Excerpt from A Mind At A Time by Dr. Mel Levine, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Some Adult Implications

Although this book concentrates on neurodevelopmental variation during the school years, any reader is likely to perceive its implications for adults. In fact, I daresay no one will be able to read this book without feeling as if he's gazing into a mirror while encountering the descriptions of individuals who struggle with the features of their wiring. The very same dysfunctions that trip up so many children often snare unsuspecting adults -- in their careers, in their avocations, and in their functioning within families. Here are three examples:

Donna is a middle school principal. She is an efficient manager and a popular leader among the kids and teachers. But she has serious problems with public speaking. She chokes up and often feels she makes a fool of herself at PTA and school board meetings. As a student in school, she had always been very quiet. She doesn't realize she is battling a lifelong problem with her own wiring; Donna has serious difficulty transforming her ideas into words and sentences. She has timely things to say and excellent insights into key issues, but finding words and constructing sentences are painful brain activities for her. She suspects her problem is "just anxiety," but her apprehension is justified when it comes to oral presentations. As she puts it, "I get so uptight when I have to speak in public. My ideas come out sounding too simple or even distorted. Yet I can write well and I do just fine talking slowly in a conversation. But I can't find words fast and organize my thoughts when I give a speech, and that's a real problem in my job, especially since I'd like to be a superintendent someday."

Kathleen is a young CPA who entered her father's accounting firm last year. An only child in a closely knit loving family, she chose this career mainly to please her parents (something she had always sought to do). But her work has been uniformly poor, disappointing, and exasperating, especially for her dad. She consistently reveals her superb social and communication skills and is richly creative and affably energetic, but Kathleen is hopelessly distractible and tends to rush through every assignment she undertakes, often leaving behind a hazy cloud of careless mistakes and gaping oversights. She possesses the kind of mind that favors and savors the big picture while often glossing over smaller points. Her brain just abhors minute details, such as the ones on an accountant's spreadsheets. Kathleen is wired for conceptualizing, creating, and theorizing. She probably should not be a CPA, but she doesn't seem to understand and perceive the career implications of her brain's characteristics. Her remarkable strengths are going untapped. She is now showing classic signs of depression and says that her "everyday existence feels so meaningless and aimless."

Brad loved orthopedic surgery in medical school. He had always been a sports fanatic, and the lure of sports medicine as a career enticed him to endure medical school (which was tedious and difficult for him). He is now an orthopedic resident. Sadly, he has been totally incompetent, possibly hazardous, in the operating room. No one can fathom it; he was such a motivated medical student. It turns out that this bright guy lacks the spatial perception and nonverbal problem-solving skill (a form of mechanical aptitude) needed to function as a skilled orthopedic surgeon. He is struggling with an all too common insidious plight, namely the chaotic career of a person whose interests don't coincide with the wiring of his particular kind of mind. Brad is in pursuit of what he's unlikely to succeed at. He's unaware of this risky discrepancy. He has found no channel for his many assets. The chief of orthopedic surgery has recommended that he leave the department because of "persistent incompetence as a clinician."

Copyright © 2002 by Mel Levine