Review of Scared Sick by Robin Karr-Morse and Meredith Wiley

I cannot recommend Scared Sick highly enough because of its approachable style, clear explanation of complex medical science for the general reader, passionate advocacy for babies and small children, and its importance in encouraging everyone to pay attention to what we are doing to the youngest members of our societies. I was shocked to learn that it was only from the late 1980s that newborns, whether premature or full term, were given anesthesia when operated on for conditions such as heart defects. It was thought the infantile central nervous system was not developed enough for neonates to feel pain, and so they were simply paralyzed for surgery with no pain relief. It seems to take us a long time before we notice the suffering of others, and the effects it has on them. No wonder we are still in the early days of noticing psychological stress and instigating preventative programs and therapies for it.

Continued at Metapsychology Online Reviews.

 

Review of Living, Thinking, Looking: Essays by Siri Hustvedt

Siri Hustvedt is fascinated by the brain and mind, and what can go wrong with them. She is also fascinated by fiction, reading, writing, art; she writes with verve, intelligence, and understanding about all these things, and others as well. In her latest collection of essays, she notes the link is her 'abiding curiosity about what it means to be human' (ix), and the reader cannot argue with that conclusion.

In an echo from her previous essay collection, A Plea for Eros, she writes that 'no single theoretical model can contain the complexity of human reality' (x), so her intense interest in Freud and psychoanalysis is a critical one, and interwoven with other interests to form a larger organism.


Continued at Metapsychology Online Reviews.

When

When I went to the fridge to get the milk, the bottle was empty. Okay, I yelled, who's drunk all the milk? No answer, of course, because they're all asleep. Or pretending to be asleep so they don't have to be the first to get the tea ready. Then I noticed there was no butter in the butter dish, and the sausages that were leftovers from yesterday were gone too. Right, who's swiping food from the fridge? I yelled again. I opened the freezer door, and the chicken was gone, along with the chops. The polysterene tray was there, as was the plastic from the chook, but otherwise, gone. Jesus, someone would have to be bloody hungry to eat all that.