Vorwort
Fascinating, illuminating and full of absorbing true case studies, FROM THE EDGE OF THE COUCH reveals how medical science is still struggling to fully understand the workings of the mind - and offers proof that fact really is much stranger than fiction.
Autorentext
Raj Persaud is a consultant psychiatrist working in the British National Health Service at the world-famous Maudsley Hospital in south London, and an honorary senior lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London. Uniquely for a doctor, he also holds a first-class honours degree in psychology from University College London, which recently awarded him the title of Fellow in recognition of his ground-breaking work in psychiatry. Other medical awards and honours include the prestigious Royal College of Psychiatrists' Research Prize and Medal, the Denis Hill Prize and the Osler Medal. As well as medicine, psychology and psychiatry, he holds university-level qualifications in statistics, history and philosophy.
Raj Persaud is the author of Staying Sane, The Motivated Mind and From the Edge of the Couch and his work has been published in academic medical journals, including the British Medical Journal, the Lancet and the British Journal of Psychiatry. He writes regularly for the national press and hosts BBC Radio 4's All in the Mind - the only broadcast series dedicated specifically to reporting on academic psychology and psychiatry. He also appears regularly on television programmes such as Question Time, Newsnight and Tomorrow's World. In a recent poll of members of the Royal College of Psychiatrists published in the Independent on Sunday newspaper, he was voted one of the top ten psychiatrists in the UK.
He is married to an eye surgeon, has a son and a daughter, and lives in London.
Klappentext
MEDICAL JOURNALISTS' ASSOCIATION 2003
TONY THISTLETHWAITE AWARD COMMENDATION FOR EXCELLENCE
You may think that vampires and werewolves are merely the creation of Hollywood and legend but, as Dr Raj Persaud reveals, there are bizarre people out there who are convinced they really are werewolves, vampires and other incredible creatures. As a result, they behave in ways beyond our wildest fantasies. But could these phenomena in fact arise from our most disturbing dreams?
In the tradition of Oliver Sacks' bestselling book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Dr Raj Persaud uses authentic case studies to explain current thinking on brain function and emotional disorders. In one case, a man could get his sexual kicks only by being crushed in garbage trucks, while another successfully persuaded his wife she had been abducted by aliens. One man made love to his furniture; another believed he was really a tiger and conducted an affair with a tigress in the local zoo.
Through his analysis of these and other bizarre conditions, such as Alien Hand Syndrome - where sufferers conclude that one of their own limbs is out to kill them - Multiple Personality Disorder and Erotomania - Dr Persaud suggests that we may not have as much free will and control over our bodies as we delusionally believe. Even more provocatively, in throwing open the usually secret world of the psychiatrist's casebook, he proves that fact really is much stranger than fiction.