WHISPERS: The Voices of Paranoia
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List Price: $14.00
Our Price: $13.30
Your Save: $ 0.70 ( 5% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 616.897
EAN: 9780684802855
ISBN: 0684802856
Label: Simon & Schuster
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: 1996-02-09
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Studio: Simon & Schuster
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Editorial Reviews:
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In a mesmerizing journey into mental illness, the author of Intoxication and Fire in the Brain captures the suspicion, terror, and rage that possess the minds of paranoids. "Horrifying and utterly fascinating . . . a hard book to put down."--Bettyann Kline, Los Angeles Times.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Definitely Weird - Off the Wall And Not What You'd Expect From a UCLA researcher
Comment: The basis of a good researcher is neutrality and reserve, keeping a distance between themselves and the subjects whose lives they are studying. The book is disturbing and brings into question the motives and ethics of the author-researcher as he tried to recreate the details of a paranoid state that his subjects were experiencing.
Dr. Siegel is an accomplished and respected expert in abnormal psychiatry and biobehavioral science. However, this book is more than a little bit creepy and disturbing.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Interesting collection of...short stories?
Comment: Yick. It is hard to believe that an academic wrote this book; the writing style is more in line with what one might expect from a journalist -- so much fluff and embellishment and irrelevant banter. The case studies might be interesting, if only Siegel would get to the point of these flowery, discursive anecdotes. Disregarding the lightly scientific introduction, this book would be more palatable if classified as fiction, not psychology, the truth of stories notwithstanding; there is simply not enough substance here. Compare to Oliver Sacks' _The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat_ or _An Anthropologist on Mars_ -- which I consider worthy examples of relaying psychological case studies in an style that is engaging and accessible, yet not overwrought and still scientifically informative.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Well, the cover art is really great!
Comment: I am a big fan of case study books when it comes to topics like depression, paranoia and schizophrenia having suffered from the first like a lot of people and having a very close friend that suffers from the last.
Maybe it's the fact that I've read many of these types of books that makes me feel like Whispers just wasn't that great.
This book was short but could have been much shorter. I'm no stranger to long books and the length is not something I consider when seeking out new things to read but reading Whispers over the course of a work week made it feel as if it dragged on.
The writing style is interesting, not dull at all but at times I got the feeling that the author wrote this book to stroke his own ego for being so willing to put himself into potential dangerous situations to learn about the individuals more than to tell a story or to explore and explain with words the world of paranoia that some people live in.
Maybe I just expected the wrong thing when I picked this up? I can accept that but in my opinion there are many other books about this subject that are more rewarding to read regardless of if you are looking for clinical date and cold hard facts OR shock value.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Yeah, right *rolls eyes*
Comment: 12 case studies, into 12 paranoid people. However, it doesn't take the most critical of thinkers to realize that Siegel may be embellishing the facts a little.
Don't take my word for it read the book, and you may find some of his stories to be a little far fetched. Like the last story of the book (Paranoid Express) in which Siegel locks himself in a train cart, snorts cocaine, pisses in his pants, and suffers blistering heat, for three days, just to experience what Mario N. goes through in his final days before being arrested. The unbelievable part, is that the police go along with Siegel's little experiment. They bring him food, change audio tapes, and deliver messages in the same way they did with Mario N. for three days. I don't think there is a federal government alive who would go to such great lengths to accommodate a professor who wanted to get coked up to prove that a murderer was paranoid at the time.
Don't get me wrong "Whispers" is an interesting read and a page turner, but they way Siegel ties his cases together like the game "six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon", is a little worrisome. You have this little nagging feeling in the back of your brain that says "if he went to such great lengths to embellish how the 12 paranoids were connected or what he did to understand their pain", then maybe he embellished their cases as well.
If that doesn't bother you, then by all means get the book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A real page-turner. Not boring at all...
Comment: This book is so exciting that it is hard to believe it is non-fiction at times. The author covers many different cases with literary mastery usually reserved for fiction writers. There are stories of Hitler's brain in a jar, crazy cokehead hallucinations, psycho killers and more. This is not your standard acedemic (read boring) case study. I read this book from cover to cover in about a week, very hard to put down. It is written for the layman, but in a way that it is excessible to anyone (including professionals in the field). I would recommend this book to anyone with even a passing interest in abnormal psychology.
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