asktheleaf's review against another edition
emotional
informative
inspiring
4.5
This book floored me. Diesseroth writes with a poetic beauty that psychology deserves, and investigates his case studies with incredible empathy and humility. while it will help a reader to have a bit of background in the fields of psychology or neuroscience, I recommend this book to anyone curious about mental health.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Dementia, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Mental illness, and Eating disorder
Moderate: Forced institutionalization, Addiction, and Self harm
loslibros's review
challenging
informative
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
3.75
How is this book not a HIPPA violation!? Just kidding but seriously a very cool, nuanced look at mental illness and the inner workings of the brain. Not nearly as "tech bro" as the synopsis might make it seem.
miguelf's review against another edition
2.0
Muddled tome that the book jacket promises to “transform our understanding not only of the brain but of ourselves as social beings”. The writing style was trying way too hard to capture both emotion and science and not really succeeding very well in either direction and the mixing of testimonials came across as disjointed.
deebee's review
I stopped reading because of the language used around autistic people (e.g. functioning labels, etc)
lucibello's review
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.5
At times I could hardly put the book down (the empathetic parts), and at other times it felt like drudgery. The reason is because he is not seamless in transitioning from neuroscience to stories of practicing medicine to philosophy, and even to poetry. He tried to explain mental health conditions to which there is unclear science through evolution. It was inductive reasoning at best. However, he also gave some excellent science, and has a profound ability to empathize with this client. I would have rated this much lower had it not been for his demonstration of empathy.