Listening to Prozac - by Peter D Kramer (Paperback)

About the Book

Reported to turn shy people into social butterflies, improve work performance, memory, even dexterity, are we using Prozac "cosmetically" to make people more attractive? In a new Afterword, Dr. Kramer gives an updated report on Prozac in America today. This classic bestseller has sold more than 450,000 copies.

Book Synopsis

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."

Review Quotes

"A remarkable book with an enduring cultural and professional impact. As this 30th anniversary edition reveals, Kramer's observations remain a source of insight and are more relevant than ever." --Awais Aftab, MD, Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Case Western Reserve

"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

"One of the most important and provocative books on psychology I've seen in years...asks us to question all our assumptions about what the self is, what therapy has been and can be, and about the role of drugs in affecting behavior and personality." -Psychology Today

"Dr. Kramer seems to be writing about the therapeutic credos of our time. The result is entertaining, provocative . . . and often originally insightful."- The New York Times Book Review

"Kramer is a wonderful writer, and his readers will learn much about the new research on temperament and personality, biological theories of mood disorders, and the behind-the-scenes stories of how psychiatric drugs were discovered or invented." -Los Angeles Times Book Review

"[Kramer] has taken on in a lucid and informed manner, issues that many clinicians and academics have been unwilling to tackle....His book will be truly heuristic...it will generate agreement or disagreement but, most importantly, it will generate thought and discussion. This is what one hopes for, but too rarely gets, in the public discussion of science and medicine."- Washington Post

"Peter Kramer deals brilliantly with the complex issue of personality and questions whether a commonly used antidepressant can alter the very essence of a person's character." -Nature

"Intelligent and informative." -New York Times

"Kramer presents a lucid and convincing demonstration that American psychiatry is not brain dead....It demonstrates that conceptual brilliance and innovative thinking are alive and well in our field today." -American Journal of Psychiatry

"Kramer fruitfully examines many questions that are relevant to everyone in this post-Freudian age of medication."- San Francisco Chronicle

"Debunks the hysteria about [Prozac], fanned by pop journalism and talk shows, and gives us instead a multifaceted exploration of what the drug can do, cannot, and perhaps should not do."- Houston Post

"[A] thoughtful, elegantly written book."- Reason

"A wise and unflinching examination of the ramifications for society--and for the individual--when the capsule replaces the touch." -Kirkus Reviews

"Tackles the complicated implications and assumptions of modern psychiatry." -New York Daily News

"Extremely well-written, easy to read, serious, erudite and highly stimulating...and important and essential edition to psychiatric literature. We are fortunate to have Peter Kramer, a teacher and writer par excellence."- Philadelphia Inquirer

About the 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 .