Book review: Mind and social practice: selected writings of Sylvia Scribner. Ethel Tobach, Rachel Joffe Falmagne, Mary Brown Parlee, Laura M. W. Martin, and Aggie Scribner Kapelman (Eds). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997. No. of pages 419. ISBN 0-521-46203-7 (Hardback).
✍ Scribed by Susan Sonnenschein
- Book ID
- 101278420
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1998
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 64 KB
- Volume
- 12
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0888-4080
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
approved as a cure for memory-related de®cits in Alzheimer Disease by the Food and Drug Administration in the USA, but not by the ocial authorities in the UK. The results from the clinical trials with Tacrine should be de®ned, at best, equivocal: whilst a discrepant amount of improvement is sometimes reported in a limited number of psychometric measures, pharmaceutical trials fail to show any sizeable eects in behavioural or functional outcome measures.
As Wiley's www page maintains, the Handbook of Memory Disorders will interest clinicians and students in neuropsychology, clinical psychology, psychiatry, neurology, and occupational and speech therapists. It will also appeal to scientists, who will ®nd it valuable as a reference book. It is in fact a science book. Psychology books, and memory books in particular, are the only scienti®c books that, in the book shops, are to be found amidst popular publications on the paranormal or self help. These purport to teach frogs how to become princes and to live magically, demonstrate that you are what you eat, describe the technique of radiant' thinking, detail the sexual problems of martian males and venusian females, and unlock the pattern of the reader's natural' creativity. This is probably due to some assonances or alliterations in the key words of the books' titles. With the same logic, dissertations on Schroedinger's cat or on the biochemistry of galanthamine should be shelved in the `pet and garden' sector, and treatises on the mysteries of the black holes in the DIY. I abhor the idea of ®nding the Handbook of Memory Disorders mingled with the Breakthrough Programs that regenerate mental energy or the Manual for a Perfect Memory. I appeal to the good sense of the book shops' managers: shelve psychology books in the science sector, please. I do not want to see my favourite textbooks cheek-to-cheek with volumes on astrological predictions. I am a Libran, and, notoriously, Librans do not believe in astrology.