Encyclopedia Neurotica
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From the author of The Portable Curmudgeon, a delicious, witty, irreverent A to Z guide to the tics, twitches and safety-valves that characterize our twisted, neurotic modern world.
We live in an Age of Anxiety. The events of modern life have overwhelmed the average homo sapiens until getting from Point A to Point B without being overcome by neuroses is a practical impossibility. Enter: the comic safety valve. Jon Winokur's Encyclopedia Neurotica is a delightful garden of the ills that beset modern man. Entries include excerpts from both popular and arcane published works, as well as original definitions, essential terms and the occasional cutting-edge concept, such as "celebriphilia, the pathological desire to sleep with a celebrity, suffered chiefly by groupies."
Some samples from Encyclopedia Neurotica:
--Abyss, the: the yawning unfathomable chasm of existential terror
--Acquired Situational Narcissism: a condition characterized by grandiosity, lack of empathy, rage, isolation and substance abuse; mainly afflicts celebrities, who tend to be surrounded by enablers
--Denial: unconscious defense mechanism that numbs anxiety by refusing to acknowledge unpleasant realities
--Manic Run: prolonged state of optimism, excitement and hyperactivity experienced as part of bipolar disorder
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Winokur, author The Portable Curmudgeon, The Traveling Curmudgeon and other humorously crotchety titles, shifts his focus from cranky to crazy in an oddball reference book billed as "an irreverent guide to the wacky world of neurosis." He offers entries from "absurd, the" to "zero tolerance," with stops along the way for "food contact phobia," "misanthropy" and "phallic symbol." But the book's purpose is not always clear: sometimes it reads like a dictionary, other times like a quote book. There are entries for obscure psychological terms, such as "Morita," a Japanese form of psychotherapy, and entries for pop cultural terms that have little do with neurosis, such as "gaydar." "David, Larry" gets a five-page study, complete with an analysis of his comic style and two pages of laudatory quotes, but father of modern psychology "Freud, Sigmund" gets only two pages, while "depression" merits one. It would be easy, but apparently inaccurate, to say the book suffers from "schizophrenia," which is a "general term for a group of psychotic disorders characterized by hallucinations, delusions, and withdrawal from reality." Perhaps it suffers from multiple personality disorder, instead? But it's a mildly amusing compilation of phobias, philias, manias and syndromes, perfect for browsing while you're sitting in your shrink's waiting room.
