Customer Reviews

Understanding Paranoia: A Guide for Professionals, Families, and Sufferers

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

When I first opened this book, I felt that it was not appropriate for my situation. It seemed to address the disorder as it manifests most severely--with psychosis and extreme delusions. I passed the book on to the paranoid individual in my life and he has been very impressed with Dr. Kantor's work. The chapters near the end about how to deal with paranoid people, how to understand one's own thinking (for the paranoid person) and his descrpitions of how paranoid people may be in relationships and the prognosis for these were particularly useful. Overall, this book has been a big part of helping a man see how paranoia has affected his life and how he can lessen its impact. It has been life-changing. It is not only extremely well written and researched, it is also just about the only text you will find on the subject which can be applied to people with PPD, rather than the more severe manifestations.

This clearly written insightful book on a generally overlooked topic helped me understand myself and my relatives. If you think you may be paranoid or have a relative who suffers from paranoia this book will speak to in your language and fill you in on what is going on. Don't believe the review about its being too complicated; it is straighforward and to the point. I really found it useful.

This book helped me immeasurably to understand Paranoia and to deal with a person in my life who has suffered from paranoia for years, someone I never fully understood and had, until now, no idea how to manage. I also understood more about how paranoia determines the thoughts and actions of some in high places, including certain world leaders. Highly recommended as a fast, fascinating read, and as a book that offers laypersons a practical approach for coping with the paranoid individuals in their lives and even with their own paranoia.

This book makes for interesting reading but is not ideal for sufferers for several reasons. A large portion of the book is devoted to reckognizing the symptoms of paranoia in others. Second and more importantly, the book unconsciouly villainizes paranoids, the last thing a sufferer needs. What Kantor fails to observe is that sensitive people prone to emmotional extremes of a hostile nature, i.e. extreme anger, are also frequently excessively compassionate individuals. Reading about one defect after another, without the slightest mention of any redemptive qualities can be demoralizing and unconstructive.

Kantor combines cutting edge research with years of clinical experience to create a great book about an underdiagnosed syndrome. This is difficult to study because most paranoid clients are paranoid about therapy as well as being studied, but he has managed very well. He points out that paranoia can lie on a spectrum, and can also be situation specific. He writes very well, especially if you like erudite language and arch asides. He shows wit and compassion. After reading this book I understood a great deal about the inner life of someone who is paranoid. The last chapters give down to earth advice for sufferers and those who love them. It is an invaluable reference for lay and professional readers. I appreciated his compassionate and clear language, along with sharp insight and sense of humor.

I am an avid fan of the work of Dr. Kantor. He consistently has a way of reaching his readers in a non-threatening conversational style, that takes you right to the heart of understanding even the most complex disorders. UNDERSTANDING PARANOIA is a brilliant and definitive guide for all of us. Whether we personally struggle with mild or more severe paranoia --or if we have family, friends,acquaintances or clients that are affected by this disorder---this book not only helps us understand the causes and descriptions, but it also gives us effective solutions which are readily available to all. Incredibly insightful book!

I wanted to express my agreement with the September 2005 review of Understanding Paranoia in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, that says, "This book is an important and useful work...beneficial to laypersons...also helpful for clinicians...a valuable guide." To me, that says it all.

I was really hoping this would be a good book and help me out but sadly it is not. The author makes a lot of assumptions and the whole book seems more like his unqualified speculation rather than based on medical evidence. He is forthcoming and tells the reader that the people he calls "patients" were not his actual patients but rather stories he heard from other doctors or even read in the paper. However as the book goes on it becomes apparent that he, himself, is fabricating this anecdotes out of thin air just to prove some point. Even worse is that the points he makes are often stereotypes and could be offensive to sufferers or their families. Worse yet is that their is only one short chapter dedicated to sufferers and another to families. The rest of the book is largely geared toward professionals who can make all the judgment they want from the safety of their arm-chairs.

To be more specific, the author casts a wide net of people he deems "paranoid" but at the same time makes these broad generalizations that can't possibly hold true. For example, he categorizes as paranoid everyone from the jealous husband, to war veterans, political activists, computer hackers, to kids who shoot up their schools, employees who go "postal", and of course the guy who thinks the government implanted a microchip into his penis. Now these groups wouldn't be so bad if he didn't also make these broad generalizations. Early on in the book he claims all paranoid individuals are angry people. Then he goes on to say all paranoid people hate themselves. Later he calls them all sadomasochists. With these complex psychological conditions like paranoia, I don't think you can make generalization like that. The fact that the author attempts to makes the whole book seem unprofessional not to mention somewhat offensive.

To the books credit it does have a few pointers that might be helpful to some people with mild forms of paranoia. Its just that the book skims over these parts in a short chapter so it is not as helpful as it can be. All in all I don't feel like I learned anything significant by reading this book and I am not sure it helped me at all. Might be useful for a mental health professional but that is about it.

Dr. Kantor presents information in a logical order, in language that is easy to understand. Practical advice for family members dealing with a loved one with true paranoia disorders. Explaining the difference in paranoia, bipolar, and schizophrenia gives the reader a deeper understanding that allows one to communicate better with the loved one and theirs doctors.

Kantor himself is something of a psychological stylist as opposed to a dryly objective academeic, and high time someone took serious clinical psychology out of the beadle-ish false belief that good psychology shouldn't be entertaining. Kantor has a sense of humor, a blessed leavening for the somewhat grim study of paranoid typolgy. Paranoids are weirdly creative, often intuitive, and given to a richly unreal inner life. This book is rather like a ornithologist's companion for the pleasurable hobby of birdwatching, althougth we are on the lookout for a pair of noids, who are watching us intently from across the park with high powered binoculars. But seriously folks, Kantor will bring the academic works of Theodore Millon to life in a way that some other perfectionistic nitpickery just can't. If you're a noid watcher, and you realy want to spot a pair of noids in action and appreciate their plumage and subtler behavioral patterns, this is the book for you.