Below is a review of recommended non-fiction books in Hebrew for 2023 - part XNUMX and this time "Everything in your head - about psychosomatic diseases and the relationship between body and mind" by Susan O'Sullivan, "The Principle of Unknowing" by Ofir Janko, "The Quantum Universe" by Brian Cox and J. F. Forshaw and "Mittal patrol: the major operations of the unit" by Avner Shur and Aviram Halevi.
Everything in your head: about psychosomatic illnesses and the connection between body and mind / Susan O'Sullivan (published by Mater)
The book "Everything in Your Mind", by Susan O'Sullivan, neurologist and clinical neurophysiologist, is a book that was important to be written. It describes a connection between body and mind, which is manifested in psychosomatic disorders - situations in which physical symptoms arise from psychological reasons and emotional distress.
During the book, O'Sullivan tells stories from her clinical field - for example, a patient with epilepsy, for whom no medication helped her because the cause of the convulsions was psychomatic, a patient who developed paralysis, a patient who became blind when she was hired for a new job, a patient who was unable to open his eyes due to a spasm of the eyelids, a patient who lost her ability to speak, a patient suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome and many other stories. At the end of the book, the author also tells a personal story, about psychosomatic phenomena that happened to her after she broke her leg.
Everyone is vulnerable to psychosomatic symptoms, following certain life crises, chronic stress and especially situations that make us feel trapped (such as incompatibility in married life) - on the other hand, there are people who are more prone to psychosomatic illnesses and symptoms such as people with an anxious or neurotic personality, people who tend to depend too much on others, People who see others as strong and successful and themselves as powerless, people who tend to worry or feel anger, guilt and depression, people with a history of anxious parents in the first year of life and more. It is not easy to differentiate between a psychosomatic symptom and a real medical symptom - on the other hand, according to the author, most diseases limit themselves to a finite number of symptoms, where the greatest diversity is not in the type of symptoms but in their degree of severity, while psychosomatic disorders can indeed appear in any part and in any bodily function, but They move easily and quickly from one place to another. The author also explains how psychosomatic symptoms arise, for example damage to the HPA axis (hypothalamic axis, pituitary gland and adrenal gland), excessive reference to symptoms, illness used as an escape or explanation for failure, denial of stress, profit from an illness such as sympathy, loving care and financial grant, and more.
The book, in addition to describing psychosomatic phenomena in patients and what caused them, also includes a lot of information about the history of research on them (what was previously called "hysteria") - the activities of Jean-Martin Charcot (the famous neurologist in Paris from the end of the 19th century, with the beautiful patient his, Blanche Whitman, a lower-class girl from the closed ward of a mental hospital due to a difficult life background), his research in the field of Pierre Jeanne (a French philosopher and psychologist) and of course Freud with his assumptions about the subconscious and psychosomatic symptoms as a symbol of the conflicts that occur within us (hence the treatment of Freud aimed at the discovery of the conflicts and then at the disappearance of the psychometric symptom).
The book describes types of illnesses related to the psychometric field but different from it - for example Munchausen syndrome, which represents people who produce or imitate an illness in order to gain medical attention, or hypochondria (health anxiety), in which the patient is obsessed with his health and the expectation of illnesses, and this anxiety takes over his life. The author also mentions syndromes such as irritable bowel syndrome and chronic fatigue syndrome, which do not necessarily stem mainly from stress, but sometimes from false beliefs about how to respond to changes in our bodies, instead of ignoring them (for example, in irritable bowel syndrome, the people who suffer from it are excessively aware of every internal sensation and every change in the bowels' action They react to symptoms that others ignore, and these reactions cause symptoms and awareness to worsen.)
The book also offers possible ways to relieve and eliminate psychosomatic symptoms, such as understanding why that person developed a psychosomatic symptom with the help of the three factors - vulnerability, trigger and gain. As soon as there is a diagnosis and an explanation, it is much easier for the patient to accept the diagnosis, find out what purpose the disease serves, find out what is missing or what the profit lies in the disease and try to bring something in its place and then recover - for example, if the disease seems to help solve the problem of loneliness, we will treat the loneliness and the disease will disappear, If the problem lies in incorrect reactions to the messages the body sends, they can be relearned, or if there is a certain trauma that serves as a trigger for the disease, it must be treated - thus succeeding in breaking the patterns of fear and avoidance.
In conclusion, an excellent book, well made, which perfectly covers a fascinating and important subject.
The grade of the book - 9.8
The principle of not knowing / Ofir Janko (self-published)
The Principle of Ignorance, to distill its message, is a book that claims that we actually know nothing of what is happening in our world, we "think" we know according to the stories that are reported to us or that we tell ourselves, but not really. The book was written by Ofir Janko, a computer engineer.
Let's start by saying that I love a person who gets up in the morning, and decides to write a book of thought or non-fiction when it is free from academic influences in the field. Thomas Kuhn would argue that thus the author is not affected by the paradigms of the field. On the other hand, such a book should of course be of high quality, invested and original, and that's how I was impressed by Janko's book.
The book refers to different fields and demonstrates how these fields are built from stories, which are told by "blind reporters" - reporters who, due to knowledge barriers, cannot see what is really happening. For example, we cannot learn from history, because one case does not impose on another case and a certain correct response can only be given in retrospect (this is beyond the other interpretation that anyone can give to the event). Dinosaurs are from prehistoric times - the researchers were not there, and the information barriers of complexity and time prevent them from really knowing what happened there - therefore what they tell us are interpretive stories, which do not have to be true. The book also refers to skepticism in the areas of health recommendations and more. Janko makes an interesting claim, and writes that just as the credibility of a book can depend on the amount of its bibliography, which cannot really be checked, so also a person's title, for example a doctor, does not give him the ability to know more or be a more expert than someone with a master's degree - since all the difference between him For a master's degree is research work in a very specific field.
The book is a thought provoking book and the chapters are fascinating - in my opinion the beginning is less attractive to read than the rest and precisely the last chapters of the book, in which Janko also describes the tremendous effort in writing such a book, are particularly original in my eyes. I certainly agree that we, as humans, live in a world we have no idea about. The brain - as it dreams at night - feeds and tells us stories during the day as well, because its purpose is to provide security and survival. Our whole world is subject to the principle of ignorance, when language, economics and every other area of our lives are inventions of man - the result of agreements between us that the connection between them and reality is strictly coincidental. On the other hand, as Janko writes at the end of the book, man needs to consume stories, no matter how true they are and that one can live with not knowing really well.
The grade of the book - 9.4
The Quantum Universe / Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw (published by Yediot Books, Attic Books)
The book "The Quantum Universe" by physicists Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw is a book that introduces us, the readers, to the oddities of the quantum world, but without going too far into complex mathematical descriptions. The book, for example, explains basic quantum principles such as superposition, quantum tunneling, wave-particle duality and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle (another excellent recommended book in the field is Dr. Baez Tamir's book, "Quantum Physics").
In my opinion, one of the outstanding advantages of the book is its ability to link quantum phenomena with tangible scenarios in the real world, with the help of analogies and metaphorical narratives (eg clocks). This certainly makes it easier to understand. The book also has a nice presentation of the conflicts and ambiguities that still occupy the world of research.
The book is good and interesting, although I would improve the accessibility of the book, so that even those with no physics background at all can understand the book in an easier way. This is definitely a book that you should devote some time to in order to understand. The book is still fascinating and satisfies the reader's curiosity about one of the fascinating theories that have arisen for us in the world of science.
The grade of the book - 9.3
Military patrol: the unit's major operations / Avner Shor and Aviram Halevi (published by Yediot Books)
Although this book is a non-fiction book, it deals with the military history of the IDF while focusing on the operations permitted for publication by the Defense Forces Patrol. The book presents a multitude of operations intertwined within the history of the State of Israel - from the elimination of Abu Jihad and the binge operations, through the kidnapping operations of a Matkal patrol such as the kidnapping of the Syrian officers in 1972, the kidnapping of Javad Katsfi, Sheikh Obeid and Mustafa Dirani, to
For the big operations such as the Entebbe operation, taking over bus line 300 and more. During the book you can learn, beyond the operations of the Matkal Patrol, also about the periods our country has gone through, about the key figures in the Matkal Patrol such as Ehud Barak, Yoni Netanyahu, Amar Bar Lev, Bogi Ya'alon and more, and about the military politics that helped the Matkal Patrol to develop You belong to the elite unit as it is today.
The book is not badly written, but sometimes there are a few unnecessary details that may be of more interest to patrol or military personnel - which makes reading the book a bit difficult.
The grade of the book - 8.4
The author of the review - Ofer Ben Horin, editor-in-chief - The science news website and the author of the book
"MRI the complete guide - medicine and physics meet"
