Christopher Lane Shyness Reviewed in Examiner

Phobia or faux-bia?
The Examiner, October 23, 2007
Robin Tierner

WASHINGTON— Shyness, fear of public speaking, reluctance to dine alone in restaurants — common discomforts or mental disorders?

Medicalizing ordinary emotions has generated big business for the pharmaceutical industry and psychiatric profession. In the new book “Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness,” Christopher Lane examines the impact on health care and society when psychiatry’s bible, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), swelled from handbook into heavy tome detailing hundreds of new conditions such as social anxiety disorder, known as SAD.

For the rest of the article, please click here.

Christopher Lane's Shyness Receives Starred Review in Library Journal

From Library Journal, October 15, 2007

*Lane, Christopher. Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness. Yale Univ. Oct. 2007. c.272p. photogs. index. ISBN 978-0-300-12446-0. $27.50. PSYCH

Lane (English, Northwestern Univ.; Hatred and Civility: The Antisocial Life in Victorian England) takes on the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and big pharma, asserting that for self-serving reasons involving control and profit they have colluded to create new psychiatric diagnoses demonizing shyness and demanding treatment by drugs such as Paxil. Having gained access to archival materials from the APA, Lane provides a behind-the-scenes look at the haphazard, unscientific process used to revise The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, along with the equally unscientific procession of drug studies funded by the very pharmaceutical companies that most stand to profit from endorsement of those drugs by the investigating psychiatrists. This superb, iconoclastic cultural study might well be compared to Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison and Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, two major works by Michel Foucault exploring the social construction of ideas and institutions. Highly recommended for university and large public libraries.-Lynne F. Maxwell, Villanova Univ. Sch. of Law Lib., PA

For other reviews, please click here.

Rachel Herz Interview in the October Issue of Self Magazine

Check out Rachel Herz, author of The Scent of Desire, interviewed in the current issue of Self Magazine, page 221.

Christopher Lane's SHYNESS reviewed in The New York Observer.

Blushing, Once a Virtue, Now a Symptom
by Juliet Lapidos
The New York Observer, October 16, 2007
SHYNESS: HOW NORMAL BEHAVIOR BECAME A SICKNESS
By Christopher Lane
Yale University Press, 263 pages, $27.50

Every student of medical history knows that the psychiatric establishment is not immune to fads and fallacies. A Victorian physician once estimated that a quarter of all women suffer from “hysteria”—a vague, catchall diagnosis modern psychiatrists have banished from clinical circles. Remember learning about “multiple personality disorder” from Primal Fear and Fight Club? That’s probably a canard, too. In his excellent new book, Shyness, Christopher Lane identifies another dubious mental illness. Perhaps you’ve read about it on highway billboards: It’s called social anxiety disorder.

Mr. Lane traces the discovery—or rather the creation—of social anxiety disorder to the late 1970’s, when the American Psychiatric Association updated its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. A small group of leading psychiatrists deleted a few entries, tweaked others, and added dozens of new mental illnesses. The science behind these sweeping revisions was shockingly flimsy. Mr. Lane reveals that the task force members conducted little systematic research, and often based their conclusions on ambiguous studies.

For the rest of the article, please click here.

Jessie Gruman & Aftershock in The Capital Times

Cancer tale is triply inspirational
Debra Carr-Elsing
The Capital Times, 10/16/2007

... After interviewing more than 200 patients and their families, as well as hospital chaplains, doctors and nurses, Gruman wrote a book, "AfterShock: What To Do When The Doctor Gives You -- Or Someone You Love -- A Devastating Diagnosis" (Walker & Co., 2007; paperback, $16.95). She will talk about her new book and how to move forward during a medical crisis at a free community presentation Thursday night at Monona Terrace.

"Every year, thousands of Americans get terrible medical news about cancer, HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis, ALS and other life-altering diseases, and they have to absorb this information into lives that are pretty full already," Gruman says.

Besides that, in the few weeks after a devastating diagnosis, there's no time in your life when it's more important to really understand your options, Gruman adds. In her book, she offers suggestions to help families navigate that journey.

"People are very resilient, and they should know that the intense sense of loss and despair that they feel when they first get bad medical news will not last forever," Gruman says. "They will be able to return to a life that's rich with possibility." ...

For the rest of the article, please click here.

Anthony Lewis' FREEDOM FOR THE THOUGHT THAT WE HATE Receives a Starred Review in Kirkus

From KIRKUS (Starred Review), October 15, 2007
Lewis, Anthony
FREEDOM FOR THE THOUGHT THAT WE HATE: Tales of the First Amendment

A superb history of the First Amendment and the body of law that has followed it.

Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and longtime Supreme Court observer Lewis (Make No Law: The Sullivan Case and the First Amendment, 1991, etc.), now retired from the New York Times, explains in the clearest of language how freedom of expression evolved in this country. Surprisingly, it was only in 1919 that a Supreme Court justice (Oliver Wendell Holmes) wrote that the First Amendment protected speech and publication, and that was in a dissent—not until 1931 did a majority on the Court begin enforcing the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech. Drawing examples from many cases, Lewis demonstrates that interpretations of the First Amendment shifted over time as the Supreme Court, and the public, began to recognize that freedom of expression was one of America’s basic values. He considers the ways in which freedom can conflict with such other values as the right to privacy, protection from hate speech, the safeguarding of national security and the right to a fair trial (i.e., one uncompromised by prejudicial press coverage). He also explores the evolution of laws against libel here and in Great Britain and reports on the impact of the landmark 1964 case, New York Times v. Sullivan, which ended the press’s fear of seditious libel actions and promoted the investigative spirit that led to critical coverage of the Vietnam War and Watergate. Anecdotes abound in this lively, lucid history. Among other choice bits, readers will learn which Supreme Court Justice viewing films for their possibly pornographic content took a law clerk with him to tell him what was happening on the big screen.

Timely and important, a work that astonishes and delights as it informs.

For other Kirkus reviews, please click here.

Freada Kapor Klein in Newsday

Talking about workplace sexual harassment
Newsday October 15, 2007
BY PAT BURSON, pat.burson@newsday.com

If you've been at the water cooler recently, it probably came up: Sexual harassment is a hot topic at the moment. First there was the recent jury award to Anucha Browne Sanders over her treatment by New York Knicks coach Isiah Thomas and Madison Square Garden; then there was Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' resurrection of accusations Anita Hill made years ago during his confirmation hearings - rehashed in a new autobiography in which he again maintains his innocence and questions Hill's.

And it appears that MSG executives' troubles aren't over yet. Courtney Prince, a former captain of the Rangers City Skaters cheerleading squad has a sex-discrimination lawsuit pending against the Garden and two of its employees.

When such high-profile incidents get people buzzing, legal and workplace experts say it's also a good time for employees and employers to revisit and re-evaluate their efforts toward eradicating sexual harassment on the job - whether in offices or ditches, on front lines or assembly lines, in halls of learning or houses of faith - anywhere men and women work closely together.

The issue isn't new, but approaches to it continue to evolve. We asked experts who deal with the issue of sexual harassment as part of their work to offer their insights.

Here's what they had to say:

The workplace-harassment researcher and trainer: Sexual harassment policies often are written to protect the company, not to give practical guidance to workers at all levels, says Freada Kapor Klein, founder of the Level Playing Field Institute in San Francisco, who studies sexual harassment on the job and works with companies to create bias-free environments.

Here's her approach:

Toss out the one-size-fits-all, zero-tolerance sexual harassment policies that amount to little more than a list of do's and don'ts. They "make no sense when you're talking about grown-ups who spend eight, 10 and 12 hours a day in the workplace, who come from very different cultures, and who ought to be allowed some latitude to decide for themselves which is appropriate and inappropriate," says Klein, who offers more options for handling difficult situations at work in her new book, "Giving Notice: Why the Best and the Brightest are Leaving the Workplace and How You Can Help Them Stay" (Jossey-Bass). It arrives in bookstores on Friday.

Create "people-friendly" policies that deal with real-life situations, including examples of "the gray area, where the workplace stops and starts," she says.

"For instance, if two people are walking to the train station after work, and they're talking about their weekend dates and somebody's offended by a comment that their co-worker makes, how do they handle it? Is this the business of the employer? Does it affect how they work together tomorrow?"

Establish safe and confidential places where employees can go informally to seek advice, ask a question or express a concern, as well as places they could go to file a formal complaint that would be investigated. "It's really letting the employee choose how to handle it," Klein says. "The choice should be the employee's."

Explain the differences between behaviors that are annoying, inappropriate and illegal. "There's a wide range of behavior, and it has a subjective part and objective part," she says. "The subjective piece means this is unwelcome to me. I don't like this joke. I don't like the way this person touches me. I don't want to hear about your dates. The objective part is, does it cross the line for most people? Would most people agree that this is out of bounds in a work environment?"

Urge employees to be clear about their boundaries and speak up respectfully if they feel their boundaries have been violated.

Let your employees know that you will enforce their boundaries. Klein says she thinks employees should be able to negotiate their own relationships with their colleagues without interference. But, she adds, if one employee already has warned another that he or she is doing something that's crossing the line and the person continues, then it's time for a higher-up to step in.

"When you say, 'Please don't touch me again,' then I understand that I'm risking getting in trouble when I persist because management has made it clear" that everyone's boundaries will be protected.

For the rest of the article, please click here.