLA student with a stolen computer program re-creates Hitler's brain ... and the author holds a chilling conversation with the dictator.
A man in a seedy motel room, high not on drugs but disappointment, knows he is God.
A mother is swept from reality by watching the movie The Ten Commandments...and kills her firstborn daughter.
A wealthy businessman is certain that an army of dwarfs has invaded his estate.
And in a remarkable case, the author duplicates the very conditions that drove one desperate man to a terrorist attack on a train ride ... and almost plunges over the brink of paranoia himself.
Ronald K. Siegel, Ph.D., is Associate Research Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA. A contributor to such publications as Omni and Scientific American, he is also the author of the highly regarded Intoxication and Fire in the Brain. He has served as a consultant to the World Health Organization and to two presidential commissions, and is frequently called upon as an expert in high-profile criminal cases. He lives in Los Angeles.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherRandom House Value Publishing
- Publication date1997
- ISBN 10 0517196492
- ISBN 13 9780517196496
- BindingHardcover
- Rating
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