ADHD Confessions: Rousseau as Self-Help

The thinker and writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau described in himself a restlessness, impulsivity and distractibility which would today almost certainly warrant diagnosis with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).In ADHD Confessions: Rousseau as Self Help, Richard Orange shows how this famed figure of the French Enlightenment harnessed what he called his "restless temperament" to generate bold, original ideas in fields as diverse as music, education, literature, autobiography, and political science, influencing both the leaders of the French Revolution and the writers of the US Constitution. But he also turned his extraordinary intellect in on his own mind, analysing his restless traits nearly 250 years before they would be framed as a mental disorder. Orange shows how Confessions, together with Rousseau's two later autobiographical works, still hold uniquely helpful insights for those wrestling with restlessness and impulsivity today. Rousseau found his unruly mind agonising,