Book Review: ADD In Adults
Attention Deficit Disorder in Adults: A Different Way of Thinking, Revised 4th edition by Lynn Weiss, PhD.
If you or someone you associate with has ADD don't even bother trying to read this book. If the empty headed cheerleader style of most of the book doesn't destroy your mind then the overuse of academic speak in the sections written by John Rubel, one of Dr. Weiss' colleges, will put what's left out of its misery. I have a degree in psychology and I had to reread a couple of bits to be sure of what he was trying to say.
An example of Dr. Rubel's deathless prose:
Try as they might, researchers and clinicians who investigate ADD (the authors included) aren't perfectly objective. In attempting to synthesize a body of data, we arrive at some synthetic judgement that has been contaminated by our theory driven confirmatory biases, motivated distortions, and other sources of error (Kuhn, 1962).
Yet our clinical judgement, albeit flawed, is essential for identifying potentially relevant variables and patterns, framing hypotheses, and building theories about ADD (Western & Weinberger 2004)
The evolving optics of Dr. Weiss's and my struggle to synthesize our experiences of the tension between the current state of ADD science and clinical practice is called "brainstyle theory".
Okay IOW for those who only speak English: When evaluating research data the interpretation is often affected by personal bias but we still have to use our own judgement to identify patterns and form theories about ADD. Our way of looking at the issues is through our "brainstyle theory".
Thank god he only wrote the better part of one chapter and a forward or this 240 page or so book with medium size print might have been twice as long.
Dr. Weiss on the other hand repeats endlessly that there is nothing inherently bad in being ADD and you can learn to manage it without really giving any tools to do. Lots of self esteem movement jargon is thrown around as well as some new agey sounding stuff about "the wounded self" and "the true self".
She pads out the book by including the full text of a letter she coauthored to the APA about changing the wording in their pamphlet on ADD, lots of over simplified case study examples of how people just like you overcame ADD, and samples from the work book she uses with groups she conducts. The work book seems to be good for identifying problem areas but not a lot is mentioned about how to deal with them other than getting in touch with your true self and being okay with being different.
There are some really useful bits here, almost all of which are in the appendixes and all of which are available elsewhere, mostly on the 'net. These include the official APA DSM standard for what constitutes ADD, a list of drugs currently being used with information about each one, and self diagnostic check list. Not enough to justify paying $17 for this book in paperback. I'm glad I got it from the library
If you or someone you associate with has ADD don't even bother trying to read this book. If the empty headed cheerleader style of most of the book doesn't destroy your mind then the overuse of academic speak in the sections written by John Rubel, one of Dr. Weiss' colleges, will put what's left out of its misery. I have a degree in psychology and I had to reread a couple of bits to be sure of what he was trying to say.
An example of Dr. Rubel's deathless prose:
Try as they might, researchers and clinicians who investigate ADD (the authors included) aren't perfectly objective. In attempting to synthesize a body of data, we arrive at some synthetic judgement that has been contaminated by our theory driven confirmatory biases, motivated distortions, and other sources of error (Kuhn, 1962).
Yet our clinical judgement, albeit flawed, is essential for identifying potentially relevant variables and patterns, framing hypotheses, and building theories about ADD (Western & Weinberger 2004)
The evolving optics of Dr. Weiss's and my struggle to synthesize our experiences of the tension between the current state of ADD science and clinical practice is called "brainstyle theory".
Okay IOW for those who only speak English: When evaluating research data the interpretation is often affected by personal bias but we still have to use our own judgement to identify patterns and form theories about ADD. Our way of looking at the issues is through our "brainstyle theory".
Thank god he only wrote the better part of one chapter and a forward or this 240 page or so book with medium size print might have been twice as long.
Dr. Weiss on the other hand repeats endlessly that there is nothing inherently bad in being ADD and you can learn to manage it without really giving any tools to do. Lots of self esteem movement jargon is thrown around as well as some new agey sounding stuff about "the wounded self" and "the true self".
She pads out the book by including the full text of a letter she coauthored to the APA about changing the wording in their pamphlet on ADD, lots of over simplified case study examples of how people just like you overcame ADD, and samples from the work book she uses with groups she conducts. The work book seems to be good for identifying problem areas but not a lot is mentioned about how to deal with them other than getting in touch with your true self and being okay with being different.
There are some really useful bits here, almost all of which are in the appendixes and all of which are available elsewhere, mostly on the 'net. These include the official APA DSM standard for what constitutes ADD, a list of drugs currently being used with information about each one, and self diagnostic check list. Not enough to justify paying $17 for this book in paperback. I'm glad I got it from the library
posted by Ranuel | 10:33 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home