Gary Small

Have you ever lost your keys? Have you ever parked in a parking lot and exited the building only to realize that you forgot where you parked? Do you have problems recalling names and faces? If any of this describes you, and chances are that it does, this book could be for you. While I do say that, this comes with a caveat. This book is for people that are older than I am at the moment, but I figured it is never too early to start. To illustrate this, the author begins in one section by asking where you were when Kennedy was assassinated and follows it up by asking the same question pertaining to John Lennon.

The Memory Bible offers a comprehensive approach to keeping your brain fit enough to stave off Alzheimer’s Disease and other forms of dementia. Dr. Gary Small is or was the Director of the UCLA Center on Aging and has advice on all sorts of different things. He presents to us the Memory Tricks popularized by Harry Lorayne along with a number of other things that you can do. The book contains a number of testimonials and stories that are meant to illustrate how insidious memory loss actually is. He gives out the standards of what constitutes memory loss and other disorders while telling us that it is merely a way to sort it categorically.

Keep in mind, just because you have some memory loss doesn’t mean that you automatically have Alzheimer’s disease or some form of dementia. Dr. Small assures us that the only way to tell is to have a complete physical examination and some form of Brain Imaging Scan. The preferred one is the PET or Positron Emission Tomography scan. Going back to what I said, a number of factors can contribute to memory loss or generally poor memory with Stress being a massive culprit. In our interconnected world of Smartphones and worldwide Wi-Fi access, it comes as no surprise that people are stressed more easily. The same thing goes for lack of sleep. People say it all the time, but I will say it again, sleep is important.

If you read this book, you should understand that it was published in 2002. As of this review, that is 17 years ago. I don’t know what advances have been made in the Alzheimer’s field, but I believe they have a more capable understanding now then they did back then. I mean, for some of us seventeen years is a long time. In any case, this book is still useful for prevention and for general health issues. I will probably never eat a totally vegan diet, but this book has plenty of good advice.… (mer)

The Naked Lady Who Stood on Her Head is a collection of short essays by psychiatrist Gary Small describing the "most bizarre cases" he dealt with over decades of practice. The first essays are from encounters at Massachusetts General during Small's days as a resident. From there, we follow Small back to his native California where he continues to treat patients, conducts research, and settles in as a geriatric specialist.

If judged by its subtitle alone ("a psychiatrist's stories of his most bizarre cases"), readers may be disappointed. Any casual student of psychology will not be impressed by stories about shopping addicts, psychopathic husbands with second families, and stress-induced sudden blindness. The subtitle draws in the reader by promising shock value (it happened to me!) and just doesn't deliver.

The value of his book is beyond Small's "craziest" patients. I think this book would have been better if it was framed as a personal memoir, or of a physician's reflections as he looks back on his career. The patient stories are framed by conversations with Small's colleagues, friends, and family, where he gives us context of where he was in his career at the time and how he has grown as a physician since then. He recognizes several times that his response as a young psychiatrist would be vastly different from his response today, as a professional with years of experience. It was fascinating to read about how how Small worked through challenging diagnoses, and how his professional interactions with his patients shaped his personal interactions with friends and family, and vice versa: how his personal life affected the way he treated his patients. Those passages were what I liked best about this book - self-reflection.

Dr. Small is a brilliant physician, and I would have liked to read more about his method as a psychiatrist and less about his house calls to wealthy patients. Hopefully in the future he will give us that book!… (mer)