Stroke

C. C. Dahlberg and J. Jaffe: Stroke: A Doctor's Personal Story of His Recovery

W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., New York, N.Y. 1977

DR. DAHLBERG IS A PSYCHOANALYST who likes to write books about the obvious. What is the obvious, particularly for an analyst, and what does it conceal? A prior book by the senior author: "From Food to Fertilizer—the Role of Excrement in the Life Cycle" (Young, Scott Books, Reading, Mass., 1973) is an earlier effort in the direction of recognizing and appreciating what lies behind the obvious.

The present volume, expertly co-authored by Dr. Joseph Jaffe, familiarizes us with a significant and wide-spread cause of morbidity and mortality—namely, cerebro-vascular disease. The focus is on left hemispheric lesions leading to aphasia. It is pointed out that on the basis of hospital admissions, "five to six hundred thousand people in the United States suffer a stroke each year, and a majority do survive. Two-and-a-half-million stroke victims are alive in America today." We also are reminded that because the incidence of survival is high, stroke becomes the most costly disease in this country.

The authors have selected to write about aphasia because of their special interest in communication. Thus, in addition to providing us with an interesting personal account of Dr. Dahlberg's neurological syndrome, an extremely lucid and illuminating section on linguistics is included. As all of us must acknowledge, the language function distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom—it defines a unique property of man. Amputation or disturbance of language function must be a chilling, deeply unsettling