DAVID NYLUND: Treating Huckleberry Finn: A New Narrative Approach to Working with Kids Diagnosed ADD/ADHD. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA, 2000, 232 pp., $39.95, ISBN: 0-7879-5229-X. The author of this book purports to take on ADHD industry (p. xviii) while, paradoxically, signing on as a member of an important subculture of that very industry: the anti-ADHD lobby. While romanticizing children who suffer from ADHD, and telling us that the is a fabrication intended to discriminate against children who are different, his criticisms of contemporary diagnostic and treatment procedures are more inflammatory than informative. This is unfortunate, because Nylund's politicization of ADHD obscures the fine clinical points that he makes in the second half of the book. In the preface, Nylund rails against the ADHD diagnosis, and against the common use of to treat children so diagnosed, by using language such as ADHD-Ritalin machine (p. xv), children being subjected to chemical restraint (p. xv), seductive nature of the ADHD label (p. xv), pretense of the ADHD diagnosis (p. xviii), and pathologizing children of difference (p. xix). He goes on to claim that [t]here is no scientific basis for the ... belief that ADHD is a neurological deficit (p. 9), ignoring the quite substantial evidence that has been published in the past five years; that restrains children, and thereby frees up many of them to use their talents and abilities; and that Ritalin ... is a temporary that quickly dissipates and is highly addictive (p. 23), despite the research showing that children with ADHD who are prescribed medication are at a lower risk for substance abuse later in life. Furthermore, I have never encountered a child with ADHD who got high from taking Ritalin. In further attempting to debunk the diagnosis, Nylund depicts the worst-case scenario as being representative of the diagnostic process. He portrays a process that is devoid of compassion for the child's fears; dismissive of environmental, social, and economic considerations; ignorant of other factors that might cause or contribute to the child's difficulties; and unable to acknowledge and build on the child's strengths. He debunks the treatment process by criticizing it for offering just one solution: stimulant medication. I personally do not know any clinician who practices this way, and poor clinical practice will dehumanize and mistreat individuals with any diagnosis. This does not mean that the is not valid and useful. He further claims that diagnosing a child with ADHD has devastating consequences for their minds, bodies, families, futures, and lives (p. xiv), whereas this type of devastation is more likely to come from children not being properly identified and effectively treated, leaving them to be misunderstood and denied the help that they need. In leading us on a crusade against the diagnosis, the author later contradicts himself by acknowledging the when he describes his therapeutic approach, in which he attempts to help children and parents change their relationship to the diagnosis. …