Synopses & Reviews
Includes bibliographical references (p. 257-267) and index.
Review
"This combination of expert scientific and historical context, tough-minded reporting and daringly subjective re-creation serves to illuminate and humanize a sometimes arcane subject....[O]ne of the most informative and readable recent books on psychology." Publishers Weekly
Review
"Smart, charming, iconoclastic, and inquisitive." Peter D. Kramer, author of Listening to Prozac
Review
"Slater is...grounded in her research and conclusions and does succeed in bringing a refreshingly honest, and human, perspective to an all-too-often detached clinical science." Booklist
Review
"[A] wayward and powerful blend of science, autobiography and imagination." Laura Miller, The New York Times
Review
"[A] powerful and accessible introduction to the science by a writer who is adept at navigating its bitterest fault lines. Slater has the necessary technical expertise to tackle the various ethical dilemmas that inevitably arise in inquiries of the human mind, but she also has the necessary creativity to cut through those controversies in order to show us just how complex and curious psychology has shown us humans to be." Farhad Manjoo, Salon.com (read the entire Salon.com review)
Synopsis
Slater documents the drama of extraordinary inquiries into human psychology, bringing to life stories with unforgettable protagonists. She delivers a witty and stunningly perceptive view of the progress of the science of the human mind in the last century.
Table of Contents
Opening Skinner's box : B.F. Skinner's rat race -- Obscura : Stanley Milgram and obediance to authority -- On being sane in insane places : experimenting with psychiatric diagnosis -- In the unlikely event of a water landing : Darley and Latanâe's training manual--a five-stage approach -- Quieting the mind : the experiments of Leon Festinger -- Monkey love : Harry Harlow's primates -- Rat park : the radical addiction experiment -- Lost in the mall : the false memory experiment -- Memory Inc : Eric Kandel's sea slug experiment -- Chipped : this century's most radical mind cures.