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Listening to Prozac

The Landmark Book About Antidepressants and the Remaking of the Self

Author Peter D. Kramer
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Paperback
$19.00 US
Penguin Adult HC/TR | Penguin Life
On sale Sep 01, 1997 | 480 Pages | 9780140266719
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The New York Times bestselling examination of the revolutionary antidepressant, with a new introduction and afterword reflecting on Prozac’s legacy and the latest medical research 

“Peter Kramer is an analyst of exceptional sensitivity and insight. To read his prose on virtually any subject is to be provoked, enthralled, illuminated.” —Joyce Carol Oates

When antidepressants like Prozac first became available, Peter D. Kramer prescribed them, only to hear patients say that on medication, they felt different—less ill at ease, more like the person they had always imagined themselves to be. Referencing disciplines from cellular biology to animal ethology, Dr. Kramer worked to explain these reports. The result was Listening to Prozac, a revolutionary book that offered new perspectives on antidepressants, mood disorders, and our understanding of the self—and that became an instant national and international bestseller.
In this thirtieth anniversary edition, Dr. Kramer looks back at the influence of his groundbreaking book, traces progress in the relevant sciences, follows trends in the use and public understanding of antidepressants, and assesses potential breakthroughs in the treatment of depression. The new introduction and afterword reinforce and reinvigorate a book that the New York Times called “originally insightful” and “intelligent and informative,” a window on a medicine that is “telling us new things about the chemistry of human character.”
Introduction
1. Makeover
2. Compulsion
3. Antidepressants
4. Sensitivity
5. Stress
6. Risk
7. Formes Frustes: Low Self-Esteem
8. Formes Frustes: Inhibition of Pleasure, Sluggishness of Thought
9. The Message in the Capsule
Appendix: Violence
Afterword to the 1997 edition
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
Peter D. Kramer is the author of eight books, including Ordinarily Well, Against Depression, the novels Spectacular Happiness and Death of the Great Man, and the national and international bestseller Listening to Prozac. His essays, op-eds, and book reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and elsewhere. Dr. Kramer hosted the public radio program The Infinite Mind and has appeared on the major broadcast news and talk shows, including Today, Good Morning America, the Oprah Winfrey Show, and Fresh Air. For forty years, Dr. Kramer practiced psychiatry in Providence, Rhode Island, where he is Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University. He now writes full time.
 
Visit Dr. Kramer on the web: http://www.peterdkramer.com . View titles by Peter D. Kramer

About

The New York Times bestselling examination of the revolutionary antidepressant, with a new introduction and afterword reflecting on Prozac’s legacy and the latest medical research 

“Peter Kramer is an analyst of exceptional sensitivity and insight. To read his prose on virtually any subject is to be provoked, enthralled, illuminated.” —Joyce Carol Oates

When antidepressants like Prozac first became available, Peter D. Kramer prescribed them, only to hear patients say that on medication, they felt different—less ill at ease, more like the person they had always imagined themselves to be. Referencing disciplines from cellular biology to animal ethology, Dr. Kramer worked to explain these reports. The result was Listening to Prozac, a revolutionary book that offered new perspectives on antidepressants, mood disorders, and our understanding of the self—and that became an instant national and international bestseller.
In this thirtieth anniversary edition, Dr. Kramer looks back at the influence of his groundbreaking book, traces progress in the relevant sciences, follows trends in the use and public understanding of antidepressants, and assesses potential breakthroughs in the treatment of depression. The new introduction and afterword reinforce and reinvigorate a book that the New York Times called “originally insightful” and “intelligent and informative,” a window on a medicine that is “telling us new things about the chemistry of human character.”

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Makeover
2. Compulsion
3. Antidepressants
4. Sensitivity
5. Stress
6. Risk
7. Formes Frustes: Low Self-Esteem
8. Formes Frustes: Inhibition of Pleasure, Sluggishness of Thought
9. The Message in the Capsule
Appendix: Violence
Afterword to the 1997 edition
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

Author

Peter D. Kramer is the author of eight books, including Ordinarily Well, Against Depression, the novels Spectacular Happiness and Death of the Great Man, and the national and international bestseller Listening to Prozac. His essays, op-eds, and book reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and elsewhere. Dr. Kramer hosted the public radio program The Infinite Mind and has appeared on the major broadcast news and talk shows, including Today, Good Morning America, the Oprah Winfrey Show, and Fresh Air. For forty years, Dr. Kramer practiced psychiatry in Providence, Rhode Island, where he is Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University. He now writes full time.
 
Visit Dr. Kramer on the web: http://www.peterdkramer.com . View titles by Peter D. Kramer

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