Page 6 - Boca ViewPointe - March '23

Page 6, Viewpointe March 2023
Book Review

Six Cases Of Unsettled Minds: The stories are intensely moving as we root for the
The Psychology Behind individuals, as they seek to achieve mastery over their
condition. The thrust and attractiveness of Ms. Aviv’s
Suffering study is the rehabilitation of the individual by whatever
means—whether complacent therapy, pharmacological
Rachel Aviv. Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and drugs, friendship and purpose, or self-knowledge. Most
the Stories that Make Us. New York: Farrar, Straus and like Roy and Bapu don’t lick it. Some adapt, Naomi found
Giroux. 2022. in her confinement penance, regained her self-esteem,
Prince Harry, Duke of Surrey. Spare. New York: Random is reunited with her family. Laura gains reputation and
House, 2022. renown partially though her popular blog recounting her
“Give me Liberty or give me Death.” Patrick Henry journey, marked by her friendship with fellow survivor
Cooper which leads to the question of whether marriage is
By Dr. Ronald J. Meyers the solution. Ms. Aviv’s own story of confronting anorexia
relates to her own survival and adaptation to the world by
Rachel Aviv, a staff becoming an empathetic journalist.
writer for The New Yorker She continues to recount case studies of five other Might Prince Harry also serve as a case of extreme
and specialist in medicine, troubled individuals, while also tracing the history of mental suffering, like the aforementioned? I don’t think
education and criminal psychiatric treatment in the twentieth century exposing in that I’m being hyperbolical. On its face, there appears to me
justice, draws upon her own other words its limited successes and glaring failures. a strong case to be made for a young man who, traumatized
experience with mental One of Sigmund Freud’s most cogent insights was by the death of his mother and suffered rejection from
illness to disclose the effort the notion that the abnormal is a differentiation, only his brother Willy, his father Charles, and his stepmother
to understand ourselves exaggeration of the normal; which leads to the conclusion Camilla. He was bullied and denigrated as a youngster
through the stories that we that such individuals are not so different from us, but rather in school, notwithstanding his princely status—whose
tell that inform and define extensions of our behavioral tendencies, with depression, very moment of birth relegated him to becoming--not the
who and what we are. She draws upon her own life and eating disorders, urge to suicide, extreme unhappiness and heir but the spare. The paparazzi (Paps) who hounded his
punishing experience with anorexia as a six-year-old contested the millennium viewpoint that the mental ill mother, and in his view were responsible for Lady Diana’s
confined to hospital because of the inability of her parents were aberrations who need to be confined and separated death, and he himself, and then his wife, mercilessly
very simply to get her to eat. from society. Freud’s views have had a major influence pursued, spied upon and exposed by them in gaudy
on psychotherapy in the twentieth century, including in headlines; this apparently with the complicit involvement
Ms. Aviv’s reportage. of his own family, whether regarding the uniform he
Stamp and Coin Club her childhood) in which she has been actively involved in wore to a costume event, the number of enemy he shot,
She traces five case studies (and treats one friendship from
and finally the decision for standdown from his prince
some instances over many years. Dr. Roy Osheroff, a medical responsibilities and exile (which he argues was merely
Boca Raton Stamp & Coin Club asks you to start doctor and proprietor of an extremely successful dialysis offered as an option not necessarily his final choice).
a new hobby. practice, suffered a serious case of melancholia, which led Prince Harry, with superb professional help, writes a
Visit with us at the Stratford Courts Auditorium to his confinement in several venues. Bapu a well born, graceful and heartfelt story, now at the top of the Times’s Best
located at 6343 Via Sonrisa del Sur, off S.W. 18th wealthy Hindu upper class woman in an unhappy marriage Seller list. But does not gainsay that he basically sought to live
Street, between Powerline Road and Military Trail. and dissatisfaction with her in-laws, who in pursuit and an exemplary life, overcoming the diminution, serving with
We meet the second and fourth Thursday each month adoration of Krishna embraced piety and poverty and cannot honor in the military and with his philanthropic initiatives, the
at 7 p.m. Please call membership coordinator Harvey be deterred from abandoning family and world possessions. example of his mother’s service and compassion wedged upon
Golinger at (561) 752-4922.  Laura Delano descendant from the notable American his heart, and not least of all, satisfying the whims and dictates
Franklin and Eleanor scion, class president and squash star of granny, the Queen. I can heartily recommend Prince Harry’s
in high school, well-educated at Harvard, attendee of not one compelling account of his dutiful dedication to the Gilbert and
but two debutant balls; but like Roy Osheroff suffering the Sullivan caricature of the “life of duty” and his survival. He
throes of depression and suicidal. Naomi Gaines, who grew surely bore a stiff upper lip except when it threatened to destroy
up on the wrong side of the tracks in the projects in Chicago his wife and his sanity. Perhaps it finally can be argued that he
and Minneapolis, who in her depression jumps off the bridge was following forbears, like Thomas, Patrick and Benjamin,
into the Mississippi River with her two infants; she is rescued who forswore the flawed institution of whimsy and selfishness,
but one of her infants dies, and she is sentenced to years in in a most modern declaration of independence; in adapting and
prison for the premediated murder. adopting the idealized path of fatherhood and a virtuous life in
Her work features the range of the principal approaches to the land of equality. He belongs to and in America, we surely
psychotherapy from benevolent engagement to incarceration, wish him well—without the puffery.
to the preferred pharmacology, to electroconvulsive therapy
(which was imposed as well on my father and brother to treat Dr. Ronald J. Meyers, a resident of La Paz, is an Emeritus
their depression--with no apparent salubrious benefit). Professor of English. rmeyers@esu.edu. 

SOLD!

6686 Via Regina
Dr. Lebrun Nestor Dr. Siperstein-Paul
Cornell University Yale University 3/2.5 plus 1 car garage Executed Contract in 28 days!
Dr. Mackay-Wiggan Dr. Micciantuono-Meran Flipped Condo for a Huge Profit!
Columbia University On-site Mohs Surgeon
$575,000
Dr. Lipman Dr. Gold
NYU Medical Center Albert Einstein Med Ctr Good service doesn't have to be hard to find.
Dr. Mathew Dr. Waintraub
Dr. Mathew
Dr. Waintraub
Duke University Cornell University
Dr. Anna Kurayev Dr. Anu Parameswaran Call Nicole Marks at (561) 445-8743
Tufts Medical Center NYU Medical Center
or email at nicolemarks52@gmail.com

Boca Pointe resident and Realtor

Nicole Marks, Realtor, GRI, ABR
561-445-8743