Head Case: How I Almost Lost My Mind Trying to Understand My Brain (Hardcover)

by Dennis Cass (Author)
Key Phrases: commonsense dualism, prehistoric brain, proximal learning, New York, Bill Maher, Theory of Mind (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
When writer's block threatened to interfere with Cass's career as a freelance journalist, he decided the solution would be to learn everything he could about how the brain works. He soon fancies himself an amateur scientist, embarking on a spree of experimentation, self-diagnosing himself with attention deficit disorder and scoring a prescription to Adderall, which helps at first but then starts messing up his mind. As Cass makes clear from the outset, the journalistic enterprise is fraught with emotional turbulence because it forces him to confront his family history, especially his stepfather's manic depression. Yet for all the outward appearances of candor—Cass, a former columnist for GQ and Slate, speaks freely of humiliating childhood experiences as well as of his adult jealousy of more successful writers like Malcolm Gladwell—it still feels like he's holding back. The science elements of the book are also insufficiently developed, especially when writers like Steven Johnson and Daniel Pink have already effectively staked out the genre of first-person guided tours of neuroscience. At times, Cass comes off as genuinely uncomfortable with what his research tells him about his brain and himself, leaving readers wishing he'd pushed harder to get a richer story. (Mar.)
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Product Description

When journalist Dennis Cass was nineteen years old his stepfather, Bill, suffered from a psychotic break. Cass tried to commit him to a mental institution only to watch Bill escape from a cab en route to a Harlem hospital and run raving down the streets of Manhattan. Some fifteen years later, a bout of writer's block turned Cass's thoughts toward the brain.

A complete stranger to science, Cass immersed himself in the world of neuroscience, subjecting himself to brain scans, psychological tests, and scientific conferences, as he attempted to gain a better understanding of ADHD, anxiety, stress, motivation and reward, and consciousness. Then things got a little weird. What began as a more clinical effort to understand himself soon became a personal and emotional journey into the fragile, mysterious workings of the mind and the self.

Head Case is a charming, hilarious, and at times harrowing memoir of scientific experimentation. It's a story of science and society, of fathers and sons, and of how the past lives on in the present. Along the way the book asks timeless questions: What do we know about ourselves? What can we know about ourselves? And how much self-knowledge can a single person handle?

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins; 1 edition (February 27, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060594721
• ISBN-13: 978-0060594725
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,045,698 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Genre, Schmenre, May 16, 2007

By	Jeffrey A. Johnson (Minneapolis, MN United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

[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.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I Laughed Reading About His Losing His Mind, March 3, 2007

By	Max Rottersman (Hanover, NH USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Your mind is a terrible thing to taste..., July 23, 2007

By	AaronPaul (Minneapolis, MN USA) - See all my reviews

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.