Customer Reviews

Head Case: How I Almost Lost My Mind Trying to Understand My Brain (P.S.)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

[Full disclosure preamble: I used to work as a magazine editor, and Dennis Cass wrote for me. Some of what he wrote won awards. He's a pro. And a good guy to boot.] What's great about this book is that it messes with your expectations. You start out thinking it's a science book, and then you find yourself in memoir territory. But not icky, treacly, nobody-knows-the-trouble-I've-seen memoir; this one has a deep undercurrent of humor, despite the fact that some pretty unpleasant things go on. The science book doesn't go away--it gets augmented with the memoir. And then another section of the orchestra fires up, and it becomes a great book about writing, too. In an age when books are so often group-concocted like junior-high science projects and "branded" like candy bars or khaki pants, Head Case is a throwback to a time when you read a book because you wanted to connect with another mind.

When Cass says science isn't his thing, he's not speaking from false modesty. Fortunately, he keeps the science talk to a minimum (or leaves it to the likes of Malcom Gladwell). I give the book five stars because I enjoyed reading it despite a bad head cold. If you have anyone in your family with an addiction or mental illness this book will answer the question, "what would you find if you tried to understand that person through the latest in neuroscience?" Cass doesn't find any real answers, of course, but his journey is written with honesty and courage. That courage, to explore his fears, and expose the number of drinks and pills he has taken, makes him seem a mere mortal compared to Gladwell. But he should know it takes all kinds of authors to cover our collective head cases.

This book is a very loosely organized mix of intimate biographical detail and presumed reports from the field of brain function research. Unfortunately, the resultant pottage is rather seriously undercooked, so the reader just gets lumps of ingredients that fail to flavor or inform each other.

Cass talks a lot about his stepfather's eccentricities, drug problems, and probable bouts of manic-depression. The imbalance all this parental dysfunction brought to Cass' youth served as one of the primary spurs for Cass' adult investigation into the workings of the mind/brain and for this book. However, Cass just doesn't do a good enough job relating the two. After describing a particularly egregious lapse on the part of his stepfather, Cass proceeds to speculate somewhere down the line about whether such social insensitivity might have been caused by a defect in his Dad's amygdala. That's a pretty big bounce on the trampoline.

The reader is sent into further unfueled take-offs by Cass' own experiments in mental states. For example, he tries to test his tolerance for stress by keeping his arm immersed in ice water. Then he brings a picture of TV commentator Bill Maher to one of his interviews with a brain researcher to try to find out why Maher's face so frightens and frustrates him. Much of this book is just such childish brain chatter.

I did keep reading, mostly out of a sort of voyeuristic interest in what Cass' stepfather would do next. However, I really didn't learn much about the brain here, outside of the one more precise chapter that describes how the amygdala can register and "wire" fear even when we are not conscious of having been frightened. This chapter provides a possible explanation for the waves of panic experienced by people with anxiety disorders.

In general though, you would probably learn more about recent discoveries in brain function and chemistry in any issue of "Discover" magazine or "Scientific American," than you will find on these disjointed and rambling pages.

Head Case is an enjoyable journey of self discovery that many of us must travel. However, most of us don't do it with the vigor that Cass conjures up as he experiments on his own brain in his home-grown "laboratory" and offers it up to real scientists all over the country.

Whether conducting self-experiments in the kitchen while his family sleeps, or treating his real or possibly imagined ADHD with prescription meds, Cass ultimately learns more about himself, his childhood and his new role as a father than he sets out to.

It's nice to leave your brain behind and get inside someone else's for a short time. Head Case does just that. It's the neuroscience book for the rest of us. Buy it now, your brain will thank you.

"Head Case" is very unique...sort of a combination of a memoir and a book about neuroscience (or at least the quest to understand neuroscience). Mr. Cass has a wonderful sense of humor...I laughed out loud on several occasions...it was a much funnier book than I thought it would be. In particular, I found his musings about Bill Maher very sharp and comical...I've had the same thoughts and feelings about Mr. Maher myself. I also really liked his depiction of his mentally ill stepfather and the time they spent as a family living in New York. I thought it was very apt portrayal of living with someone who has major psychiatric problems. While the book is a little bit scattered, I think that that actually adds to it's charm...it's not a predictable read. Anyone who has any interest in the brain or mental illness or who appreciates quirky, intelligent humor will like this book.

If you want a victim-pitty-me memoir...don't read this book. But if you want to learn about what you should have been paying attention to in under-grad biology...read this book. If you'd like to laugh...hard and long from the warmth of self or near-self recognition...read this book. If you want to be glad to get inside someone else's very-smart head and heart, and find yourself the better for it, read this book. Then share it with someone you care about. Both of you will be the better for it. All the great elements of prose are herewith: tension, drama, release, comedy. It will remain on my shelf, with another copy bought and left with fly-leaf endorsements on the bookshelf of my favorite coffee house.

Length:: 1:25 Mins

Dennis Cass takes a very entertaining look at a problem we all have in common: the brain. (This is funny, too. 7 Remote Mysteries & 1 Delay)

You might not realize it at first, but this book chronicles the modern day equivalent of a spiritual quest. What could be more universally human than the attempt to get outside of one's personal veil of perception in order to make sense of conscious experience?

Dennis Cass may have created the need for the term "armchair neuroscientist" revealing exactly what this branch of science can and cannot tell us about ourselves. (And don't get me wrong, I do believe it can tell us some things.)

On another level, this book is the memoir of a person whose attention seems to be at the very least evenly divided between external events and introspection. Although, I imagine this is a trait common to many writers, I can think of few (or none) who have ever allowed such access to the inner life. Introverts everywhere, myself included, will read this book and think, hell yea, he's killing me softly.

In conclusion, I can't get the Arby's scene out of my head...

I should have paid more attention to the Publishers Weekly review at the top and not the enthusiastic reader reviews. This is an entertaining book, to be sure. Dennis is a talented writer. But I thought this was going to be a book about the discoveries in neuroscience, with the twist that Dennis Cass was going to present a Plimpton-like account in which his first-hand experiences in various tests and machines illustrate the deeper principles revealed by the neuroscience revolution. Wrong ... Instead the book is a tale of his step-fathers tormented descent into mental illness, with some personal asides and adventures. It's still an interesting book to read, but not anywhere near what I was expecting it to be.

Really wanted to love this book. What a great concept. But put it aside about 1/3 of the way through. Just not very interesting.