Listening to Prozac

Description

Since it was introduced in 1987, Prozac has been prescribed to nearly five million Americans. But what is Prozac? A medication or a mental steroid? A cure for depression, or a drug that changes personality? Reported to turn shy people into social butterflies and to improve work performance, memory, even dexterity, does Prozac work on character rather than illness? Are we using it cosmetically, to make people more attractive, more energetic, more socially acceptable? And what does it tell us about the nature of character and the mutability of self? With the addition of an afterword that gives us an up-to-date report on Prozac in America today, including his personal observations, reactions to his critics, and the latest scientific research, psychiatrist Peter Kramer reinforces what The New York Times calls ‘an intelligent and informative book…which tells us new things about the chemistry of human character.’

Dr. Kramer was recently asked to guest host The Infinite Mind, a weekly public radio show focusing on the art and science of the human mind and spirit, behavior, and mental health. Listen to the show now.

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 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 OatesPeter D. Kramer, M.D., recently named host of the national, weekly public radio series, The Infinite Mind, is “possibly the best-known psychiatrist in America,” as The New York Times put it. Peter Kramer received his M.D. from Harvard and is the best-selling author of Listening to Prozac, Should You Leave?, Spectacular Happiness, and Moments of Engagement. His latest book, Against Depression, will be published in May 2005.

In 2004, two programs of The Infinite Mind hosted by Kramer won top media awards: a Gracie Allen Award from the American Women in Radio and Television for an examination of “Domestic Violence” and a National Mental Health Association Media Award for “Between Two Worlds: Mental Health for Immigrants. Kramer has written for The New York Times Magazine and The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post Book Review, The Washington Post, the (London) Times Literary Supplement and U.S. News & World Report, among other publications. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island, where he is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University, and has a private practice.

Visit Dr. Peter D. Kramer on the web: http://www.peterdkramer.com 

The Infinite Mind: http://www.theinfinitemind.com/

US