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    The Naked Lady Who Stood on Her Head: A Psychiatrist’s Stories of His Most Bizarre Cases
    The Naked Lady Who Stood on Her Head: A Psychiatrist’s Stories of His Most Bizarre Cases
    The Naked Lady Who Stood on Her Head: A Psychiatrist’s Stories of His Most Bizarre Cases
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Naked Lady Who Stood on Her Head: A Psychiatrist’s Stories of His Most Bizarre Cases

    Written by Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan

    Narrated by Marc Cashman

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    “Stories of human behavior at its most extreme….With humor, compassion, empathy, and insight, Small searches for and finds the humanity that lies hidden under even the most bizarre symptoms.”
    —Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive and A Whole New Mind

    A psychiatrist’s stories of his most bizarre cases, The Naked Lady Who Stood on Her Head by Gary Small, M.D., and Gigi Vorgan—co-authors of The Memory Bible—offers a fascinating and highly entertaining look into the peculiarities of the human mind. In the vein of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Awakenings, and the other bestselling works of Oliver Sacks, The Naked Lady Who Stood on Her Head surprises, enthralls, and illuminates as it focuses on medical mysteries that would stump and amaze the brilliant brains on House, M.D.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateSep 28, 2010
    ISBN9780062027542
    Author

    Gary Small

    Dr. Gary Small is a professor of psychiatry at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine and director of the UCLA Longevity Center at the university’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience & Human Behavior. He and Gigi Vorgan are the authors of iBrain, The Memory Prescription, The Longevity Bible, and The Memory Bible.

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    Reviews for The Naked Lady Who Stood on Her Head

    4/5

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    • 2/5
      This ain't no Oliver Sacks. Holy fuck the writing was bad. Just...abysmal. I'm so sorry. I just couldn't stand it. The author tried way, way too hard to dumb down the information--it was dumbed down to the point that the author sounded incredibly stupid (although he really likes to tell you how smart he is directly). It might be just me, but the book seemed pretentious and just a tiny bit sexist. The funny part is he talks about collective hysteria and how women are more prone to it. Yes, that makes sense to me. And his explanation of it makes sense to me. But then the way he talks about women is often flippant, and he uses the word housewife over and over again. Honestly, it's not just women. There was a lot of simplistic labeling going on, and none of it was helping him seem relatable. Needless to say, I pretty much despised this book. Having to listen to his incredibly inane descriptions on audiobook was like sticking an ice pick through my eye. The dialogue....oh, the humanity!...the dialogue....no one has ever spoken to each other like that. "Hi honey, what are you up to today?" Christ.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed reading about all these unusual psychiatric cases, told with sensitivity and empathy, and explaining how the patients were helped in each case.
    • 4/5
      An interesting collection of psychiatric stories. Nothing extreme, but still worth reading.
    • 5/5
      This was a great read. Dr. Small tells about some of his most interesting and challenging clients from his time as a young doctor in 1979 to his seasoned Psychiatrist days in 2008. Each chapter is another case and all are told with a balance of mystery solving with his genuine care for his patients and often, respectful humor. He shares his mysteries with his wife Gigi Vorgan who co-wrote the book and who had good insight in many cases.My only complaint is that I wish it was much longer.
    • 5/5
      Very good and heart-felt. I appreciated his self effacing approach. Very recommended!
    • 3/5
      Of course the title of this attracted me, and it started out good with some unique cases, some of these illnesses I'd learned about in psychology. But some I didn't feel were horribly extraordinary. But it was an ok book. Didn't care for the endings to the chapters - I'm not sure how I would have ended them, but it sounded a little too fairy-tale happy-ending to me.
    • 4/5
      I would really like to rate this 3 1/2 stars. I did enjoy this book but would not count it among my personal favorites. The cases are bizarre and entertaining while also being serious and somewhat educational. The author is a psychiatrist who recounts his experiences with some of his most unusual cases. The saying that real life is better than fiction applies here. The author's writing is entertaining while also giving interesting insight into the field of psychiatry that is easy enough for a layperson to understand.

      I enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone interested in psychiatry or just really strange mental issues in people.
    • 3/5
      Psychiatrist Gary Small shares stories of some of the oddest and most memorable cases he has encountered in his career, including people suffering from such problems as false pregnancy, weird nightmares, complicated addictions, and mass hysteria.It's interesting to get a look into the practice of psychiatry that goes beyond the cliches of "Tell me about your mother" or "Here, have some antidepressants" (although there are certainly enough examples of both of those things). And many of these cases are indeed interesting. As a human, myself, I'm always interested in what goes on in -- and what can go wrong with -- the human mind.But, I don't know. There's just something about Small, or about his writing (or about the writing of his wife/co-author, perhaps) that rubs me the wrong way. I think it's partly that he can't seem to quite decide whether this is a collection of interesting cases or a personal memoir, and keeps including extraneous, uninteresting information about his personal life. Partly it's the way he includes lots of dialog that cannot possibly be verbatim, which often feels really stilted and simplified. (Admittedly, in a book like this, that sort of thing is probably inevitable, but it can certainly be done more smoothly. And the fact that he never explicitly discusses the fact that that's what he's doing doesn't thrill me, either.) He includes lots of conversations with his co-workers, too, which often have a hearty "ha-ha, look at us guys all having a laugh together!" tone, where the people and the jokes in question tend to come across as more obnoxious than anything. Also, while he's often self-deprecating and is willing to discuss his own uncertainties and false assumptions as he attempts to figure out his patients' problems, I can't help noticing the fact that all these cases ultimately make him look good, sometimes by showing up other doctors whom he portrays as hidebound idiots. Now, maybe it's a false impression, but all of this together combines to make the whole thing feel a little off to me. A little self-absorbed, maybe. A little artificial.But that's not even what really bugs me the most. Because, all right, it comes as absolutely no surprise that therapists sometimes find their patients boring, or annoying, or unpleasant. And, in general, I am all for honesty and openness in this kind of account. But I cannot help feeling that it's deeply unprofessional for a therapist to talk publicly about finding his patients boring or annoying or unpleasant, no matter how many personal details he's changed. And Small does this kind of a lot. I think I reached the height of my discomfort with him when he quotes a patient as saying, "This is completely confidential, right?" and his reply of "Of course" left me exclaiming, "Except it's clearly not, because you put it in your book!" In other contexts, maybe that would have bothered me less, but with this book, I just can't quite get past it.
    • 2/5
      All about him, him, him.
    • 4/5
      Really fascinating. I enjoyed reading about this man's career. I hadn't realized that the field has changed so much since the late 70's-early 80's. The psychotherapy was really interesting too. It is not laden down with medical terms, it is written so that a layperson can understand.
    • 5/5
      This was excellent,.UKE READING MYSTERIES. Fascinating cases loved it.
      ,