Laura Miller of Salon reviews a new book by Peter Kramer, author of Listening to Prozac. Is our culture reluctant to “eradicate” depression?
Van Gogh on Prozac
Salon
By Laura Miller
Treating depression doesn't quell our humanity and creativity but restores them, argues "Listening to Prozac" author Peter Kramer. So, please, let's stop making a virtue out of despair.
"What if Prozac had been available in van Gogh's time?" That's the question Peter Kramer, a professor of psychiatry known for his bestselling book, "Listening to Prozac," hears whenever he makes a public appearance, and he's sick of it. The people who ask it, he observes, are all the same: "hearty men trying to win standing with the audience about them, as if we were all complicit in a good joke." In other words, it's a stupid question masquerading as a clever one, posed by the kind of person who is unshakably -- and mistakenly -- convinced of his own originality. More…
If Van Gogh Had No Depression, Would We Have His Art?
5/23/2005 09:27:00 PM
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