Attention Deficit Disorder: A Different Perception - Softcover

Thomas Hartmann

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0887331564 ISBN 13: 9780887331565

Publisher: Underwood Miller Inc, 1993

Synopsis

As many as 20 million Americans may have Attention Deficit Disorder. In this pioneering book, with sales of more than 100,000 copies, Thom Hartmann explains ADD from an evolutionary perspective, suggesting that the disorder really arises from roots as hunters in a hunting society. He offers a positive viewpoint, citing examples including ADD individuals who changed the world - people like Thomas Edison, Ernest Hemingway and Benjamin Franklin.

About this title

About the Author

Thom Hartmann is the author of six books on ADD and former executive director of a residential treatment facility for abused and emotionally disturbed children. He authored more than 200 published articles and has spoken at conferences around the world.

Reviews

Innovative and fresh .... Rather than portraying the syndrome as a crippling disease, Thom Hartmann demonstrates that ADD can be associated with creativity, high achievement, and a most successful adaptive style.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Where did ADD come from? If you compare the list of classic ADD symptoms, and the list of the characteristics of a good hunter, you'll see that they match almost perfectly. In other words, an individual with the ADD collection of characteristics would make an extraordinarily good hunter. A failure to have any one of those characteristics might mean death in the forest or jungle.

(continued...)
There are two characteristics of ADD which can seriously challenge a Hunter who is trying to be successful in life and society. They are impulsivity and craving.

These two characteristics are, in moderation, what make some Hunters incredibly successful in our society. Under control, these "driving forces" lead to the creation of institutions and businesses, to the writing of books and creation of art, to creative brainstorms that lead countries, companies, and lives in wholly new and wonderful directions.

(continued...)
How to Turn a "Disorder" Back into a Skill (A Survival Guide for ADD Adults)(continued...)
-Nearly every man who develops an idea works it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then he gets discouraged. That's not the place to become discouraged. (Thomas Edison)

If you've read this far with an open mind, I hope you've accepted the notion that ADD is neither a deficit nor a disorder. It is, instead, an inherited set of skills, abilities, and personality tendencies which would enable a Hunter or warrior or lookout to be eminently successful and would condemn a Farmer or an accountant to certain disaster. So how did this powerful set of Hunter skills come to be labeled as a disorder?

Historically, societies have viewed people whose behaviors they didn't understand, or which weren't "the norm," as inferior. Certainly the debates of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries here in the United States about whether Native Americans and African slaves were human highlights the extremes to which people are willing to take notions of culturalism. People who are seen as different are often lumped into a "not-quite-human" category, as were Japanese-Americans during World War II or physically disabled Americans in present times.

The following quotation serves as example to this phenomenon: "I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races ... I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality." ( Abraham Lincoln)

Edition details

• Publisher: Underwood Miller Inc
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0887331564
• ISBN 13: 9780887331565
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 188