Judith Orlaff - Second Sight

Review by Ro Bennett on show 6th May

On the whole I enjoyed this book although I found some parts heavy going.
This is the review from the back of the book:
'New York Times bestselling author Dr Judith Orlaff tells her remarkable life story and teaches you how to recognize and trust your own intuitive gifts to improve your life - and the lives of those around you.
In this updated edition, Dr Orloff reflects on her career and the changes that have revolutionized modern medicine and psychiatry since Second Sight was first published. She expands her earlier ideas and further explores intuition’s role in maintaining physical health and emotional well being, using examples from her own life as well as her patient’s lives. This is both a remarkable self-portrait of one woman’s journey toward the acceptance of intuition as a therapeutic tool and a comprehensive look at how you too can develop your intuition, transform your health and revolutionize your everyday life'.

In the introduction to the book Judith Orloff describes herself: 'the only child of two physician parents, with another twenty five physicians in my extended family, I come from a lineage of hard core scientific thinkers. As a child, I had dreams and intuitions that came true. At first my parents wrote these off as coincidences, but Mother and Dad became so unnerved I was forbidden to speak about them at home. I grew up ashamed of my abilities, convinced there was something was wrong with me'.

I found the first part of the book very interesting. It deals with the conflicts and turmoil Judith experiences as she struggles to make sense of her life. She writes : 'My mother, a strong willed family practitioner,...powerful, gregarious, afraid I wouldn’t fit in, seemed to be determined with all her intensity and faith to straighten me out, even at the risk of being overbearing. But I was stubborn and rebellious, just wouldn’t listen, was convinced my parents were incapable of truly understanding my inner struggles, perhaps because I didn’t understand them myself'.


In her troubled teens Judith describes herself as unreachable and out of control, she puts her parents through a lot of stress and worry and at seventeen forgoes college to live with an artist. However she begins to explore and make sense of her intuitive abilities when she is introduced to Dr Thelma Moss, a psychologist and researcher at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute who specialized in the study of paranormal phenomena. Judith realises that her suffering and confusion had been caused by the suppression of her gifts.

Eventually, as she matures, she decides she wants to become a psychiatrist and after a lot of hard work she eventually achieves this. However this raises more conflict.

In the prologue of the book, Dr Orloff writes:

The only mention of premonitions or other intuitive abilities I ever found during my medical education was in textbooks labeling such claims as a sign of profound psychological dysfunction.

As a psychiatrist, Dr Orloff worked very hard to achieve a prestigious position and the respect of her peers.To achieve this, she neglected and even discounted her intuitive abilities. Then a situation arose which forced her to reconsider this. She had a strong premonition that a patient who seemed well on the road to recovery was going to attempt suicide. Despite trying to discount this, the feeling persisted to the extent that she discussed it with a colleague who suggested that she gently bring up the subject at the next appointment with her patient. This didn’t happen because the girl took an overdose. Dr Orloff was reassured by colleague that she hadn’t done anything wrong, that she hadn’t missed anything but she writes: It wasn’t my medical competence that concerned me. I was shocked by my blatant disregard of intuitive information that could have benefited Christine, that might have made the difference between her life and death. Because the source of my impressions hadn’t fit the traditional model, I had ignored them.

Christine survived and Judith started to explore how her intuition carefully used could be integrated into her practice. The rest of part one of the book describes how this develops and I found this very interesting.

In Part two I got a bit bogged down at times. There are interesting case histories and stories but I found myself feeling a bit resistant to some of it. She is trying to encourage and help the readers develop their own intuitive skills through prayer, ritual and meditation. She talks about the value of some dreams and keeping a dream journal and how to be a well balanced intuitive and explains the spiritual path of intuition - so she was describing a life style. I realised that although I would like to have intuition I just want to BE intuitive, I don’t want to have to DO anything to achieve it, so my interest began to fizzle out at the ‘how to’ stage. It’s a good book though.

Dr Judith Orloff is now an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA.
Review by Ro