An important new book. . . . The achievement of Shyness is to chart for the first time the events preceding the rise and fall of the SSRIs. Lane has marshalled a cache of unpublished data to explain the academic framework that allowed the rise to happen. [He] tells the complex story with impressive clarity. . . . Lane has done a valuable job in tracing the roots of the current crisis and he certainly isn't calling for a reinstatement of Freudianism; what is needed now is another map to indicate a way out.-Jerome Burne, Times Literary Supplement
Lane . . . notes that when psychiatrists diagnose the shy as suffering from social phobia, they mistake a variation in human temperament for a mental disorder; if anything, the diagnosis only adds to the sense of unease felt by shy people. He is also right in observing that the psychiatrists'
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (
DSM), the profession's standard 900-page reference work, errs by designating other kinds of normal human variation as mental disorders and so exaggerates the incidence of mental illness. . . . [
Shyness] provides vivid portraits of how
DSM-III was constructed, over the course of six years.-Paul McHugh,
Wall Street JournalA provocative look at an important chapter in the history of modern psychiatry.-Judith Graham,
Chicago TribuneLane argues in this well-researched . . . controversial book that shyness [has been] pathologized, to the detriment, especially, of children and teenagers.-Elsa Dixler, New York Times Book Review (Paperback Row)
Lane finds a trove of troubling (and previously unpublished) material in the APA archive and in drug company memorandums, laying bare the APA's internal politics and showing the growing influence of drug companies on psychiatry practice. Similarly alarming are Lane's dissections of big pharma's marketing of anti-depressants and description of how information about side-effects and withdrawal symptoms associated with popular prescription drugs such as Prozac and Paxil were withheld from the public. This controversial and well-documented book will spark its share of debates.-
Publishers WeeklyHaving 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. . . . [A] superb, iconoclastic cultural study. . . . Highly recommended for university and large public libraries.-
Library JournalLane provides a behind-the-scenes look at the haphazard, unscientific process used to revise
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. . . . [A] superb, iconoclastic cultural study.-
Library JournalHaving 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. . . . [A] superb, iconoclastic cultural study. . . . Highly recommended for university and large public libraries.-
Library Journal (starred review)In his brilliant
Shyness: How Normal Behaviour Became a Sickness, Christopher Lane painstakingly shows how the category of 'mental disorder' has been expanded in recent decades, so that what were once considered normal emotions or everyday foibles-shyness, rebelliousness, aloofness, and so on-have been relabelled as phobias, disorders and syndromes.-Brendan O'Neill,
New Statesman and SocietyFascinating . . . persuasive . . . [and] painstaking, [Shyness] should be read by anyone interested in stopping the rot in the discussion of human emotion and thought.-Helene Guldberg, Spiked Review of Books
Overall, Lane's scholarly account of this saga ensures that if you're not already concerned about the over-medicalization of our mental lives, you will be.-Christian Jarrett, BBC Focus
Lane's thorough trawling of the archives of the American Psychiatric Association, his discovery of unpublished internal memos from drug companies, and most especially his accounts of the deliberately obstructive activities of the companies' marketing teams, make for compelling reading.-Martin Guha,
Journal of Mental Health 2007 Top Seller in Psychology as compiled by YBP Library Services
A 2007 Top Seller in Medicine as compiled by YBP Library Services
Selected as a 2008 AAUP University Press Book for Public and Secondary School Libraries
Highly commended for the 2008 Medical Book Award in the category of Mental Health, sponsored by the British Medical Association
This is not only an important account of the creation of a modern disease and its treatment, it is an explosive indictment of a system that is too simply materialist in both philosophy and behavior.-Harold J. Cook, Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL
A marvelous book: disturbing and perturbing, a book that will be widely talked about and debated. It is extraordinarily well written, balanced, witty, and engrossing. Bravo!-Arthur Kleinman, Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor and Chair of Anthropology, Professor of Medical Anthropology, and Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard University
In Shyness, Christopher Lane outlines an apparatus that is one of the most powerful cultural forces in the world today. In pulling back the drapes and revealing the bumbling and hamfistedness of the new engineers of human souls, Chris Lane might help restore sanity to Oz.-David Healy, M.D., author of Let Them Eat Prozac and The Antidepressant Era
Written with Chris Lane's brand of verve and scholarship, Shyness is a riveting book about how certain so-called illnesses are complex cultural artifacts and certain so-called doctors are casting spells called diagnoses. A smart and bracing book about shyness-not to mention a shrewd and subtle book about psychiatric classification-is long overdue; after reading Shyness it is clear that only Lane could have written it.-Adam Phillips, psychoanalyst, author of Side-Effects
