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Quinta-feira, 23/6/2005 Romanticizing Depression Julio Daio Borges For 10 years or longer, my week-day routine as a psychiatrist had been constant: write mornings, see patients afternoons. With the publication of my book Listening to Prozac in 1993, new elements were added: travel and public appearances. One question followed me from lecture to lecture, from talk show to talk show, bookstore to bookstore. Because the question was so automatic, so predictable, it took me months to appreciate how peculiar it was. At a book signing, I might give a short introduction to this or that aspect of Listening to Prozac, discussing workplace pressures to remain upbeat, say, and the ethics of using medications in response. What I spoke about seemed not to matter. Inevitably someone would ask: "What if so-and-so had taken Prozac?" The candidates for drug treatment were drawn from a short roster of tortured 19th-century artists and writers. Friedrich Nietzsche and Edgar Allan Poe made frequent appearances. My response was perfunctory - a quick review of theories of art and neurosis. I resented the joking distraction from issues I had raised. I did not treat the what if question as I did others. I did not attend to it, puzzle over it, take it to heart. And then one day I did... Peter D. Kramer no The Chronicle. Julio Daio Borges |
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