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Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us
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About This Book
In Strangers to Ourselves, a powerful and gripping debut, Rachel Aviv raises fundamental questions about how we understand ourselves in periods of crisis and distress. Drawing on deep, original reporting as well as unpublished journals and memoirs, Aviv writes about people who have come up against the limits of psychiatric explanations for who they are. She follows an Indian woman, celebrated as a saint, who lives in healing temples in Kerala; an incarcerated mother vying for her children's forgiveness after recovering from psychosis; a man who devotes his life to seeking revenge upon his psychoanalysts; and an affluent young woman who, after a decade of defining herself through her diagnosis, decides to go off her meds because she doesn't know who she is without them. Animated by a profound sense of empathy, Aviv's exploration is refracted through her own account of living in a hospital ward at the age of six and meeting a fellow patient with whom her life runs parallel―until it no longer does. Aviv asks how the stories we tell about mental disorders shape their course in our lives. Challenging the way we understand and talk about illness, her account is a testament to the porousness and resilience of the mind.
Reviews
"like so many of the stories in this intimate and revelatory book, the truth of it is real but incomplete ..."
"At every step, Aviv is nuanced and perceptive, probing cultural differences and alert to ambiguity, always filling in the fine-grain details."
"a compassionate and necessary exploration of the complex relationship between how we understand ourselves and how psychiatric diagnoses define us."
"A moving, meticulously researched, elegantly constructed work of nonfiction."
"If there is an argument she wants to advance, it is that the stories we tell about distress, and unusual, sometimes destructive behaviour, are just that – stories."
"Aviv's daunted respect for uncertainty is what makes Strangers to Ourselves distinctive."
"The book is organized around a profound and plausible hypothesis: that the stories people tell themselves about their mental disorders shape the course of their lives."
"Instead of demonising disorders of the mind, Aviv seeks to understand their causes."
"Aviv is an instinctive storyteller and her book's episodic, immersive format is underpinned by in-depth reporting as she tracks down those closest to her subjects ..."
"This eye-opening examination makes for a valuable addition to modern discourse around mental illness."
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