Strangers to ourselves : unsettled minds and the stories that make us Cover Image

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Strangers to ourselves : unsettled minds and the stories that make us / Rachel Aviv.

Summary:

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 Drawing on deep, original reporting as well as unpublished journals and memoirs, Aviv writes about people who have come up against the limits of psychiatric explanations for who they are.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.

Record details

ISBN: 9780374600846
ISBN: 0374600848
ISBN: 9781250872913
ISBN: 125087291X
Physical Description: 276 pages ; 21 cm
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022.

Content descriptions

General Note:	Publisher, publishing date and paging may vary.
Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references.
Formatted Contents Note:	Prologue: Rachel "Someone better than me" -- Ray "Am I really this? Am I not this? What am I?" -- Bapu "Is this difficulty I am facing the lesson of total surrender?" -- Naomi "You're not listening to me" -- Laura "He could read my mind, as though I didn't need to explain myself" -- Epilogue: Hava "Stranger to myself".