Attention Deficit Disorder : A Different Perception [Paperback]

Thom Hartmann (Author), Edward M. Hallowell (Introduction) (Author), Michael Popkin (Foreword) (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1997

As many as 20 million Americans may have Attention Deficit Disorder. In the five years since Thom Hartmann first published his pioneering book, "Attention Deficit Disorder: A Different Perception," new findings support his theory linking ADD to the genetic makeup of men and women who hunted for their food in prehistoric times. Now, Hartmann has revised his groundbreaking book to include the latest research along with surprising information on studies that link second-hand smoke to disruptive behavior. This edition has a new introduction by famed Harvard psychiatrist Edward M. Hallowell, MD, co-author of the best-selling "Driven to Distraction.:

Editorial Reviews

From Scientific American

Innovative and fresh .... Rather than portraying the syndrome as a crippling disease, Thom Hartmann demonstrates that ADD can be associated with creativity, high achievement, and a most successful adaptive style. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Thom Hartmann demonstrates that ADD can be associated with creativity, high achievement, and a most successful adaptive style." -- Edward Hallowell, MD and John Ratey, MD, authors of "Driven to Distraction. "This book...indicates that uncritical acceptance of the notion of ADD may conceal the need for basic reforms in our nation's public schools. -- Jay C. Fikes, Ph.D., Cultural Anthropologist

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Product Details

• Paperback: 238 pages
• Publisher: Underwood Books; 2nd edition (August 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1887424148
• ISBN-13: 978-1887424141
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #19,691 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #13 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Disorders & Diseases > Attention Deficit Disorder
  • #52 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Reference

More About the Author

Thom Hartmann, who started in radio in 1968, is also an internationally known speaker on culture and communications, an author, and an innovator in the fields of psychiatry, ecology, and economics. The co-founder (with his wife, Louise) of The New England Salem Children's Village (1978) and The Hunter School (1997), he has led national innovations in the areas of residential treatment for abused children and private/public education for learning-disabled children. Hartmann is the four-time Project Censored Award-winning, New York Times best-selling author of nineteen books currently in print in over a dozen languages on five continents. He is the former executive director of a residential treatment program for emotionally disturbed and abused children, and has helped set up hospitals, famine relief programs, schools, and refugee centers in India, Uganda, Australia, Colombia, Russia, and the United States through the German-based Salem International program. Formerly rostered with the State of Vermont as a psychotherapist, founder of The Michigan Healing Arts Center, and licensed as an NLP Trainer by Richard Bandler (who wrote the foreword to one of Thom's books), he was the originator of the revolutionary "Hunter/Farmer Hypothesis" to understand the psychiatric condition known as Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD). A guest faculty member at Goddard College in Vermont, he also synthesized the "Younger/Older Culture model" for describing the underpinnings - and possible solutions - to the world's ecological and socio-political crises, suggesting that many of our problems are grounded in cultural "stories" which go back thousands of years. His most recent books are "Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class," "The Edison Gene," "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights," "We The People: A Call to Take Back America," and "What Would Jefferson Do?"

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

66 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Revolutionary thinking, turns the ADD debate on its head!, March 28, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Attention Deficit Disorder : A Different Perception (Paperback)

The most insightful book on ADD I have read to date. While not the perfect diagnostic starter's manual for ADD newcomers, this book is an imperative read for all ADDer who have a negative view of their condition.

Hartmann has crafted a scientifically supported theory that empowers ADDers. Hartmann asserts that ADDer are "hunters" living in a society that has literally evolved into a culture of "farmers." While the common ADD traits of distractibility and quick thinking were essential in hunting an antelope, they are less desirable when planting rows of crops or balancing a checkbook.

Unlike many ADD books, this is not a substance-less, feel-good read. Hartmann acknowledges the working realities/difficulties of being an ADD "hunter" in a non-ADD "farmer" world. Only Harman's model, based on the evolution of the human brain, frames the ADD debate in a manner that brings ADDers on equal intellectual footing with their non-ADD counterparts. In the hunter/farmer model, ADD is not a disorder or defect of the brain, rather a set of traits that are not perfectly suited to getting through the many mundane tasks of a farmers world.

Drawing upon ADDers like Einstein, Franklin and Edison, Hartmann illustrates how many ADDers have utilized their quick-react "hunter" brains to achieve incredible success in a "farmer" world. Not only is this book empowering for people who view their ADD as a "disadvantage," this book is must read for the parents and teacher who shape the perceptions of ADD children.

55 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most Important ADD Book Written, January 13, 2000

By 

Robert Kall "Rob Kall of Opednews.com" (Newtown, PA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Attention Deficit Disorder : A Different Perception (Paperback)

If you only read one book on ADD, read th is one, or Thom Hartmann's Complete Book on ADHD, which covers the same turf as this one. This book shouold be required reading by any health care provider, educator, counselor, etc. who works with ADD/ADHD. It offers a positive, hopeful view of ADHD. The truth is, many, if not most of the leaders, visionaries, explorers, pioneers and people who make the big differences in this world have been or are people who would meet the characteristics of an ADD person. Hartmann's book explains it. if you are ADD or love someone who is, it wold be tragic for you to not know the ideas in this book.
If you listen to many of the "experts" on ADD/HD, people with this diagnosis are not only disordered, they are pathologically defective. Thom Hartmann went through this destructive labeling with his child, and came out of the dark tunnel with a new light-- people with ADD are Different-- Hunters in a Farmers world. And in many cases, they function better than the farmers... if the setting is right. This book should be required reading for parents of children with ADD and adults with ADD. It is a wonderful breath of fresh air for people who are feeling bad about the diagnosis and their future.

I'm a relatively successful person who is clearly ADD. Thom's way of thinking about it enables me, and my ADD daughter to be proud of our attentional differences. The human race evolved for millions of years as hunters, and for the last 10,000 years as farmers. What do you think evolution prepared us better for? This book will bolster your attitude for dealing with teachers and others who push Ritalin or other stimulants as a quick fix to your or your child's differences.

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hartmann and Drugs, May 4, 2006

By 

Douglas Robinson (Oxford, MS United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Attention Deficit Disorder : A Different Perception (Paperback)

Hartmann is a successful multitasker: not only does he write popular books on ADD/ADHD, he has published numerous books of poetry, has opened four hospitals in Third World countries, and so on. His point is that ADD/ADHD is a curse if it is not channeled properly, but can be a great blessing, and an enormous goad (and even key) to success if the "sufferer" learns to handle it, learns to cope with it.

As someone who was bored in school not just because it was repetitive, not just because teachers spent way too much time on task for the attention spans of children, but because it was all too EASY, I recognized myself in Hartmann's case studies immediately. But I was never diagnosed with ADD or ADHD because I learned to cope early. I taught myself to stay on task long enough to finish projects. And as Hartmann stresses, that's the key: finishing projects. When you're ADD, or a "hunter," it requires an extra effort of focus to do it, at first--not just a burst of focus, but a willingness to keep your nose to the grindstone for long periods of time (HOURS! DAYS!) no matter how much it hurts--but soon enough the effort is internalized and success on the world's terms becomes much easier.

Not that the "farmers" will necessarily understand that success. My colleagues say I publish "too much." I'll be working on a scholarly book and a play and a translation at once, and they'll all get done, pretty quickly, within months, because I know I have to push hard to finish or I'll lose interest. As a result I've published something like 15 books, and have a hard drive full of unpublished and unproduced manuscripts as well. I can't understand people who spend fifteen years writing a single magnum opus. Don't they get BORED?

I do want to take issue with one unnamed reviewer, though:

"While I can agree with the point in this book that ADHD to some extent is situational (a hunter temperament within a farmer society) I have to raise obvious concerns about the outcome of any book not giving full credit to the metabolic issue and medications. ... It is an extremely painful experience for many parents of ADHD students to NOT provide medication or alternatives to medication while students continue to be hyperactive, unfocused, extremely distractible, while exercising little impulse control."

This sort of review is irresponsible. The reviewer clearly did not pay attention while reading Hartmann's book (easily distracted? ADD?). Hartmann stresses specifically that ADD/ADHD is painful, stressful, traumatic for many children, and that Ritalin or some other chemical intervention may in many cases be not only necessary but life-saving. But he also stresses that long-term Ritalin use is not the solution--that what children need is instruction in coping with ADD, in channeling their impulses in productive ways. In effect, what he is calling for is help for children with ADD/ADHD who need to learn to produce Ritalin analogs in their own brain chemistry, without external intervention.