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The Other Side of Normal: How Biology Is Providing the Clues to Unlock the Secrets of Normal and Abnormal Behavior by Jordan Smoller - 4* - My Review

This book explores the idea that to fully understand mental illness, we need to start by understanding the normal – what the brain was designed to do. Smoller believes the current model (that defines mental illness based on the abnormal) is contributing to the explosion in cases in recent years, perhaps resulting in treatments that are unnecessary and potentially damaging. Do we really have that many more cases of mental illness now or is it artificially inflated by attributing a deficit or disorder to something that is within the range of normal functioning?

The author is Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and serves as a Trustees Endowed Chair in Psychiatric Neuroscience at Massachusetts General Hospital. Smoller asserts: “The best way to understand the abnormal is to study the normal. Rather than simply starting at the edges and working our way back, our goal should be to illuminate the full and vast distribution of normal. As we fill out the center, we can see its connections to the extremes—how and where the functions of the mind can be perturbed or disrupted.”

The current strategy (focusing on the abnormal) has been pursued for most of the past century. Smoller would like to turn this on its head and instead focus on the normal by asking such questions as: “What were the mind and the brain built to do? How do mental and neural functions develop? How are they organized? By understanding the basic architecture of the mind and the brain and how they make sense of the environment and experiences they encounter, we can begin to see where the dysfunctions are likely to occur and how they emerge from the normal spectrum of human experience.”

He examines the interactions between nature and nurture and argues that both are important – it never has been one OR the other. He provides evidence, cites the results of numerous studies to support his ideas. He emphasizes the promising results of research into brain chemistry and epigenetics.

Dr. Smoller addresses these issues in clear terms, such that it is easily consumable by anyone with a basic level of knowledge in psychiatry. I do believe one should come to the table with an avid interest in the topic – it’s not a book to just pick up and read on the spur of the moment. It requires focused concentration. It is written clearly, logically, and elegantly. I very much enjoyed reading the author’s insights.