Books
Writers
Home
|
C
Carrington, Patricia
Casement, Patrick J
Cash, Steve
Clark, Simon
Clarke, Susanna
Clarkson, Petruska
Claxton, Guy
Clement, Hal
Clute, John
Crichton, Michael
Patricia Carrington
Patricia Carrington's website: http://eft-innovations.com
The Power of Letting Go
The Power of Letting Go
=======================
In The Power of Letting Go, Patricia Carrington describes a simple but
extremely useful mental technique which can help to reduce the impact of
persistent negative thoughts and emotions. This will be especially relevant to
anyone suffering from stress and anxiety, i.e. just about everyone alive.
================================================================================
Ever since taking an introductory course in Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP)
a few years ago, I've liked the idea of regarding mental techniques and resources
as tools, to be selected and used when needed. Physical tools have varying
degrees of usefulness and appropriateness, depending on the situation, and so do
mental tricks and techniques (I say "mental", but many of these have physical
aspects or components, so I'm not certain what the best term would be - maybe a
new word for these should be invented?)
Keeping to this metaphor, I would say that Patricia Carrington's releasing
technique is definitely in the power tools category. I have found this simple
technique a very good way to avoid being swamped by feelings such as anger or
fear, and also an effective escape route from persistent negative moods.
So what exactly is releasing? This will sound like a gross
over-simplification, but the best way I can find to describe it is imagining the
anger, fear, bad mood or whatever the problem is, as a weight which can be dropped
or let go, just like a physical weight that can be released and let fall. This
technique can be triggered by asking yourself a question such as "Can I let go of
(X)?", where X is the anger, the fear, etc. Personally, I have found that it works
without my having to put anything in words. To me, releasing feels like a
weight disappearing from my body, specifically from my shoulders or from my
stomach area.
I think that I have often been able to achieve this in the past, without thinking
too much about what was happening. For me, the sense of stepping back from a
problem has often been associated with this "weight disappearing" feeling.
However, now I'm able to be a bit more clear about what I'm doing, and am able
to consciously use the technique whenever required.
How does it work and why is it effective? I think it works in several different
ways. Firstly, it involves the imagination, a very powerful faculty that is
commonly underused, in my opinion. How many times have I endured an
uncomfortable mood or train of thought without trying to enlist my imagination
in order to at least see/feel that I could be experiencing something different?
It seems that for much of my life I've been forgetting to use my imagination, or
have been letting it actually work against me, instead.
It is also effective, I think, because it gets you to "break state" - this is a
term often used in NLP to describe what happens when you change your emotional
state by thinking about something completely different and by changing your
body position. In effect, you are also derailing the train of thought that keeps
you in a negative frame of mind. I seem to recall that there are procedures in
Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) which have a similar effect, but I don't know
enough about CBT yet to say for sure.
Finally, it works because it counteracts the tendency to resist and fight against
negative emotions, which paradoxically serves to reinforce and prolong them. This
is not the same as suppressing feelings - feelings are there to be felt, and that
is their purpose. But once felt, they can be released, and let go.
The book also includes some useful additional tactics for facilitating the
releasing technique in difficult circumstances. The "suspend" tactic, for
example, helps you to release an overwhelming feeling temporarily (when a permanent
change might seem impossible), "divide and conquer" lets you break a situation
down into smaller elements which might be more easily released, the "exaggeration
effect" and the "forbidding tactic" are other nifty methods which you can deploy
to jump start the process.
There are some expensive courses available which teach, more or less, what
Patricia Carrington teaches in The Power of Letting Go. But her excellent
and useful book does so at a fraction of the cost, and this is another reason
why I heartily recommend it.
© Alex Cull 27th July 2005
Top
Patrick J Casement
Further Learning From the Patient
On Learning From the Patient
Further Learning from the Patient
=================================
In Further Learning from the Patient Patrick Casement continues and
expands on the material and ideas presented in his earlier book Learning
from the Patient, speaking out against dogmatism and promoting a sensitive
and client-empowering approach to therapy.
================================================================================
I think virtually all of the things I wrote about Learning from the Patient
could also apply to Patrick Casement's next book. It is an insightful and
refreshingly honest exploration of what it means, in a therapeutic context, to pay
full attention to the client's actions and words rather than perceive these
through a distorting lens of theory.
As before, the author provides examples from his own case files. In this book,
most of the material comes from a single case (in a chapter entitled A Child
Leads the Way) - that of Joy, a young girl in a middle-class family, who is
adjusting to the arrival of a little brother. The author highlights his own
slowness at realising what the girl wants to do, i.e. express her wishes and
fears through playing with paints and modelling clay, rather than follow
Casement's lead as indicated verbally and via flashcards.
One of Patrick Casement's strongest messages is that over-reliance on theory
(specifically the Freudian edifice of Oedipus complex, oral/anal/genital stages,
et al) can hamper the therapist in his/her search for truth and can blind the
therapist to what is actually going on with the client. Like a Victorian
traveller weighed down with heavy trunks and impedimenta, the psychodynamic
therapist in particular can find himself or herself thoroughly encumbered by the
bulky apparatus of dogma.
It is possible to go completely overboard with psychoanalytic theory. Amusingly,
Casement refers to an article on orchestral instruments penned by a Freudian
symbolism enthusiast, in which each instrument can be classified according to
its shape (flutes and clarinets are obviously phallic symbols, double basses
and cellos - with their narrow waists and curvaceous hips - would probably be
representations of the female body.) Yes, to a hammer-fixated handyman,
everything looks like a nail.
Something else that made a very strong impression on me was the way Patrick
Casement's approach appears very person-centred. He is manifestly a psychodynamic
therapist, and yet much of what he writes could well have been written by a
Rogerian, client-centred practitioner. Statements such as "Analysts in particular
need to have, or need to develop, a capacity to let the other person be"
and "The experience of being understood is at least as important as the detail
of any insight that is conveyed" reinforce this sense of convergence.
It is tempting to conclude that it scarcely matters what the therapist's
theoretical orientation is, as long as he or she is empathic, congruent and fully
in the "here and now" with the client. Which is a bit of an over-simplification,
but probably has a measure of truth in it.
If you are a psychotherapist or counsellor (or are training to become one) and
found Learning from the Patient valuable and insightful, you will not be
disappointed with Further Learning from the Patient. And there's good
news - Patrick Casement has since written a third book - Learning from Our
Mistakes: Psychoanalysis and Beyond - which I have not yet read but promises
to be every bit as good as his previous two.
© Alex Cull 5th May 2006
On Learning From the Patient
============================
Patrick Casement is a psychoanalyst, supervisor and writer with over 30 years'
experience in the field - in his book On Learning From the Patient he
presents some of his cases where he has learnt a lot from his clients, showing
that psychotherapy is not a one-way process and that much can be achieved with
active listening skills and the use of what Casement calls the internal
supervisor.
================================================================================
Patrick Casement's courage and his honesty are the main impressions I received
while reading On Learning From the Patient. There are few people, after
all, who are prepared to draw attention to their own mistakes and oversights,
even for the purpose of helping others. I find the author's attitude very
encouraging - one of the messages of this book, is that errors are not only
inevitable but are also useful and that we can learn a lot from them. Taking
this message to heart is, surely, an effective antidote against any tendencies
towards arrogance and overconfidence on the part of the therapist. We all make
mistakes - the point is to recover from them and make full use of them as
learning experiences.
Something else that struck me while reading this book is the way that the vast
majority of people (myself included!) project their thoughts, feelings and
sometimes entire relationships onto others. When a client does this in
psychodynamic counselling, this is transference, with
counter-transference occurring when the reverse happens and the therapist
projects his/her thoughts, feelings and relationships back onto the client. But
this goes on such a lot in ordinary life, and I'm sure that most of it is
completely undetected on a conscious level. People who react to complete
strangers as if they were parents or siblings, office workers who revert to how
they were in the school playground, people who pick the same kind of partners
again and again, all of us living partially in a kind of dream world. It's such
a common occurrence that we rarely think about it; Patrick Casement's
interactions with his clients illustrate this phenomenon wonderfully.
On Learning From the Patient also provides an answer to the question of
why it is that novice counsellors are sometimes effective where more experienced
ones are not. It has all to do with what the poet John Keats called negative
capability, defining it as "when a man is capable of being in uncertainties,
mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason". That
is, when we are in a state of not knowing, and being comfortable there, instead
of feeling that we must always jump in with some kind of analysis or instant
answer. Sometimes the obvious answer, or the expert answer, is not the best one,
and we get more results if we wait for a solution or way forward to emerge in
its own time, without being forced. And sometimes the answer comes from an
unexpected and external source, e.g. the patient, rather than from one's internal
analytical deliberations.
This capability is something that Patrick Casement has evidently cultivated in
himself, and I think it is something that can help us reap great rewards, not
only in the field of therapy. The wisdom of negative capability involves looking
at the world with fresh eyes, putting aside preconceptions, treating every
situation and person we encounter as unique, not relying on snap answers, and
all these processes can help us navigate better through this complex,
contradictory, ever-changing world.
I enjoyed reading On Learning From the Patient and greatly look forward
to reading Patrick Casement's other, more recent, books. I think that in his
wise, understated way, he has a lot to teach those of us who are taking our
first steps into the world of psychotherapy.
© Alex Cull 1st July 2005
Top
Steve Cash
The Meq
The Meq
=======
The Meq are a race of beings who secretly co-exist with the Giza (ordinary
folks like us.) They have special powers, being able to live for hundreds of
years without changing their childlike appearance, they recover from injuries
with miraculous speed and their magical gems the Starstones give them hypnotic
power over the Giza. The story starts with 12-year-old Zianno Zezen (or 'Z' to
his friends) surviving a train wreck in the American West which kills his
parents and starts him on his life's quest.
================================================================================
The book jacket describes The Meq as fantasy, but this is definitely not your
usual fantasy novel, with not a single sword, dragon, orc or vampire in sight.
Some of it concerns Zianno's awakening self-awareness (I was going to write
"growing up" but this of course doesn't happen) in the rough-and-tumble
environment of St Louis in the 1880s. The rest of the novel is taken up with
various quests which take Zianno and the others on lengthy rambling journeys
across the world.
As the story progresses, Zianno and the other Meq characters are revealed by
their thoughts and actions to be not quite human. Their lifespans stretch
across many centuries, so they can afford to think long-term, also the actions
of ancient enemies such as the Phoenicians are still fresh in their collective
mind. However, they also curiously inconsistent, one minute acting with great
urgency as they attempt unsuccessfully to track down the psychotic killer Fleur
du Mal, the next embarking on a long dreamlike trek that may take years and not
accomplish very much. Zianno and a companion start a search that takes them all
over north Africa, and at one point he suddenly realises that six years have
passed with no result!
The characters of the Meq are strangely insubstantial, and I would find it
difficult to describe the personal attributes of Zianno, Sailor and the others.
They tend to drift in and out of the story, and at times I lost track of who
was present and who was missing. The Giza (human) characters, such as Solomon
the Jewish trader, seemed to be much more vivid, on the whole. Occasionally
historical figures such as Scott Joplin or T.S. Eliot appear in the narrative,
but generally the Meq are caught up in their own quests and crises, and do not
actively involve themselves much in the wider human realm. Even the First
World War is but a remote event that takes place offstage in the world of
the Giza.
Despite its dreamlike, ambling ways, I found the story quite interesting and
look forward to reading the next book in the series. As the narrative approaches
modern times, I am curious to find out how the Meq will retain their secrets in
a world of passports, telephones and computers. Hopefully we will also see
young Zianno Zezen developing a stronger and more distinctive personality.
© Alex Cull 17th October 2003
Top
Simon Clark
Simon Clark's website: http://www.bbr-online.com/nailed
Judas Tree
The Night of the Triffids
Judas Tree
==========
Young Amelia Thomas has found the ideal place to take refuge from a life
blighted by injury and rejection - the tiny Greek island of Voros. A jumble of
sun-baked rocks, Voros has no roads or towns, but it has inhabitants, a past -
and plenty of secrets.
================================================================================
Very broadly speaking, there is a spectrum in horror fiction that ranges between
the genteel, subtle delights of the traditional ghost story on the one hand
(A Christmas Carol), and the gore-bespattered bloodbath on the other
(Night of the Living Dead.) Simon Clark has often shown himself well
proficient at the splattery end of the spectrum, so it was a nice surprise to
read something of his that was more along the lines of an old-school chiller.
The author cannot be faulted for his location in Judas Tree. The
sun-soaked islet of Voros goes beyond all the clichés summoned by the word
"idyllic". Not only is it sun-soaked and peaceful, but despite being just across
the strait from another, more bustling island, Voros is almost impossibly
secluded. No roads, no villages, shops, harbours, airstrips, tavernas or tourists,
just cliffs and rocky outcrops, with the occasional villa. If you have the means,
life there can be delicious - privacy, peace and quiet, plenty of Mediterranean
sunshine, friendly locals to supply you with food and drink. I mean, is that just
perfect or what?
Maybe it is. And maybe it's just a little too perfect. All that lovely
seclusion could be the ideal cloak to conceal - just what, exactly? Well, this
is what Amelia will eventually discover, after she flees from her grim relatives
and her life in England, and ends up, like an injured bird, on the doorstep of her
mother's villa on Voros. It will take a while, but Amelia will find out, little by
little, just what it is exactly that this island is hiding.
The great strength of this novel is the way it keeps the reader perpetually
off-balance and uneasy. The metaphor that comes to my mind is that of a creepy
painting on a wall, which at first glance appears to show a perfectly normal
scene, but gradually, as you continue to stare at it, seems to become ever more
ominous, for reasons that lie just beyond the ken of the conscious mind. Perhaps,
playing a trick of light and shade, the artist has subtly created an unpleasant
face leering out of the canvas. Or the angles and perspectives are not quiet right,
askew in an unsettling, Lovecraftian sort of way. The is the effect this novel
had on me, especially in its early and middle stages.
The corkscrew is always going missing, and reappearing in odd places. Who is
doing this? Is it a joke? A poltergeist? It's such a small thing, but completely
unaccountable. And then there are the soldiers - during the War, four young
German soldiers were based on the island. What became of them - were they killed
or captured? Or did something else happen to them here? A man sits proudly atop
a tractor in the middle of his little plot of land, surrounded by piglets rooting
in the dirt. A completely natural and innocent scene. But is it? And there are
others, little things, layer upon insidious layer of mysteries.
Well, vampires, zombies and exploding viscera have their place in horror fiction,
and there's nothing wrong with that. But it's good - actually, it's more than
that, it's bloody good - to read something that eschews guts and gore in favour
of more subtle thrills. And subtle thrills is what Judas Tree has, in
sinister abundance.
One last thought - consider the island's name. Voros. What connotations does
this have?
© Alex Cull 27th April 2007
The Night of the Triffids
=========================
A few decades after the events described in John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids,
life is tough but rewarding for the community of survivors and their children on
the Isle of Wight. But then something happens that threatens their very existence,
something that once again puts humans at the mercy of - the triffids.
================================================================================
In John Wyndham's classic SF novel Day of the Triffids someone puts the
question - in a contest for survival between a blind man and a triffid, who would
win? In a safe, ordered society, where triffids (great big exotic plants with
rudimentary legs and poisonous stings, for those few who might not know) are kept
securely penned in greenhouses and nurseries, the odds would be on the blind man.
However, in a world where the majority of humans have been blinded and where
civilisation has collapsed, one's money would surely be on the triffids. Ruthless,
patient, inexorable, these horribly mobile plants could well prevail.
Which brings us to the start of The Night of the Triffids, which picks up
the story about 30 years after the end of Wyndham's novel. The fledgling colony
on the Isle of Wight has flourished in a modest way, and the continuity of human
life has been preserved. But then a vast global event brings darkness once more,
and the triffids are again a threat. David Masen, son of Wyndham's modest hero
Bill, sets off in a plane to find out what is happening.
I liked The Night of the Triffids, although it is very different in style
to the original. Where Day is an epic, gritty story of a world ending,
Night is more a straightforward adventure tale, with plenty of action and
some romance thrown in. The story starts on the Isle of Wight, shifts to the high
seas, and then to America, where a different kind of society has thrived after
the great collapse of civilisation.
There are some interesting ideas in Night, such as the Mother House, an
institution run by women for the continuing of the species (a nod, surely, to John
Wyndham's novella Consider Her Ways), and the plot device featuring
interstellar dust, which was also used by Wyndham's contemporary Fred Hoyle in his
novel The Black Cloud. We also see disturbing new strains of triffids,
although it has to be said that natural selection must have worked very quickly
to produce these in a mere thirty years!
However, Night of the Triffids is basically less a novel of ideas than it
is of action, pure and simple. No way is it in the same league as John Wyndham's
world-famous story, but taken on its own terms - as a breezy, fast-paced novel of
warfare between human factions in a dangerous new world - this is a solid,
good-enough effort. It entertained me, anyway.
© Alex Cull 8th February 2007
Top
Susanna Clarke
Susanna Clarke's website: http://www.jonathanstrange.com
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
=============================
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is a novel set in the Regency period of Jane
Austen and Lord Byron - with a difference. For this is not so much the dawn age
of science and industry - but a new era of English magic.
================================================================================
Coming to the end of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, I felt as if I was completing
the final stage of a very interesting, leisurely, but sometimes exceedingly slow
grand tour of some exotic foreign place. One reason it took me a while was that I
found it difficult to read for more than a few chapters at a time - this is
probably a reflection on my goldfish-like attention span but also due to the
lack of narrative "hooks" to keep me going. I found this book was best sampled
a little at a time, in between some fast-paced detective stories to provide some
contrast.
There is much to admire in Susanna Clarke's debut novel. She has created what
amounts to a delightfully complex parallel universe, one in which magic, not
science, is the dominant paradigm and where fairy kingdoms co-exist with
Regency England. In this version of history, events have diverged greatly - for
instance, in medieval times the north of England was ruled by the greatest
magician of all, the Raven King, whose power and influence live on in a
tradition that is very Arthurian.
I liked the cunning way in which familiar historical occurrences, such as the
Peninsular War and the Battle of Waterloo are interwoven with the magical events
and elements of the story. Actual personages such as the Duke of Wellington and
Lord Byron have cameo roles, lending an air of authenticity to the proceedings.
Even the weather is realistic for the times, Clarke's England suffering from the
deep snows and freezing rains of the Little Ice Age (the Dalton Minimum to be
specific, for those who are sunspot enthusiasts such as myself.) The "Year Without
a Summer" - 1816, affected by the Tambora eruption - also features.
And there's the magic. Dangerous, wayward and unpredictable, magic lore is part
and parcel of this parallel England. Clarke sows her text with numerous
footnotes and asides, referring to what appears to be a vast but incomplete body
of scholarly scribblings on the subject - always hinting at more, the author
manages to create a marvellous impression of verisimilitude.
In the Harry Potter universe, magic tends to be as reliable as clockwork (the
Lumos spell, for instance, generally works just as effectively as a Muggle
electric flashlight); in the universe of Norrell, Strange and the Raven King,
magic is definitely more of a tricky proposition. If magic really existed, I
suspect it would be rather like the way it is in Susanna Clarke's creation -
sometimes very effective, often inconclusive or backfiring, always evoking a
distinct sense of oddness.
I found that the only aspects of this remarkable book that I found rather
difficult were its length and the very leisurely nature of the plot. In addition,
of the two main narrative threads in the novel, one of them (Stephen Black and
the gentleman with the thistledown hair) ends in a satisfying way, while the
other (the Norrell/Strange rivalry) is somewhat less conclusive in its ending.
Even so, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is special - I'm glad I finally made
the effort to start the book and had the perseverance to continue to the finish.
It may not have been one of the world's zippiest literary journeys, but it was
a fascinating and ultimately a worthwhile one.
© Alex Cull 13th May 2008
Top
Petruska Clarkson
The Therapeutic Relationship
The Therapeutic Relationship
============================
In this book, eminent psychologist Petruska Clarkson examines five aspects of
the therapeutic relationship, as experienced in counselling and psychotherapy
(these are: the working alliance plus the transferential, reparative/
developmentally needed, person-to-person and transpersonal relationships.)
Towards the end of the book, she goes on to provide the outlines of a training
course for psychotherapists which would incorporate an integrative approach and
which would address these different relationships.
================================================================================
I started to read The Therapeutic Relationship having just finished
Gerard Egan's book The Skilled Helper, and could thus appreciate the
sharp contrast between them. The Egan book is very much a hands-on manual for
tackling and overcoming problems and for reaching goals. The Clarkson book, on
the other hand, is a much broader work, containing not only theoretical material
but practical guidelines, some philosophy and a little poetry too! Despite its
varied content this book hangs together remarkably well and is pervaded
throughout by the author's scholarly yet humane presence.
I found The Therapeutic Relationship very enjoyable to read, well-written
and packed with insights which, as a fledgling counsellor, I have found useful
and stimulating. At the same time, it wasn't a light read, as it demanded a good
deal of concentration; rather like eating a luxuriously rich fruit cake, it was
best sampled in small portions.
The counselling course I am taking at the moment is based around an integrative
approach, i.e. we study various approaches such as humanistic/Rogerian
counselling, psychodynamic counselling (based on Freudian/Jungian/Adlerian ideas),
CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy), Gestalt etc., and each of us are meant to
develop an individual way of working, using elements from one or more of these
approaches. I therefore found The Therapeutic Relationship to be very
relevant to my studies. Petruska Clarkson's theoretical roots are definitely in
the psychodynamic tradition, but I consider her exploration of the therapeutic
relationship and its various sub-divisions to be useful for students of all
approaches.
This is also my first real introduction to transpersonal psychology, of which
I know very little. When encountering references to the alchemical vessel, or
vas, and to the temenos or sacred space - both symbols of the
enclosure where healing takes place - I began to feel that I was at the borders
of an exotic, mysterious realm. Reading The Therapeutic Relationship has
prompted me to do some research into transpersonal psychology, perhaps starting
with Jung, as it's an area I'd like to explore further.
The integrative approach is a fairly new development, it appears - I have the
impression that until recently the analytical and the client-centred schools
of thought were worlds apart. I think this is illustrated well by the fact that
when discussing the role of empathy, the author mentions that in
psychoanalytical circles, psychologist Heinz Kohut is largely credited with
developing this idea towards the end of the 1950s, despite the fact that Carl
Rogers had already been working with the concept of empathy for some years. So
what happened - was Kohut unaware of Rogers, or was Rogers being pointedly
ignored? I remember once encountering (in Rogers' book Client-Centered
Therapy) a rather abrupt downplaying of the importance of transference/
counter-transference, which might not have gone down too well with
psychodynamic therapists at the time of writing; something tells me that there
was not much love lost between the two camps fifty years ago. Hopefully things
have improved in the decades since.
I'm looking forward to re-reading this book when I have a little more
counselling experience under my belt, and thus hope to harvest yet more insights
from it. I'd also love to acquire a few more publications by Petruska Clarkson
(her 1995 book The Achilles Syndrome looks particularly interesting.)
She is evidently an extraordinary woman, as you will see if you visit her website
[link was provided above, but is now defunct] and check out her CV online, and
if you are interested in psychology and related fields, her ideas are well worth
reading about.
© Alex Cull 12th May 2005
Quite a lot has happened since I wrote that. Petruska Clarkson committed suicide
in 2006, and my career as a counsellor hasn't really taken off, although I did
complete my Diploma course. My perspective has changed. I can't help asking the
question: if this therapy stuff is so effective, why did Petruska kill herself?
Does it mean anything, actually? No definite answers, yet.
Alex Cull 29th April 2008
Top
Guy Claxton
Guy Claxton's website: http://www.guyclaxton.com
The Wayward Mind
The Wayward Mind
================
In this entertaining book, psychologist Guy Claxton takes us on a journey to
that most exotic of places, the unconscious mind.
================================================================================
I once read someone's post on Usenet (now Google Groups) where they had made a
comment about the unconscious mind, and the reply to this comment was that science
did not recognise the existence of the unconscious, and that talking about it
thus all a little futile and woolly, rather like discussing the table manners of
leprechauns. Yes, I made up the bit about leprechauns, but it was words to that
effect, anyway.
What I would have liked to say in response to this statement about science not
recognising the unconscious (but didn't, not wanting to end up in a silly flame
war) was that of course the unconscious exists. Of course it does. Think about it -
remember the last time you had a vivid dream or nightmare. Did you consciously
decide to have this dream? Did you plan its every detail, script it, edit it,
choreograph it? Unless you are Buddha or an accomplished lucid dreamer, I'm sure
you didn't. So who did? Your unconscious.
All right, given that each of us has this certain something that we call the
unconscious, what sort of creature is it? This is the question Guy Claxton
addresses in The Wayward Mind, which is, if you will, a natural history of
this mysterious and perplexing part of ourselves.
The author has the happy knack of turning a subject that might appear rather
nebulous into something marvellously entertaining and vital. His chapter
headings have phrases like "magical landscapes and invisible puppeteers" or
"the beast in the basement". He traces the notion of the unconscious mind all
through the history of Western thought, from the ancient Greeks and Egyptians
to the present day, via Freud and Descartes. What I find appealing is that
without being dogmatic, Claxton shows that science (or some part of science,
anyway) actually does recognise unconscious mental processes, but that this
need not invalidate the spiritual/religious convictions held by many.
It's a fascinating journey. Claxton gives us Plato's image of a charioteer at
the reins of two horses - the white horse of conscious volition and the dark
horse of wayward, chaotic desires - which is not a bad model of the human mind.
The dark horse is a great metaphor for the Jungian shadow - that part of us
that we habitually disown, and which, if ignored for too long, will overturn
the chariot and send it crashing into the ditch. It is also a reminder that
while we in the 21st-century western world are technological wizards, our
understanding of ourselves is not really much more advanced than it was two or
three thousand years ago.
I enjoyed the sections of the book which were about Descartes. René Descartes
is normally held up to be the 16th century villain who with one swipe of his
metaphorical blade, severed mind from body and created the headless (or
bodiless?) chicken of the modern-day Western person, cut off from his
physicality and all things right-brain. Except that Descartes turns out not
to be an arch-paragon of rationalism after all, but a surprisingly humble
man who in his letters and diaries freely admitted that there was an internal
deceiver at work within him. And that much of the inspiration for his ideas
came from - a lucid dream.
And there are other gems. I particularly like the inclusion of psychologist
Don Bannister's wonderful description of the Freudian model of the human mind
(the interactions of ego, super-ego and id) as a never-ending battle in a
dark cellar between a well-bred spinster lady and a sex-crazed monkey,
refereed by a nervous bank clerk.
To sum up, I found The Wayward Mind to be a lovely, well-written and
intriguing book, which should appeal to anyone interested in psychology,
philosophy, literature, religion and neuroscience. Guy Claxton comes across
as both learned and very enthusiastic about his subject, and this enthusiasm
is infectious. He also provides some solace to anyone who has fallen foul
of the unconscious, in some way or another (which must be just about everyone
on the planet.) Which is rather nice, as instead of beating myself up for
making mistakes, I can state that it wasn't my fault; it was simply Plato's
dark horse following its wayward and chaotic path.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
© Alex Cull, 8th June 2007
Top
Hal Clement
Heavy Planet
Heavy Planet
============
The alien world of Mesklin is a highly unusual place, a massive fast-rotating
planet with a hydrogen atmosphere, mostly covered with an ocean of methane.
Gravity at the equator stands at 3g but rises to a staggering 700g at each
pole, which would squash a human flat in no time at all. Consequently, when a
rocket containing valuable data is stranded at the south pole, the visiting
humans need to enlist the help of the natives. However, the Mesklinites have
some ideas of their own...
================================================================================
This is a book for those who like their SF hard and hanker for the days of
slide rules, rocket ships and actual scientific exploration, rather than
space-empire-building. Heavy Planet is a collection of Hal Clement's
stories which focus on the ultra-massive planet of Mesklin, comprising the novel
Mission of Gravity plus its sequel Star Light and a few short
stories (plus Whirligig World, an essay in which Clement explains the
science behind the creation of Mesklin.)
Mission of Gravity (first published in 1953) is by far the best story in
this collection - I thoroughly enjoyed Barlennan's adventures as he leads the
crew of the good ship Bree (actually a huge articulated raft) in an epic voyage
from the equatorial zone to the pole where the Earthmen's probe is stranded,
encountering monstrous sea beasts, dangerous natives, fearsome storms and other
obstacles.
The Mesklinites are multi-legged aliens resembling centipedes and are thus
superbly adapted to their oppressive environment. Some readers have noted that
they are psychologically very similar to humans; Barlennan, for instance, is
an enterprising sea captain in the style of Sir Francis Drake or James Cook,
showing resource, courage and guile at every step. The writer, however, adds
quirks that would only make sense on a high-gravity world - Mesklinites are
generally terrified of being crushed by falling objects, and the notion of
jumping (let alone flying) is usually enough to threaten their sanity. At one
point the human astronaut Charles Lackland lifts up the tiny Barlennan without
realising that this would be the human equivalent of being placed on a
precarious ledge 40 storeys up.
To be honest, I don't think the sequel Star Light is as good. A joint
human-Mesklinite expedition is exploring Dhrawn, another heavy planet (or
protostar?) and one of their massive land-cruisers has become bogged down on the
surface. Unfortunately, the story also gets periodically stuck in the mire, and
otherwise proceeds at a steady crawl. It doesn't help either that the most
exciting feature on Dhrawn is the ammonia-water mixture in its rivers; I found
the explanations rather hard going and started to personally identify with the
land-cruiser as it struggled on its halting way. Star Light mainly
focusses on the political manoeuvrings of the humans and Mesklinites, in
particular the various deceptions practised by the centipedes as they pursue
their goal of independence from their human mentors. It's solid stuff but,
like being on Dhrawn itself, it's difficult to find anything very riveting.
It would have been nice to read a sequel featuring a return to Mesklin. After
all, the northern hemisphere has been left completely unexplored, as far as
I'm aware, and who knows what wonders lie buried in the methane icecap or
beyond the northern oceans. It's possible another writer could emulate Clement's
nuts-and-bolts hard-SF style and do the job - would that really be the same,
though?
© Alex Cull 14th October 2003
Top
John Clute
Appleseed
Appleseed
=========
In the far future Nathanael Freer, a trader with his own AI-controlled spaceship
Tile Dance, picks up a contract to supply industrial nanoforges to the planet
Eolhxir. Little does he know that this is merely the start of an adventure which
promises to save (or destroy) the sentient universe.
================================================================================
Consuming the first few chapters of Appleseed was like taking huge bites
into a very rich sweet dessert, I don't know, something Italian like
zabaglione maybe. The sheer variety and calorific denseness of this prose
is impressive and mmm, yes delicious. The book abounds with richly-depicted
far-future artifacts, a melange of sweet-tasting data carafes, semi-sentient
sigilla and exotic AI personalities inhabiting a mulititude of dancing tiles
(aboard the aptly-named spaceship Tile Dance.)
Yet, as with all rich desserts, eating too much results in a certain amount of
discomfort. Here the discomfort comes with trying to follow a plot that is
liberally smothered by all this rich verbal goo. The underlying story is really
not that complicated - it's just buried under the goo, which as I reached the
middle of Appleseed was starting to really irritate me.
To abruptly change metaphors, it was also like trying to find the light switch
in a room several layers deep in ornate baroque gold-leafed ornamentation. Not
an easy task - at times I needed to backtrack for several pages, having reached
bits where I had no idea just what on earth was going on. Nothing wrong with a
little ornamentation here and there, but it would have been nice to find that
damn light switch once in a while.
The story itself, beneath all the baroque frills and curlicues, is rather slight,
in my opinion. Maybe in due course we will see sequels which show some
progression. Others have commented that the data plaque idea too closely
resembles the Blight in Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep; personally
I don't think this is a valid comparison, as the two novels are such different
entities.
Ironically I got a much stronger impression of the personalities of the various
AI entities plugged into Tile Dance than I did about the human protagonist
Nathanael Freer (aka Stinky), who seemed if anything just a bit too relaxed and
insouciant throughout the story. However, he was more than compensated for by
some of the other characters, for instance Mamselle Cunning Earth Link, a truly
exotic and versatile non-human female, and Opsophagos of the Harpe, who has to
be one of the most entertainingly revolting alien baddies I have encountered in
a long while.
But these aliens, brilliant though they are, don't quite manage to rescue
Appleseed totally from the goo.
© Alex Cull, 22nd July 2003
Top
Michael Crichton
Michael Crichton's homepage: http://www.crichton-official.com
Jurassic Park
Prey
State of Fear
Jurassic Park
=============
A workman is brought to a rain-drenched clinic in Costa Rica with strange - and
fatal - injuries. Then a little girl is mauled on an isolated beach by an
unidentified, lizard-like creature. Not long after that, paleontologist Alan
Grant and botanist Ellie Sattler are invited by their sponsor John Hammond to
spend a few days at his new biological preserve - on a tropical island called
Isla Nublar.
================================================================================
It's difficult these days to fully appreciate the impact of Jurassic Park, the
novel. We've watched the movies, bought the merchandise, played the computer
games and been exposed to over a decade and a half of advertising and media hype,
so no wonder it's a little hard to recapture the freshness and audacity of
Michael Crichton's original concept. But I think it well worth the try.
Humans and dinosaurs are a potent mixture, as novelists and moviemakers have
always known. We have the brains; they have the brawn. Humans have the technology;
dinosaurs have size, grace, ferocity, speed and power, not to mention voracious
appetites. The problem has always been to get the two together in the same era.
Humans are from the Cenozoic, dinosaurs are from the Mesozoic and never the
twain should meet, in normal circumstances.
Previous to Jurassic Park, there were two main ways to get around this impasse.
You either had to find a remote spot on the planet where dinosaurs might have
survived until recent times (a plateau in South America, a lost continent in the
Pacific, a cavern somewhere under the Earth's crust) or you had to invent time
travel in order to send humans back to the Age of Reptiles.
There are problems with these two methods. Since the Victorian era it has become
increasingly difficult to find a hard-to-reach spot where an animal the size of
a brachiosaurus could lurk undiscovered. And time travel brings with it a whole
parcel of paradoxes, hurdles and conundrums which every author who attempts it
needs to address.
At a stroke, Crichton dispenses with these. Instead, he invokes an emerging
technology which has become ever more potent and convincing in recent times -
genetic engineering. His scientists recreate dinosaur DNA from fragments
preserved inside mosquitoes caught in prehistoric amber. Pow! It's an absolutely
brilliant idea, and still gives me goose bumps when I think about it.
But there's more to the book than that. What we also get is the splendid idea of
a dinosaur theme park (as opposed to a mere lab somewhere) and the trademark
Michael Crichton slide from order into chaos, all wrapped up in a fast-moving and
highly readable thriller. It even has decent characters, in particular the acerbic
and eccentric Dr Ian Malcolm, who alone would have made Jurassic Park a cut
above your average airport paperback.
What I also especially relish is Crichton's message, not that technology is bad
or that progress is evil, but that we can easily become overconfident and fail
to see that which our mindset has excluded. A telling scene is the one in which
the operators of the park realise - very late in the day - that they have relied
too much on the computer system they have installed to count the dinosaurs. The
lesson is clear - make incorrect assumptions and however sophisticated your
software might be, you will have set yourself up for a fall. Climate modellers,
please take note.
Should we try to resurrect the dinosaurs? My head says there are more important
things to aim for, but my heart says: absolutely! Dinosaurs, mammoths, the dodo,
the aepyornis - yes, bring them back and create comfortable and interesting habitats
for them to live in (better not put them all in the same one, though.) I would pay
good money to go and see a live T.rex, hopefully before he sees me.
But before we venture down that road, I think we should make sure that we take
the lessons of Jurassic Park to heart. There is a fine line between confidence
and hubris, which we would do well not to cross. And although we have devised
immensely powerful computing machines, they are not (yet) gods or oracles but
tools, basically, which are liable to be misused by the unwise and incompetent.
I was sorry to hear about the death of Michael Crichton last month. Although he
never wrote anything quite as amazing as Jurassic Park in the years since 1990, a
new Crichton novel was always something to look forward to. I will miss him.
And to anyone who has enjoyed the movies, eaten the popcorn and played with the
action figures but has not yet read this book, I most heartily recommend it.
© Alex Cull, 20th December 2008
Prey
====
Unemployed programmer Jack Forman discovers that his wife's company are creating
swarms of microscopic machines at their facility out in the desert. Before you
can say "molecular nanotechnology" the swarms begin to behave in unexpected
ways, and (true to form in a Michael Crichton novel) things start to slide
rapidly out of control...
================================================================================
Michael Crichton normally writes what I call a very good airport book, the sort
of book that rattles along at a decent pace and provides a welcome diversion
from the queues, the delays, the boredom, the plasticky food and other
traditional features of air travel. My personal favourite is Jurassic Park,
followed by Sphere and then Congo (I do realise that not all of you
may share these preferences.)
Michael Crichton's Westworld/Jurassic Park formula goes: 1) A brilliant
but controversial new technology is developed. 2)Nothing can possibly go wrong.
3) Whoops. 4) All is saved in the nick of time. 5) Or is it?
Prey is about nanotechnology, absolutely one of my favourite subjects.
And it does rattle along nicely; people say that Crichton's books read like
screenplays, and I generally have no problem with this, preferring his
stripped-down, bare-bones quality to certain other writers' wobbling pounds of
excess verbiage.
But I have to say that it sticks to the above formula very closely. To me the
bones were a bit too bare, the story a bit too formulaic and stripped-down.
I found the twists just a mite predictable, the characters cardboard-flat and
perfunctory. Nanophiles will also spot some basic problems with the technology
which I won't go into here except to say that the swarms in the story would have
pounced with all the deadly speed of a great white shark - in a vat of treacle.
Conversely, I found scarcely believable the sheer speed at which the situation
develops - one minute the swarms are trundling here and there, waylaying the odd
bunny rabbit, the next minute they're threatening the entire human race and we're
deep into Invasion of the Bodysnatchers territory. Nanotech is a
fast-developing field, but this was a little too abrupt a shift, even for me.
Even so, it could have worked if the story had been more involving and if there
had been more meat on those bones. For a change, this is definitely a case of
less is less.
Maybe the bestselling Crichton formula needs a revamp. Or maybe it needs to
retire altogether so that a shiny brand-new formula can step into its shoes.
But then, with the Hollywood gravy train still chuffing, if it ain't broke why
fix it? Cynical old bookworm, aren't I.
© Alex Cull, 22nd July 2003
I re-read Prey a couple of years ago, and do you know, I think it was
better the second time around. And it has some decent ideas, for instance the
notion of change as not being uniform but consisting of a long period where
nothing much seems to happen, culminating in a mad acceleration. A bit like
human history. Or like Michael Mann's infamous "hockey stick" graph showing
global warming (not sure Michael Crichton would warm to that analogy, though.)
So - a lot better than I first thought.
Alex Cull, 1st May 2008
State of Fear
=============
Millionaire philanthropist George Morton is planning to donate a large sum of
money to the National Environmental Research Fund (NERF), but appears to have
changed his mind, before dying in a car crash. Morton's lawyer, Peter Evans,
has always been a staunch believer in the environmentalist movement and the
reality of global warming; however, a string of mysterious, sinister and violent
events is beginning to persuade him otherwise.
================================================================================
Much like the Toyota Prius cars driven by some of the eco-terrorist agents in
this book, Michael Crichton's new novel is something of a hybrid. On the one hand
it's a gung-ho actioner which, James Bond-like, whisks its heroes to exotic places
around the globe, where they tackle the bad guys and foil nefarious plots. On the
other hand, it purports to be a serious, fact-based work, opening our eyes to the
myths surrounding global warming, and the author provides a plethora of footnotes,
charts and appendices to support his case.
This is a departure for Michael Crichton; after all, in Jurassic Park he was
not seriously trying to convince us that we can reconstruct dinosaurs from their
preserved DNA. These are works of fiction, where the science needs to be plausible
enough to put the reader's sense of disbelief to sleep for a while. They're not
supposed to be lectures, surely.
Nevertheless, State of Fear has more than its fair share of lectures, most
of which are delivered via the author's mouthpiece, secret agent and know-it-all
John Kenner. (Kenner is a mine of knowledge, winning every single argument
hands-down, and he is thus highly irritating.) One problem is that they break up
the story too much. One minute we are breathlessly following the characters as
they dash across the world to stop an eco-terrorist attack, the next minute we
are sitting down to learn about the history of Yellowstone Park or the reason
why sequoia forests cannot be called primeval. It's all stop-and-start.
Another problem is that the characters are not only two-dimensional, they are
also completely polarised, depending on their position re global warming. The
characters who question global warming are smart, independent, competent and
committed. The characters who promote the theory of global warming are either
out-and-out extremists or are airheaded, wimpy, sheep-like or simply ridiculous.
Main character Peter Evans actually makes a transition from one camp to the other,
during the book. At the start he is a wimpy Prius-driving global-warming apologist
but by the end he is becoming more like a man in the John Kenner mould - strong,
decisive, independent, and something of a babe-magnet as well.
At its heart, though, the novel has a rather interesting point to make. The title
comes from comments made by Professor Hoffman, an otherwise very minor (and barking
mad) character. The point he makes is that governments (or, rather, the "politico-
legal-media" complexes - PLMs, for short - that exist behind the governments) have
a need to control their populations, and this is best done through fear. In this
sense, global warming is an idea whose time has come (although the fact that the
Bush government is resolutely against signing up to the Kyoto Protocol tends to
contradict this notion somewhat.)
Well, this is all food for thought. The idea of an artificial bugbear created by
the powers-that-be to control us all, could also apply to terrorism. To bring us
all ever further into line, what better way than to justify draconian measures as
necessary evils during the "war on terror"?
Back to global warming - I suppose the only way I'll know that it's real or not
is to do something like carve a notch at sea-level on Brighton pier. If I come back
in twenty years' time and find that my mark is 6 metres underwater, then I'll be
more certain than I am now.
One last mystery connected with State of Fear - what happens to sexy, evil
half-Vietnamese Marisa in the end? As far as I remember, she appears a few times
and then vanishes utterly. Did I somehow miss her demise? Or did the author just
forget about her? I think we should be told.
© Alex Cull, 17th February 2005
Top
|
|