From Publishers Weekly
The indictment of American society offered here—that America's supercharged free-market capitalism shackles us to a treadmill of overwork and overconsumption, frays family and community ties and leaves us anxious, alienated and overweight—is familiar. What's more idiosyncratic and compelling is the author's grounding his treatise in political economy (citing everyone from Adam Smith to Thorstein Veblen) as well as in neuropsychiatry, primatology and genetics. Psychiatrist Whybrow (Mood Apart) diagnoses a form of clinical mania in which "the dopamine reward systems of the brain are... hijacked" by pleasurable frenzies like the Internet bubble. Genes are to blame: programmed to crave material rewards on the austere savanna, they go bananas in an economy of superabundance. Americans are particularly susceptible because they are descended from immigrants with a higher frequency of the "exploratory and novelty-seeking D4-7 allele" in the dopamine receptor system, which predisposes them to impulsivity and addiction. The malady is "treatable," Whybrow asserts, not with Paxil but with a vaguely defined program of communitarianism and recovery therapeutics, exemplified by his friends Peanut, a farmer rooted in the land, and Tom, a formerly manic entrepreneur who has learned to live in the present moment. Whybrow's analysis of the contemporary rat race is acute, and by medicalizing the problem he locates it in behavior and genetics—away from the arena of conventional political and economic action where more systemic solutions might surface, but toward a place where individual responsibility can turn "self-interest into social fellowship." Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Kay Redfield Jamison, author of An Unquiet Mind
[A]n astute and persuasive account of the stress, overwork, and rampant dissatisfaction permeating modern America.
Bill McKibben, author of Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age
[A] fantastically important book.
Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
A trenchant indictment of our dominant values and mores, polemical but balanced, written with vigorous inspiration and gripping intensity.
Deepak Lal, author of Unintended Consequences
This is a brilliant book, which provides convincing genetic explanation for American exceptionalism.
Philip Bobbitt, author of The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History
A provocative and novel meditation on the American fate, as we struggle with depression, obesity and substance abuse.
Frederick K. Goodwin, Former Director, National Institute of Mental Health, and host of public radio's The Infinite Mind
A fascinating tapestry of fresh insights from psychiatry, anthropology, economics, neuro biology, and genetics.
Roderic Gorney, author of The Human Agenda
[A] profound, engrossing, and entertaining, volume.
Book Description
A doctor's bold analysis of the cultural disease that afflicts us all. In this startling analysis of our prosperous American society, renowned psychiatrist Peter Whybrow reveals why as a nation of acquisitive migrants our insatiable quest for more now threatens our health and happiness. Whybrow describes an affluence in America that far outstrips our need and a rampant greed spawning the addictions of consumer culture—food, money, and technology. Citing the alarming statistics of obesity, depression, and panic disorders, Whybrow alerts us to a behavior that is now testing the limits of our ancestral biology—in mind and body—and threatens to erode the very foundations of our community. Drawing upon detailed case studies, Whybrow offers compassionate guidance and a novel vantage point from which to understand some of the most pressing social and medical issues of our time. This provocative volume, grounded in science and philosophy, calls for collective action in refocusing our pursuit of happiness and enhancing America's prosperity.
About the Author
Peter C. Whybrow, M.D., is director of the Neuropsychiatric Institute at UCLA and the Judson Braun Professor and executive chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine. He lives in Los Angeles.
American Mania: When More Is Not Enough FROM THE PUBLISHER
"In this book, Whybrow's analysis combines careful reflection on the roots of American culture as a laissez-faire, competitive, free-market economy with an exploration of the nation's migrant temperament and its role in the creation of our ambitious, restless society. He sheds critical light on the dangerous misfit emerging between our consumer-driven culture and the brain systems that evolved to deal with privation 200,000 years ago. Absent any controls - cultural or economic constraints - we are easily hooked on our acquisitive pleasure-seeking behaviors. Whybrow shows how human biology is ill equipped to cope with the demands of the 24/7, global, information-saturated, rapid fire culture we not only have created but also have come to crave." Drawing on scientific case studies and colorful portraits, American Mania presents a novel vantage point from which to understand the most pressing social and medical issues of our time, and it offers readers an informed approach to addressing these problems in their individual lives.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
The indictment of American society offered here-that America's supercharged free-market capitalism shackles us to a treadmill of overwork and overconsumption, frays family and community ties and leaves us anxious, alienated and overweight-is familiar. What's more idiosyncratic and compelling is the author's grounding his treatise in political economy (citing everyone from Adam Smith to Thorstein Veblen) as well as in neuropsychiatry, primatology and genetics. Psychiatrist Whybrow (Mood Apart) diagnoses a form of clinical mania in which "the dopamine reward systems of the brain are... hijacked" by pleasurable frenzies like the Internet bubble. Genes are to blame: programmed to crave material rewards on the austere savanna, they go bananas in an economy of superabundance. Americans are particularly susceptible because they are descended from immigrants with a higher frequency of the "exploratory and novelty-seeking D4-7 allele" in the dopamine receptor system, which predisposes them to impulsivity and addiction. The malady is "treatable," Whybrow asserts, not with Paxil but with a vaguely defined program of communitarianism and recovery therapeutics, exemplified by his friends Peanut, a farmer rooted in the land, and Tom, a formerly manic entrepreneur who has learned to live in the present moment. Whybrow's analysis of the contemporary rat race is acute, and by medicalizing the problem he locates it in behavior and genetics-away from the arena of conventional political and economic action where more systemic solutions might surface, but toward a place where individual responsibility can turn "self-interest into social fellowship." Agent, Zoe Pagnamenta. (Jan.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Putting the entire country on a couch, psychiatrist Whybrow suggests that our depressions and dysfunctions, not to mention the erosion of our quality of life, are largely the result of runaway greed. Are global corporations, heirs to Adam Smith's free-market economy, driving Americans up the wall by satisfying desires only to create and intensify further desires in a workaholic nation? As individuals, we vastly out-labor the Europeans and Japanese; they, in turn, out-vacation us. We've heard all this before, but Whybrow (Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences/David Geffen School of Medicine; director, Neuropsychiatric Inst./UCLA) offers a behavioral case, replete with biochemical and neurological underpinnings, to argue that it's not completely our fault. Unlike the authors of the upcoming Nation of Rebels , he doesn't find any culture vs. counterculture shift, but posits America as an inherent "migrant culture," self-selected by the unique nature of its founding on immigrant accretion for inability to perform a reality check against our manic pursuit of material wealth and its attendant status. Research on primates, the author relates with appropriate clinical gravity, shows that those individuals most likely to abandon the home troop for a fresh crack at survival and a status upgrade (scientists call it "dispersal") have a slightly different brain chemistry than stay-at-homes and thus are predisposed to get bigger kicks from novelty, adventure, and risk-taking. A few million evolutionary years and one Statue of Liberty later, with 98 percent of us descended from families migrating to these shores within the last 300 years, here we are walking around with a special serotonin-dopamine soupin our brains: We must have that American Dream, and if it's at the mall, so be it. But if acquisition of material wealth is "a blind alley," as Whybrow believes, what to do? His suggestions are somewhat formulaic, accrued from acquaintances he finds exemplary of those able to unlearn "heroic overscheduling" and refocus on a new definition of happiness. For serious workaholics and their victims, worth considering. Agent: Michelle Tessler/Carlisle & Co.
Art & Photography
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