clarentium's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.0
This felt like multiple books muddled together: a biography of John Barker; an illustration of mental health treatment in midcentury Britain; a discussion of the role that fear plays in medicine; and a more abstract exploration of humanity's relationship with time and predicting the future.
Each part was interesting on its own but, together, they formed a disjointed narrative.
The writing itself was generally good, though a little too heavy with quotes that disrupted the natural flow. Knight's more anecdotal discussions of time were particularly engaging.
Overall, an intriguing book that felt like it didn't quite know what it was.
Each part was interesting on its own but, together, they formed a disjointed narrative.
The writing itself was generally good, though a little too heavy with quotes that disrupted the natural flow. Knight's more anecdotal discussions of time were particularly engaging.
Overall, an intriguing book that felt like it didn't quite know what it was.
brontherun's review against another edition
3.0
The 1960s, and their normalization of modern pharmacology, neuropharmacology, and recreational drug use, are a great era in which to tell a story. And Sam Knight brings us a slice of the 60’s in an appropriate mind-bending story of psychiatrist Dr. John Barker and his strange pursuits. The book chronicles the setup of a collection of dreams and premonitions foretelling future disaster. It was hosted by a newspaper, but driven and supported by Barker, who although by profession was a NHS psychiatrist in a British mental hospital, was passionate about psychics, fortune tellers, and doomsday predictors, but only if they were predicting disasters and death.
What is terrifying and informative about this book Barkers more traditional pursuits with his short term and long term patients with aversion therapy and similar barbaric and ineffective “treatments”. I learned more about electric shock treatments than I wanted to know. But Knight also explained some new concepts, which I found fascinating. Things like resignation syndrome, the nocebo effect, and Poisson’s Law. Science is strange, and medicine is a bizarre art that creates masterpieces and horror shows using sometimes questionable science. Such was Barker’s day job as told by Knight.
However, the fact that Barker and his reporter partner Fairley thought that their newspaper data collection of foreboding dreams was worthy of a national alert system boggles the mind a little. As Knight recounts: “During the eighteen months that the Premonitions Bureau was in operation, there had been plenty of signals that Barker was on an errant path.” While this is particularly true for Barkers work on the predictions of disaster, it is also true for his aversion therapy, where he wanted to reprogram folks with electric shocks and/or new drugs to accomplish things such as “to make mothers want, once again, to do the dishwashing.” As if. If there was such a therapy it sounds like something out of a nightmare, not a utopian future.
What is terrifying and informative about this book Barkers more traditional pursuits with his short term and long term patients with aversion therapy and similar barbaric and ineffective “treatments”. I learned more about electric shock treatments than I wanted to know. But Knight also explained some new concepts, which I found fascinating. Things like resignation syndrome, the nocebo effect, and Poisson’s Law. Science is strange, and medicine is a bizarre art that creates masterpieces and horror shows using sometimes questionable science. Such was Barker’s day job as told by Knight.
However, the fact that Barker and his reporter partner Fairley thought that their newspaper data collection of foreboding dreams was worthy of a national alert system boggles the mind a little. As Knight recounts: “During the eighteen months that the Premonitions Bureau was in operation, there had been plenty of signals that Barker was on an errant path.” While this is particularly true for Barkers work on the predictions of disaster, it is also true for his aversion therapy, where he wanted to reprogram folks with electric shocks and/or new drugs to accomplish things such as “to make mothers want, once again, to do the dishwashing.” As if. If there was such a therapy it sounds like something out of a nightmare, not a utopian future.