Capture Unraveling The Mystery Of Mental Suffering – Using in-depth case studies, Can’t Just Stop explores the science behind both mild and extreme compulsive behaviors—“a fascinating read about human behavior and how it can go awry” (The Charlotte Observer).
Whether shopping with military precision or simply hanging up kitchen towels, compulsion is something most of us have witnessed in our daily lives. But compulsions exist on a broad continuum, and at the opposite end of these mild forms are life-altering disorders.
Capture Unraveling The Mystery Of Mental Suffering
Sharon Begley’s meticulously researched book is the first to treat all of these behaviors together—from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) to hoarding, to exercise compulsions, even compulsions to do good. They may look completely different, but all of these behaviors are ways of coping with varying degrees of anxiety. Sharing the personal stories of dozens of interviewees, “Begley combines personal subject matter with thoughtfulness and sensitivity” (Library Journal) and gives significant context to their plight. Along the way, she explores the role of coercion in our fast-paced culture, the brain science behind it, and the surprising manifestations of behavior throughout history.
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Can’t Just Stop makes coercion clear and accessible, with “fresh insights that could fundamentally change the way we think about and treat mental illness in the future” (Publishers Weekly).
Sharon Bagley is a senior science writer for STAT, the science publication of The Boston Globe. She previously worked for Reuters, Newsweek, The Daily Beast and The Wall Street Journal. She is the author of Can’t Just Stop; The Emotional Life of Your Brain (with Richard J. Davidson); Train your mind, change your brain; and Mind and Brain (with Jeffrey Schwartz). She has received many awards for bringing science to the public.
“Compelling… One of the strengths of this book is Begley’s rigorous clarity about her subject… Begley takes us on a tour of the compulsions through history and the fascinating transition as they moved from what they saw as a religious phenomenon, to the point that they were considered a medical disease…[A] good job.’
“Begley, The Boston Globe’s senior life sciences stat writer, is one of the best at translating complex science for a broad audience. Overall, ‘Can’t Just Stop’ is fast-paced and exciting without being simplistic, and Bagley shows remarkable restraint in avoiding news that you can use to improve your productivity or otherwise improve your life.”
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“Begley combines personal subject matter with thoughtfulness and sensitivity in this compelling read. Recommended for anyone who wants to learn more about compulsive behavior.”
“Begley’s latest chapter on brain function in the compulsive mind contains fresh insights that could fundamentally change the way we think about and treat mental illness in the future.”
“Sharon Begley has done us all a service by writing about compulsion without writing about illness and offering a new perspective on a phenomenon that is common, if not universal. People concerned about their own compulsive behavior will appreciate her nuanced and balanced approach and may come away with a new understanding of themselves.”
“Sharon Bagley is science fiction’s liveliest writer. Can’t Just Stop offers a modern take on compulsion (and who doesn’t?) and a delightful read.”
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“Filled with emotionally resonant stories, ‘Can’t Just Stop’ helps us understand not only the basics of some forms of mental illness, but also the daily concerns that largely shape our behavior. A fascinating look at the human mind in our age of anxiety.”
“At once fascinating and compassionate, funny and informative, this volume should be on every psychiatrist’s bookshelf and on the nightstand of anyone who enjoys exciting and insightful writing.”
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By clicking “Register Me”, I agree to the Terms of Use and acknowledge the Privacy Policy and Financial Incentive Notice. Free eBook offer available to NEW US subscribers only. Offer redeemable at Simon & Schuster e-book sales partner. Must redeem within 90 days. See full terms and options this month. When the American writer David Foster Wallace gave a speech at the commencement ceremony at Kenyon College in 2005, he urged graduates to “control how and what you think.” If you don’t at least try to regulate your thoughts and behavior, Wallace warned, you will go through life “dead, unconscious, a slave to your head.” Wallace himself suffered from unwanted negative thoughts and self-doubt for a long time and committed suicide three years after this speech.
David Kessler: Books, Biography, Latest Update
But can our mind become a “terrible master” as described by Wallace? Kessler, a former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, has been looking at this question for the past two decades, studying how substances like food, alcohol and tobacco can hijack our brain chemistry and make us act against our best intentions — to overeat on cakes, booze or cigarettes.
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He shared his basic theory of how this happens in his 2009 New York Times bestseller, The End of Binge Eating. But in his latest offering, Capture, Kessler takes these ideas a step further: he argues that the same biological mechanism that can disrupt our self-control is also largely responsible for our emotional suffering.
He calls this mechanism “capture” and describes it as the process by which some stimulus—a substance, place, thought, memory, or person—can capture our attention and change our perception. “Once our attention becomes increasingly focused on this stimulus,” Kessler writes, “the way we think and feel, and often the things we do, may not match what we consciously desire.” In other words, when a seizure begins, it can make us feel like we can’t control our thoughts and actions.
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For the most part, the book provides a theoretical look at the psychological forces that dictate our destructive impulses, such as self-doubt and anger, and give rise to our mental suffering, such as depression and addiction. But Kessler also outlines the neurobiological underpinnings of his theory. In the brain, he explains, “seizure is the result of neural patterns that are created in response to different experiences.” Over time, our neural response to a stimulus can become automatic, and when that response doesn’t match our conscious intentions, we feel off course.
Kessler illustrates his theory with a series of vignettes exploring, among other things, Wallace’s lifelong struggles with and obsession with Colorado shooter James Holmes. Capture can poison the mind, Kessler notes, but it can also provide an antidote. He describes some people who have escaped stressful feedback loops and found stability by replacing an unhealthy mindset or activity—say, overwhelming anxiety—with a more positive one, such as exercise.
These stories about real people are fascinating, but ultimately provide only anecdotal support for Kessler’s theory. Some readers may crave more scientific evidence to better understand how entrapment works, what causes it, and how we can break free. — Lindsey Konkel
In Avengers: Age of Ultron, Tony Stark (aka Iron Man) and Bruce Banner (aka Hulk) develop a powerful artificial intelligence to improve Stark’s global defense system. The AI, Ultron, immediately decides that the only good way to protect humans is to destroy them. Skynet, the artificial intelligence that awakens in the Terminator movies, comes to a similar conclusion, perhaps giving new meaning to the old adage “Great minds think alike.”
David Kessler, M.d., White House Covid 19 Response Leader, To Give Einstein’s 2021 Commencement Address
Is the human race really racing down the road to its own extinction through the development of artificial intelligence smarter than us? In his new book, In Our Own Image, artificial intelligence expert Zarkadakis explores this and related issues with extraordinary ingenuity, clarity, and breadth, weaving together material drawn from a range of disciplines—not just computer science, but also history, philosophy, psychology and neuroscience.
We have already created intelligent machines, but we are far from cracking the big nut, consciousness – and not, he adds, because it is impossible to do, but because we have been slow on the engineering side. Neuroscience shows that consciousness is the result of the integration of information that flows in complex loops from different parts of the brain to the cerebral cortex. In theory, we can build circuits that work in the same way, Zarkadakis says, and “neuristors” and other so-called neuromorphic devices invented in recent years are gradually moving us in that direction.
It does a particularly good job of answering one of the most fundamental questions about artificial intelligence: Why do we go to such great lengths to create artificial minds when we have so many real ones? He claims that we are driven to this by ancient unconscious tendencies to imbue inanimate objects with human-like spirits. We have created totems for millennia, and praying to them gave us a sense of control over our lives; the ultimate expression of these trends would be the creation of an inorganic object that we can truly control that enhances human capabilities.
The problem here is that a split second after we create this entity, it, like Ultron, will almost certainly evolve into a much more powerful entity.
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