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Book Review of The Paranoid's Pocket Guide to Mental Disorders You Can Just Feel Coming On

reviewed on
Helpful Score: 1


This is a little gem of a book that was ridiculously fun to read. It presents a collection of mental disorders organized into the following groups: Anxiety Disorders, Dissociative Disorders, Factitious Disorders, Impulse-Control Disorders, Personality Disorders, Psychotic Disorders, Sexual Disorders, Sleep Disorders, and Somatoform Disorders. Each disorder is presented with a do-you-have-these-symptoms Quiz, a hilarious and very telling glimpse of Inner Monologue, an overarching description of the Diagnosis, the Causality, and the Treatment options, plus some cases Of Note.

At 207 pages long, including the appendices of phobias and manias, it's a breezy jaunt into the dark disturbing world of insanity.

I'll post this Inner Monologue from Narcissistic Personality Disorder (pps 138-139) so you can have a preview:


"What is wrong with these people? How can they all just sit there and listen to that guy prattle on and on? Can't they see that you're wearing a brand new shirt? And such a nice shirt, in such a nice, subtle shade of blue - "Horizon Blue," the salesman called it - that really brings out your eyes and bespeaks a refined taste in garmenture. Why is nobody complimenting you on your excellent taste?

"Wait! That lady over there with the veil - she may have looked over. Did she? The least she could do is give a thumbs-up for the shirt. No, there she goes, turning back to that boring minister and his incessant, depressing eulogies. Okay, we get it. The lady's dead. That's sad, but no amount of wailing is going to bring her back. Why doesn't everyone just get over it and focus on something good in life? Like this terrific shirt?

"These morons wouldn't know a nice shirt if it wrapped its sleeves around their necks and squeezed the life out of their worthless bodies. How can you expect imbeciles to comprehend your acute sense of style? Why won't they notice?!"