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Saturday, March 20, 2004Lloyd serves up a mini-mystery about an obsessive group of academics, immersed in Husserlian phenomenology, poised to crack the code of consciousness. Graduate student Miranda, the cyber-heroine who must eventually contend with a motley crew of fellow travelers, is initially only eager to salvage her dissertation from the clutches of her brilliant but unstable mentor. ....During a succession of mini-strokes, Miranda finds herself on the intimate receiving end of several lessons in neurophenomenology, ranging from temporary right parietal neglect to slamming shut the thalamic gatekeepers to the global workspaces of consciousness....Once intellectual appetites have been well whetted, Lloyd serves up the richer main course - the nonfictional "labyrinth of consciousness": a wide-ranging survey of why mind science must abandon the ruling sensory-centric view of consciousness and confront the grander multi-dimensional mystery that lies at the heart of subjective experience. Amazon's review confirms that it's no Being John Malkovich: Since everyone revels in illustrating neurophilosophical theories, by the time all the sleuthing pays off, the characters have lost definition and the narrative is tied up in knots. Bafflement continues into a stand-alone Part Two as Lloyd leaves his primary story behind for a more academic focus, expanding on a new theory of consciousness developed over the course of the novel. But the reader reviews gave it anywhere from three to five stars, the highest rating being from a neuroscience student who said it helped him better understand the theories he was studying in class. Which brings me to the other book review of interest in JAMA, Reel Psychiatry: Movie Portrayals of Psychiatric Conditions, a psychiatric textbook which uses cinematic examples as case histories. (And which Psychscape has already noted, along with a comprehensive bibliography of movies and mental illness.) Using fiction to illustrate psychopathology has a long tradition in medical education. I remember one of my professors in medical school showing film clips of his favorite personality disorders - Elizabeth Taylor in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (borderline), Lee Remick in Days of Wine and Roses (dependent), and, of course, The Three Faces of Eve, the most famous of all dissociatives. And finally, this week's New England Journal of Medicine has a review of a book that uses fiction to teach medical history, the historical novel The Speckled Monster: A Historical Tale of Battling Smallpox: Numerous historians have written about this momentous revolution in medical practice. Inoculation laid the groundwork for vaccination, immunology, and medical statistics. Carrell's book, The Speckled Monster, adds a new twist to the topic; it is a fictional account based on extensive historical research (the subtitle of the book is "a historical tale"). Her narrative begins slowly but quickly picks up the pace as it interweaves events on both sides of the Atlantic and suggests their mutual influence. It is unapologetically heroic: Lady Mary and Boylston triumphed despite the substantial odds and obstacles against them. Lady Mary took on the formidable London medical establishment, whereas Boylston contended with providential clerics and foreign-trained physicians (particularly the cantankerous Scot, William Douglass). Both were threatened with mob violence. In sweeping and dramatic strokes, Carrell paints the ostracism Boylston endured as he made his rounds through colonial Boston; in England, Lady Mary suffered public criticism for daring to put her children deliberately in harm's way. Sounds like an eighteenth-century version of Quincy, M.E.. ADDED BONUS: Quincy vs Columbo Superstar Monkey Duel Game posted by Sydney on 3/20/2004 03:49:00 PM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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