Haunted Children: Rethinking Medication of Common Psychological Disorders (S U N Y Series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology) [Paperback]

Arthur F. Roemmelt (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0791438864 | ISBN-13: 978-0791438862 | Publication Date: August 1998

In Haunted Children Arthur F. Roemmelt, M.D., relates stories of his years as a child psychiatrist, sharing the experiences of children with a variety of psychiatric disorders and emphasizing the intensive and creative relationship necessary for the children to develop in a healthy fashion. The author discusses the movement of psychiatry away from psychotherapy toward strategic interventions and pharmacology and the consequences of this transformation. He argues that, although the latter treatment is seen as more efficient and available, it can also promote certain maladies such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and child abuse. Roemmelt concludes that what essentially is troubling many children is better confronted in therapy rather than treated with medications.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Arthur F. Roemmelt, M.D., is a psychiatrist in Syracuse, New York, who has been in practice for more than two decades. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 196 pages
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr (August 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0791438864
• ISBN-13: 978-0791438862
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,197,842 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A BOOK OF SUBSTANCE WITH FASCINATING CASE STUDIES, July 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Haunted Children: Rethinking Medication of Common Psychological Disorders (S U N Y Series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology) (Hardcover)

Roemmelt presents some fascinating case studies of children whose lives were distorted by family and environment; children very difficult to reach, but for whom the force of a human relationship with Roemmelt was enough to keep them from a life of medicated confusion and increasing fragmentation.

This book is a counter argument against the belief that all neurotic behavior, or most, has a biological component that should be manipulated medically to correct emotional problems and inner conflict.

In the spirit of Karen Horney and others, Roemmelt takes the position that neurosis is essentially a problem in human relationship -- that many deep inner problems are rooted in conflicts arising from relationships between ideals ( the fact of what we are vs. what we 'ought to be'), self, and others.

Clearly some problems of neurosis and many of psychosis are biologically oriented, and all ultimately have a biological representation -- yet it is not the position of this book that drugs should be described as a first resort, but as a last resort.

The feeling of being truly alive -- that comes from pain, persistence and the desire to overcome ones limitations, as much as from any other set of feelings -- can be canceled out by the regulatory and often harmful side effects of medication. Many doctors hand it out like candy. (Drs. can be as bad with medication as they can be with therapy.)

This book is not about "touchy feely" as another critic suggests, but a testimony to love in the spirit of awareness; and also in the spirit of the warrior -- the fighters being the children who made it back to the other side.

Some people clearly need medicine. Some really don't -- they need a shot at a real life. Could Roemmelt really provide that chance for some of his Haunted Children -- read the book and decide.

'If you don't feel it, you're not getting it. '

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Keep on taking the pills ..., February 27, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Haunted Children: Rethinking Medication of Common Psychological Disorders (S U N Y Series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology) (Paperback)

Yet another book deriding the new biologically-oriented psychiatry as dry and heartless.

Contains several case histories of classically autistic children who are deemed to be deeply emotionally disturbed (the fault of their parents, of course) and subjected to ludicrous psychoanalytic interpretations. Where has Roemmelt been since the sixties? Has he not yet noticed not only that autism has been conclusively demonstrated to be neurological in origin, but that a number of high-functioning people with autism (such as Temple Grandin and Gunilla Gerland) have backed this up and started describing their experiences, which, needless to say, bear no resemblance to Roemmelt's wild imaginings?

Any attempt to present psychoanalysis as the warm, humane, "touchy-feely" alternative to biologically-oriented psychiatry is doomed if it displays this much ignorance and lack of interest in the actual minds and opinions of the people it purports to be studying.

One reason, after all, for the surge in biologically-oriented psychiatry in the last decade is the massive number of lives that were shattered by psychoanalytic dogmas (such as the groundless claim that autism was an emotional disturbance caused by unloving parents).