Product Description

Do you often suspect the worst of others? Mild to moderate paranoia, or mistrust of other people, is on the increase, and although it may feel justifiable at the time, unfounded suspicions of this kind can make life a misery. Research says between 20 and 30 per cent of people in the UK frequently have suspicious or paranoid thoughts. This is the first self-help guide to coping with what can be a debilitating condition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7589 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-29
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

About the Author
Dr Freeman is a Lecturer in Clinical Psychology at King's College London, Jason Freeman is a writer and editor and Professor Garety is Professor of Clinical Psychology at King's College, London.

Customer Reviews

Review by Surrey psychologist.
Excellent book. User friendly and easy to follow. Helps to frame suspicious/ paranoid thoughts as the "understandable" consequence of a number of factors that come together. Really useful guide for those experiencing such distressing thoughts and for also for professionals working in this area. Another 1st class book from the "Overcoming" series.

Good but I have some doubts
I would like to thank the authors for writing this book, but I must confess I have a lot of problems with it. I write as someone who has been hospitalized with medical paranoia, so I know what it is like to entertain fallacious suspicious thoughts. However, I also write as someone who has submitted a serious harassment complaint to his managers at work, a complaint that was not resolved either way. You will appreciate that I am currently not in a powerful enough situation to ascertain how justified my complaint was, a common situation for those suffering from paranoia, I would guess.

The authors say: "This book doesn't focus on unjustified anxieties about others, but rather on unfounded fears." This is to duck the million dollar question. What about anxieties where you cannot tell whether they are justified or not? This book reads as though it is written by doctors for the benefit of their patients, advice from high status people for the benefit of low status people. The assumption is that readers will have low self-esteem, and that the vast majority of their suspicions will be false ones. What about those who have paranoid thoughts who possess high self-esteem? From my experience of the 21st century workplace, my guess is that for these people, the vast majority of their suspicious thoughts will be partly justified. What should they do next? This book says absolutely nothing about this situation.

The modern workplace consists of a hierarchy. Suppose a lowly member of the hierarchy challenges a loftier member. Immediately a mini-conspiracy, a deliberate mistake, a misspelled email ensues to restore the hierarchy. It really is naïve to pretend this doesn't happen. For many bosses, instilling paranoia is a management technique. That's why there is a terrible danger that this book turns into a Harasser's Charter. If I was a manager planning to give a difficult employee a hard time, I would certainly have a copy of this book to hand, so that when the harassment complaint came in, I could say, "Are sure you are - feeling alright? Can I recommend this?"

Let me be more positive about what I agree with in this book. Certainly paranoid feelings need to be tested out against reality, although I would say that the testing needs to be a great deal more indirect and ingenious than the examples given here. I agree too about the value of creative writing in externalizing one's suspicions. Certainly this is an important topic, and I am glad this book has addressed it.