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Disturbances of the Mind, by Douwe Draaisma (Translated by Barbara Fasting). Cambridge University Press, 2009, 366 pages (ISBN 978-0-521-50966-4, US$25.99 Hardcover)
Reviewed by ANNE DULL BAlRD
DOI: 10.1037/a00215l3
Draaisma is an excellent storyteller. He gets the reader to stand on tiptoe to look over the barriers of time and place into specific biographic scenes and then quickly zooms out for a historical perspective. For North American readers, this Dutch psychologist and historian is a welcome guide on the journey to understand the work and lives of 1 1 European eponym-bearers: Bonnet, Parkinson, Broca, Jackson, Korsakoff, Gilles de la Tourette, Alzheimer, Brodmann, Clérambault, Capgras, and Asperger.
Draaisma notes that he strove to be a "resurrectionist" (p. 3) of the thoughts, feelings, and context of these individuals. In achieving fhis objective he engenders empathy for past and present clinician-scientists and their patients and creates a work fhat will interest, engage, and even inspire educated readers outside the health professions as well as students and professionals in neurology, psychiatry, and psychology. Single chapters might be useful for support groups dealing wifh one of fhe eponymous disorders. My most serious criticism is Draaisma' s lack of a clear statement of the limits of his coverage of current research. His brief summary of current understanding of each eponymous disorder provides a welcome sense of integration, but, without qualification by the author, some readers may mistake this material for a comprehensive review. In particular I worried about this possibility when I read the Alzheimer's disease chapter, in which Draaisma writes mat research to date "has not created a single opening in the direction of treatment" (p. 225). I strongly urge mat any recommendation of fhe book to lay readers or undergraduate or early graduate students be accompanied by the caveat that readers not rely on the book as fhe sole or even primary source of information regarding me current state of knowledge regarding a given disorder.
The book begins with chapters on Bonnet syndrome and Parkinson's disease. In both, Draaisma displays...