Lauren Slater
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By: W. W. Norton & Company
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 72
Average rating: 4.0 of 5
if this was marketed as fiction 2 out of 5 stars.
12 of 16 people found this review helpful.
I'd give it five stars. Slater is an outstanding writer. Unfortunately, you can't believe a word she says. She's confessed to being a pathological liar, which may be a lie or just may be the truth. In any case, it shouldn't be the task of the reader to have to keep teasing out which is which. Writers should strive to tell the truth, at least when it comes to a nonfiction psychology book. But the line between fiction and nonfiction has gotten blurry, and books are marketed wherever their editors believe they will sell.
I noticed this tendency while reading "Prozac Diary." An account of seeing seven swans in an early draft (published in Survival Stories) had morphed into an encounter with a dust devil and the swans were nary to be found anywhere. So what really happened? Other accounts - jumping a black stallion without reins or stirrups at a camp struck me as fantasy - what reputable camp would put inexperienced preteen girls on a stallion? This is a scenario more suitable for a Walter Farley book.
When more than a few sources in a book like "Opening Skinner's Box," rise up and complain that they have been misquoted and misrepresented, it is hard not to believe them. However, much of what Slater discovers about the psychologists and their experiments is fascinating. She does draw astute conclusions about human nature. However, she has a tendency to approach her interview subjects with the impudence of a child and the insolence of a teenager. Had she maintained a more professional attitude, it would have been easier to take what she said at face value, rather than feeling sorry for how the subjects were portrayed.
However, at times, her conclusions weren't personal enough, at least when it came to disclosing key information. Knowing that she takes Prozac (something she does not mention in this book), it was awfully hard not to see her conclusions about the drug as simply personal fears writ large.
Also, her interview with Bruce Alexander neglected to mention that he is her father-in-law. Such knowledge puts a different complexion on the entire chapter. It also explains why he gets described as good looking, while other psychologists wind up being depicted unstable and unattractive. For example, she mentions over and over that Harry Harlow had a lisp, though his speech defect turns out to explain nothing about his personal or professional behavior. So why focus on it at all?
But if you enjoy her writing style, I'd recommend reading the book, few psychologists write so well for a general audience.
Editorial Review:
"A vivid, insightful account....Told with wit and warmth."—Kirkus Reviews Through ten examples of ingenious experiments by some of psychology's most innovative thinkers, Lauren Slater traces the evolution of the century's most pressing concerns—free will, authoritarianism, conformity, morality. Beginning with B. F. Skinner and the legend of a child raised in a box, she takes us from a deep empathy with Stanley Milgram's obedience subjects to a funny and disturbing re-creation of an experiment questioning the validity of psychiatric diagnosis. Previously described only in academic journals and textbooks, these often daring experiments have never before been narrated as stories, full of plot, wit, personality, and theme.
