Lauren Slater has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 4 narrators, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 2 ratings. The most-rated is Blue Dreams.
Opening Skinner's Box
Summary
Beginning with B. F. Skinner and the legend of a child raised in a box, Lauren Slater takes us from a deep empathy with Stanley Milgram's obedience subjects to a funny and disturbing re-creation of an experiment questioning the validity of psychiatric diagnosis. Previously described only in academic journals and textbooks, these often daring experiments have never before been narrated as stories, chock-full of plot, wit, personality, and theme.
©2004 Lauren Slater (P)2017 Tantor
Blue Dreams
Summary
A groundbreaking and revelatory history of our major psychotropic drugs, from "a thoroughly exhilarating and entertaining writer." (Washington Post). Although one in five Americans now takes at least one psychotropic drug, the fact remains that nearly 70 years after doctors first began prescribing them, we still don't know exactly how or why these drugs work - or don't work - on what ails our brains. Blue Dreams offers the explosive story of the discovery, invention, people, and science behind our licensed narcotics, as told by a riveting writer and psychologist who shares her own intimate experience with the highs and lows of psychiatry's drugs. Lauren Slater's account ranges from the earliest, Thorazine and lithium, up through Prozac and other antidepressants, as well as Ecstasy, "magic mushrooms", the most cutting-edge memory drugs, and even neural implants. Along the way, she narrates the history of psychiatry itself, illuminating the imprint its colorful little capsules have left on millions of brains worldwide, and demonstrating how these wonder drugs may heal us or hurt us.
©2018 Lauren Slater (P)2018 Hachette Audio
Playing House
Summary
Acclaimed author Lauren Slater ruminates on what it means to be family. Lauren Slater's rocky childhood left her cold to the idea of ever creating a family of her own, but a husband, two dogs, two children, and three houses later, she came around to the challenges, trials, and unexpected rewards of playing house. In these autobiographical pieces, Slater presents snapshots of domestic life, populating them with the gritty details and jarring realities of sharing home, life, and body in the curious institution called "family." She asks difficult questions and probes unsettling truths about sex, love, and parenting. In these pages, Slater introduces us to her struggles with her mother, her determination to make a home of her own, her compromises in deciding to marry (her conflicts manifesting as an affair on the eve of her wedding), her initial struggle to connect with her newborn child, and the dilemmas of mothering with a mental illness. She writes openly about her decision to abort her second pregnancy and her later decision to have a second child after all. She tells us about the searing decision to have elective double mastectomy and how her love for her husband was magically rekindled after she saw him catch fire in a chemical accident. It's not all mastectomies and chemical fires, though. Slater digs into the everyday challenges of family living, from buying a lemon of a car and fighting back menacing weeds to gaining weight and being jealous of the nanny. Beautifully written, often humorous, and always revealing, these stories scrutinize the complex questions surrounding family life, offering up sometimes uncomfortable truths.
©2013 Lauren Slater (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
The $60,000 Dog
Summary
A stunning new book about the role of animals in our lives, by a popular and acclaimed writer. From the time she is nine years old and discovers a “Private Way” full of the wonderful and creepy creatures of the wild - spiders, deer, moles, chipmunks, and foxes - Lauren Slater finds in animals a refuge from the troubled life of her suburban home. As she matures, her bond with animals - raccoons, horses, swans, cats, and primarily, dogs - strengthens and grows more complex and compelling. They offer relief from the pain of her mother’s mental illness, from a foster family where she feels not at all at home, from her own periodic bouts with depression. As a psychologist, a reporter, an amateur naturalist, and above all, an enormously gifted writer, Lauren Slater draws us into the stories of her love for the animals that are so much more to her than pets.
©2012 Lauren Slater (P)2012 Audible, Inc.