What an odd book !

Although its preface declares that the author is about to expose in front of the reader all the secrets of the human brain, the book itself takes a completely different path, listing various mental diseases and disorders, in no apparent order and with considerable overlap and inconsistency, in chapter after chapter.

The chapters themselves are quite interesting to read, but reading this book for a long time is tiresome - it’s like reading the “Mental disease dictionary” (if there is such a thing). The taxonomical approach gets tiresome very quickly. It feels like the author has pulled the contents from some series of articles dealing with mental disorders and slapped them together into a single book.

I wouldn’t recommend this book, unless you’re a junkie of mental disorders (and even then, just reading Wikipedia would probably be much more illuminating).

Related posts:

1. Book review: “The mismeasure of man” by Stephen Jay Gould
2. Book review: “Broca’s brain” by Carl Sagan
3. Book review: “Idiot” by Fyodor Dostoevsky
4. Book review: “Secrets of the Jewish brain” by Eran Katz
5. Book review: “Fool’s experience or the key to enlightens” by

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