“The divide between the psychic hinterlands and a setting we might call normal is permeable, a fact that is both haunting and promising. It’s startling to realize how narrowly we avoid, or miss, living radically different lives.”
How do we understand ourselves in periods of crisis and distress? Such moments – familiar to any life – often create tension between our own sense of self and how the rest of the world sees us. New Yorker staff writer Rachel Aviv, author of Strangers to Ourselves, had her first brush with how people perceive mental health and wellbeing when she was diagnosed with anorexia as a young child. This is the point of departure for her meticulously researched non-fiction narrative that leaves no stone unturned, as she examines not only her own experience, but that of a variety of people around the world, each shedding light on a different aspect of mental wellbeing and illness.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, societies around the world are more primed than ever to openly discuss mental health. But despite this and recent breakthroughs in medical science, psychiatry is a relatively new field, and the mind remains largely uncharted territory. Strangers to Ourselves is both an autobiographic and journalistic account, providing windows onto that experience in a book that is curious, transformative, and above all, deeply human.
Rachel Aviv is a staff writer at the New Yorker. ‘Strangers to Ourselves’ is her debut book and was named by the New York Times as one of the 10 best books of 2022. The book was also a finalist for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle award in criticism.
This event is sponsored by Wolters Kluwer.
