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The Personality Surgeon
Charles Peruzzi, a general practitioner in London's East End, finds himself the proponent of a revolutionary method of psychological therapy using computers to cure patients by breaking their personalities apart and restructuring them
- GenresFiction
322 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 1986
6 people are currently reading
40 people want to read
About the author
Colin Wilson
403 books1,291 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
Colin Henry Wilson was born and raised in Leicester, England, U.K. He left school at 16, worked in factories and various occupations, and read in his spare time. When Wilson was 24, Gollancz published The Outsider (1956) which examines the role of the social 'outsider' in seminal works of various key literary and cultural figures. These include Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, William James, T. E. Lawrence, Vaslav Nijinsky and Vincent Van Gogh and Wilson discusses his perception of Social alienation in their work. The book was a best seller and helped popularize existentialism in Britain. Critical praise though, was short-lived and Wilson was soon widely criticized.
Wilson's works after The Outsider focused on positive aspects of human psychology, such as peak experiences and the narrowness of consciousness. He admired the humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow and corresponded with him. Wilson wrote The War Against Sleep: The Philosophy of Gurdjieff on the life, work and philosophy of G. I. Gurdjieff and an accessible introduction to the Greek-Armenian mystic in 1980. He argues throughout his work that the existentialist focus on defeat or nausea is only a partial representation of reality and that there is no particular reason for accepting it. Wilson views normal, everyday consciousness buffeted by the moment, as "blinkered" and argues that it should not be accepted as showing us the truth about reality. This blinkering has some evolutionary advantages in that it stops us from being completely immersed in wonder, or in the huge stream of events, and hence unable to act. However, to live properly we need to access more than this everyday consciousness. Wilson believes that our peak experiences of joy and meaningfulness are as real as our experiences of angst and, since we are more fully alive at these moments, they are more real. These experiences can be cultivated through concentration, paying attention, relaxation and certain types of work.
Colin Henry Wilson was born and raised in Leicester, England, U.K. He left school at 16, worked in factories and various occupations, and read in his spare time. When Wilson was 24, Gollancz published The Outsider (1956) which examines the role of the social 'outsider' in seminal works of various key literary and cultural figures. These include Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, William James, T. E. Lawrence, Vaslav Nijinsky and Vincent Van Gogh and Wilson discusses his perception of Social alienation in their work. The book was a best seller and helped popularize existentialism in Britain. Critical praise though, was short-lived and Wilson was soon widely criticized.
Wilson's works after The Outsider focused on positive aspects of human psychology, such as peak experiences and the narrowness of consciousness. He admired the humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow and corresponded with him. Wilson wrote The War Against Sleep: The Philosophy of Gurdjieff on the life, work and philosophy of G. I. Gurdjieff and an accessible introduction to the Greek-Armenian mystic in 1980. He argues throughout his work that the existentialist focus on defeat or nausea is only a partial representation of reality and that there is no particular reason for accepting it. Wilson views normal, everyday consciousness buffeted by the moment, as "blinkered" and argues that it should not be accepted as showing us the truth about reality. This blinkering has some evolutionary advantages in that it stops us from being completely immersed in wonder, or in the huge stream of events, and hence unable to act. However, to live properly we need to access more than this everyday consciousness. Wilson believes that our peak experiences of joy and meaningfulness are as real as our experiences of angst and, since we are more fully alive at these moments, they are more real. These experiences can be cultivated through concentration, paying attention, relaxation and certain types of work.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 22, 2020
This book is very odd. It doesn't exactly have a plot. It's more a book about ideas. We watch a doctor's career take off as he pursues a theory. He becomes a beloved genius and soon all his ideas will change the world. The end.
I don't know if you can call that a spoiler, as there's nothing really there to spoil.
While some of the ideas are interesting, others are profoundly ridiculous and disturbing. One premise: being able to read a person's personality from a photograph, to the point where you could hire them for a job based on processing a picture. This is presented as a super cool idea that is totally plausible and not at all creepy.
Another bizarre aspect of the book is how incredibly sexist it is. A "nymphomaniac" is advised that if she really wants to catch a man, she needs to play hard to get and not offer herself up so freely. She of course agrees with her doctor and his counsel. And she ends up sleeping with him. This is presented as totally fine and not at all ethically questionable.
A man meets a woman and immediately feels the need to state that he does not find her at all sexually attractive. Later, after therapy, she is way sexier and we are told of her "sensual mouth and jutting breasts". Though she is not his type, even he must admit that he now finds her attractive.
This "therapy" of making ladies super hot is portrayed in the book as just awesome and wonderful and not at all weird or part of a male fantasy. The women just gladly listen to the doctor and never question him. In fact, none of the patients ever call him on his theories. Everyone swoons over his genius.
The book is almost entirely without conflict. It's sort of a science fiction story, maybe. Definitely dated, the book feels the need to define the word "pixel" for example.
Because it's written by Colin Wilson, it is very readable. Wilson can really write, and make everything seem compelling. At the same time, there are some really clunky sentences and bits of bad dialogue in this book. And typos. It feels like the author just wrote a fantasy about "What if I was a super cool doctor with the best ideas?" and then wrote until he ran out of steam -- or reached the number of pages necessary for a novel.
It includes some speculation about how people could do amazing things with their mind if they had better control of their bodies. Humanity is on the brink of the next evolutionary leap. And other theories that will be familiar to those who have read Wilson's other books.
I'm glad I read it, but it's a problematic, somewhat stupid book.
I don't know if you can call that a spoiler, as there's nothing really there to spoil.
While some of the ideas are interesting, others are profoundly ridiculous and disturbing. One premise: being able to read a person's personality from a photograph, to the point where you could hire them for a job based on processing a picture. This is presented as a super cool idea that is totally plausible and not at all creepy.
Another bizarre aspect of the book is how incredibly sexist it is. A "nymphomaniac" is advised that if she really wants to catch a man, she needs to play hard to get and not offer herself up so freely. She of course agrees with her doctor and his counsel. And she ends up sleeping with him. This is presented as totally fine and not at all ethically questionable.
A man meets a woman and immediately feels the need to state that he does not find her at all sexually attractive. Later, after therapy, she is way sexier and we are told of her "sensual mouth and jutting breasts". Though she is not his type, even he must admit that he now finds her attractive.
This "therapy" of making ladies super hot is portrayed in the book as just awesome and wonderful and not at all weird or part of a male fantasy. The women just gladly listen to the doctor and never question him. In fact, none of the patients ever call him on his theories. Everyone swoons over his genius.
The book is almost entirely without conflict. It's sort of a science fiction story, maybe. Definitely dated, the book feels the need to define the word "pixel" for example.
Because it's written by Colin Wilson, it is very readable. Wilson can really write, and make everything seem compelling. At the same time, there are some really clunky sentences and bits of bad dialogue in this book. And typos. It feels like the author just wrote a fantasy about "What if I was a super cool doctor with the best ideas?" and then wrote until he ran out of steam -- or reached the number of pages necessary for a novel.
It includes some speculation about how people could do amazing things with their mind if they had better control of their bodies. Humanity is on the brink of the next evolutionary leap. And other theories that will be familiar to those who have read Wilson's other books.
I'm glad I read it, but it's a problematic, somewhat stupid book.
January 25, 2018
When it comes to writing style, I always preferred Colin Wilson's non-fiction to his fiction. This was one of his later novels and it shows. The Personality Surgeon is a bit unusual in that it's not a thriller and doesn't have any interpersonal drama but is rather the story of a (fictional) discovery. As such, it takes a while before it gets interesting but after a few chapters it was the writing that pulled me in. Interesting, as I find most of Wilson's books, and some of his best fiction I have read so far.
March 2, 2023
One of his most interesting novels. The story doesn’t particularly have a plot, but is concerned solely with ideas on the construction and maintainence of personality. Wilson’s ideas can come across as slightly odd if you are not as deeply entrenched in the belief that man is God, and that we can change everything via concentrated effort, as he is. Nevertheless, very interesting book filled with great little psychological insights.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews