Posted by laima on August 13, 2006, at 9:26:22
In reply to Re: Is Kramer right? » laima, posted by Dinah on August 13, 2006, at 8:54:45
> Yes, that's him.
>
> I *think* the main point of the book is that our society romanticizes depression and values the symptoms of depression. While it's really a disease that needs to be treated.
>
> Maybe I haven't reached the optimistic part of the book yet.Perhaps he's got some valid points then- and unfortunately, we all know there are lots of people who don't believe depression is a disease, think we should "snap out of it", "adjust our attitude", or something like that. Without having read the book, I might speculate Kramer would overstate his case in an effort to be more convincing? Maybe we aren't the ideal audience for this particular text then, because we already know some of this? We're already convinced! :)
Perhaps the "hopefulness" for us might come indirectly, in that someone is aggressively trying to educate the general public about depression realities(??) Or the book might help someone who is beating themselves up, blaming their mood disorder on a personal character flaw or something like that, realize that it's not so simple-let them be relieved of some guilt or self-blame(??)
Wasn't his last book criticized for allegedly advocating "cosmetic psychopharmacology", "feeling better than well" with prozac, and so on? I haven't ever gotten through that one either, don't know what he actually said, but recall it made a huge media splash, and there was much talk about people who were not even depressed whatsoever demmanding prozac in order to feel "better than well" and to enhance their mental performance. That kind of *frivilousness*, to me, felt as if it degraded the seriousness of clinical depression. As someone who was successfully using prozac for severe depression and considered it profoundly life-saving, I wasn't too happy about all the prozac jokes which were so popular at the time, either. I found them very offensive and hurtful. Perhaps he's trying to "compensate" for that episode? Just speculating.
In any case, my curiousity is now enough that I'm going to try to find a copy to read for myself- especially if I make any more comments!
poster:laima
thread:675829
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060810/msgs/676002.html