Customer Reviews

Rewriting the Soul

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Ian Hacking is a brilliant thinker and an elegant writer. I read this book after one of my husband's friends suggested it. He said it was the best book he can ever remember reading (like me, he prefers to read good nonfiction).
After reading the book (during which I couldn't help marking particularly good passages because I knew I'd want to reread them), I have found myself refering to this book frequently in my own writing (I'm an academic) and conversation with my students. I must agree with my husband's friend: this is certainly one of the best books I've read.
If you enjoy smart analysis of contemporary culture and the frailties of sciences claiming to map the human mind, you will really enjoy this book. If you are a deep believer in the pure and virtuous authority of psychology, you will feel disturbed.

All I have to say about this is that the book was published in 1998 and is now 14 years old. In a hotly contested field such as this, it is more helpful to stay current in the literature. A specific, exhaustively peer-reviewed text which was recently published is this one:

Dissociation and the Dissociative Disorders: DSM-V and Beyond by Paul F. Dell and John A. O'Neil (Apr 20, 2009)

I suggest that if you are truly interested in the phenomenon of DID/MPD, read more recently published books. "Rewriting the Soul" was written during the heated years of the media war between the "False Memory Syndrome Foundation" and the medical/psychological profession. Naturally this book was greatly influenced by that sociopoliticized time. Times have changed, whatever your perspective on this diagnosis.