Customer Reviews

Neurotic Styles (The Austen Riggs Center Monograph Series, No. 5)

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

 

 

I agree with Peter Dunn, M.D., about the importance of this work and its historical place in understanding psychopathology. Please read his excellent review. However, Dr. Shapiro's writing style is an obstacle to understanding during a first reading. He needs a good editor. The book reads as if Dr. Shapiro dictated the text, mulling over what he was trying to say. Thus, it contains many turgid, run-on sentences. I often had to read a sentence again to understand its full meaning. This distracted me from following the overall concepts. The chapter on impulsive styles is especially repetitive. The stylistic difficulties that are distracting on a first reading don't get in the way as much the second time, when one is trying to remember key elements. At this point, Dr. Shapiro's parsing of shades of meaning offers subtle insights. Those insights could have been conveyed the first time by breaking one sentence into two or three, but the book is what it is. I recommend it, if you're willing to do the work. In comparison, I recommend the works of Glen Gabbard, M.D., whose writing is especially lucid.

Another reviewer had to read this in preparation for his graduate work in psychology. He found it "fatuous." I read it during my graduate work in psychology and found it refreshing.

It was a relief to read something that was qualitative in its nature. There's not a statistic in a cartload. Instead, Shapiro takes an inside point of view -- or what's called an "emic perspective" in cultural anthropology -- to examine ways of thinking ("cognitive styles") found in different neurotic personality types -- the obsessive-compulsive, the paranoid, the hysterical, and the impulsive. The result is an easily understood set of organized personal experiences, and their intuitive explanations, based on Shapiro's own research and experience. It's less "formal", less behavioral a set of descriptions, than impressionistic. The subject is the mind, not so much the activities that express it. It's really so old-fashioned that it's revolutionary.

Well, I'll try to sketch an example of how he goes about his business. The first neurotic style Shapiro examines is the obsessive-compulsive. The central image is that of a worried and rigid guy whose mind is controlled by a strict "overseer" laying down rules that the victim must follow. The interests of the obsessive-compulsive become so narrowed by these rules that everyday problems become a desperate matter of finding a solution that "fits". The solutions lose flavor and become technical. If he listens to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, he's listening to the fidelity of the recording, not responding to the music. He can't see the forest because he's focused on a particular tree.

How much psychology do you need to know in order to get something out of the book? Not much. If you know that Freud believed that adult neuroses were rooted in childhood experiences, that's about the level you're required to operate on. Shapiro makes no attempt to explain the development of these disorders. His analysis is all in the here-and-now. And there's hardly a word about treatment.

I suppose opinions can legitimately vary. For my part, I not only got a lot out of it but enjoyed reading it. I'm rereading it now, twenty-five years after the first time.

This is finely written, brilliant, and in its day, extremely forward looking book. Essentially it predates the idea of, in psychiatry, Axis II, or personality disorders. The writing is clear, poignant and full of examples. Nowadays, it may seem dated, since some of the Axis II categories have been refined, changed, or even eliminated by the various DSM committees, and accumulated research. I read this book many times as an undergraduate and graduate student (it was recommended by Bryan Hayden at Brown for our beginning personality class) and it served as a great introduction to the notion of personality as an invariant, durable style of interacting. Also, it hearkens back to a time when maybe psychologists were, perhaps, a bit more literary minded: the writing is at that level of quality. Damon LaBarbera, PHD

I am surprised at the wide range of reviewer reactions the book elicited. I love the book and still refer to it, especially the "hysterical" style (now officially called histrionic personality disorder).

Shapiro attempts to capture the characteristic behaviors, perceptions and interpersonal dynamics of each style. He succeeds, and does so without using arcaine terms or invoking abstract, academic theories.

Don

It is hard to follow at times. However, it helps the reader get the feeling of being a person who has a neurotic style of dealing with the world. The book is not critical but explanatory of the different styles most people have at least to some extent.

I thought this might be an interesting read - it was recommended to me. Pretty dull and boring. Oh well.

i read this book two decades ago in preparation for my graduate studies in psychology. i thoroughly disliked it at the time for its digressive, repetitious and fatuous style. i have never read a book before or since that was written with its particular combination of hysterical imagination and obsessive compulsive hairsplitting. impulsive personalities will gnash their teeth in anguish. and after i had the peculiar annoyance of reading this book -- something so awful i can vividly remember it twenty years later -- the whole subjective and flimsy concept of "neurosis" was swept out of the professional clinical nomenclature, which therefore makes dr. shapiro's wearying little compendium of clinical anecdotes digressive, repetitious, fatuous and irrelevant. "neurotic styles" is an anachronism alongside the bathetic science fiction of sigmund freud ... but at least freud knew how to write.

This review is based on the Italian translation of the text.

The book portrays each style in vivid and easily identifiable tones: perhaps even too much so as I found myself insterted in all styles but, possibly, for the hysterical one...

What was a bit baffling is the use of an ineffable "normal behavior" that sometimes appeared as the one projected on a Buddha or a Jesus Christ.

Very little, to conclude, is said on how to tackle each style in order to help and overcome it, but possibly that was not in the scope of the book.