Page 99: Benign Bigotry

The Page 99 Test features Kristin Anderson’s Benign Bigotry today, and that page finds Anderson in a discussion of criminality and blame — that is, a subtle form of prejudice assuming that good things happen to good people, and bad things to bad people.

“Disturbances” reviewed in the THE

In a great Times Higher Education piece, professor of psychology David Smail reviews Disturbances of the Mind by Douwe Draaisma.

In this cleverly constructed book, several of the puzzles of present-day neurology are considered alongside accounts of the lives and times of those with whom they are eponymously associated. Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and Korsakoff’s, Tourette’s and Asperger’s syndromes feature among the better-known instances, but lesser-known syndromes such as the those of Clerambault and Capgras (perhaps more psychiatric than neurological) are also considered. Each receives a chapter to itself.

The author’s particular skill is in making his subject matter interesting at several levels and to different groups of readers. His accounts of the successes and sorrows of those who are seen (not always accurately, as he points out) as the discoverers of these well-known diseases are historically vivid without resorting to hagiography; and the story of the fortunes of their brain-children as they negotiate the fluctuations of medical and social fashion since their conception is absorbing.

Are Katie Couric and Diane Sawyer Perched on a Glass Cliff?

Diane Sawyer recently took over the anchor chair of ABC World News from Charles Gibson, transforming the evening news landscape with two of the three major network prime-time newscasts now anchored by women. Katie Couric made history only three years ago as the first woman to solo a major network nightly news program, CBS Nightly News.

These are important milestones for women, to be sure. But these significant milestones for women come at a perilous time in the history of television, when network news is viewed as an ailing franchise. The growth and proliferation of cable television programming and the ever-intensifying competition from the Internet have resulted in diminishing viewership of the major network evening news, once respected as the go-to source for dependable news.

Given the current state of television news, that two of the three networks have women at the helm would have been much bigger news ten years ago than it is today. That Couric and Sawyer are in these still important positions reminds me of a curious phenomenon in organizational management: the glass cliff.

WSJ Five Best – Novels About Mental Disorders

Psychology historian Douwe Draaisma writes for the Wall Street Journal’s “Five Best” column on the best novels dealing with mental disorders. Draaisma’s “Disturbances of the Mind” is a sensitive, fascinating set of histories of a dozen disorders.

Jerome Kagan featured on Rorotoko

Cambridge favorite Rorotoko, that interviewer of fascinating brainy people, posted a piece on Jerome Kagan today. Kagan has studied child psychology for decades, and has turned his attention to the age-old dilemma of academic divides.