all things bright and beautiful...

 this book pretends to answer many questions but in the end is nothing more than a collection of anecdotes and no substance.

making lists and joining them up does not make a proper argument

on top of all that the author ropper [very close to popper] seeks to pooh pooh and annihilate psychoanalysis in general and Freud in particular but he quotes Freud whenever it suits him.

This  has the appearance of a work of recondite scholarship but in the end is merely what Norman Mailer would call an advertisement for himself.

Interesting maybe for all the little digressions and pseudo historical analysis but not for those who are genuinely interested in helping the sick and suffering.

There never will be the discovery of any spontaneous lesions on the brain that cause psychosis.

furthermore the  author ropper does not seem to be able to distinguish between paranoia and schizophrenia.

One of his claims is that psychoanalysis is on the retreat but he refuses to acknowledge the influence of WW11 and the stiff british upper lip that rode in on that wave and the attempts by A.J'P. Taylor, Ernest Gellner, the weasel karl popper and the rest of the gang at the LSE et al who made it their business to excise and excoriate any discipline that could show them the true meaning of their wishes and the contents of their unconscious. 

file under an elaborate attempt to drum up business and put it on the shelf between pinker and dawkins.

until he can show a connection between neurology  and behaviour then he is wasting his time and ours.