Description
Book SynopsisHe has seen great achievements arise from great suffering and feels that understanding depression can provide important insights into happiness.
Trade ReviewAn informed, challenging, and readable approach to a vital subject. Despair is in the title, but readers will rejoice in the reading. Library Journal Ghaemi is a lucid and eminently reasonable writer. Zocalo Public Square [ On Depression] belongs in libraries serving graduate students of psychiatry, psychology, and, perhaps, philosophy. -- Melissa Nasea Watermark Clearly written, with mercifully short chapters for the uninitiated reader, Ghaemi's book elucidates how many of us already feel about the current construction of mood disorders, without having been able to articulate our misgivings. -- Alexander Langford British Journal of Psychiatry This is a fun and stimulating read for anyone interested in depression and other mood disorders. -- Helga Meier Metapsychology
Table of ContentsPreface
Part I: Entrance
1. Lives of Quiet Desperation
2. The Varieties of Depressive Experience
3. Abnormal Happiness
4. The Age of Prozac
5. The Unknown Hippocrates
Part II: Pretenders
6. Postmodernism Debunked
7. Pharmageddon?
8. Creating Major Depressive Disorder
9. The DSM Wars
Part III: Guides
10. Viktor Frankl: Learning to Suffer
11. Rollo May and Elvin Semrad: I Am, We Are
12. Leston Havens: Holding Opposed Ideas at Once
13. Paul Roazen: Being Honest about the Past
14. Karl Jaspers: Keeping Faith
Part IV: Exit
15. The Banality of Normality
16. Two O'clock in the Morning
Acknowledgments
Appendix: Listening to Despair: An Interview by Leston Havens
Notes
Bibliography
Index
