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Chemically Imbalanced: Everyday Suffering, Medication, and Our Troubled Quest for Self-Mastery Kindle Edition

by Joseph E. Davis (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 10 ratings
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A study of how ordinary people deal with everyday problems through self-mastery and mental health care practices.

Everyday suffering—those conditions or feelings brought on by trying circumstances that arise in everyone’s lives—is something that humans have grappled with for millennia. But the last decades have seen a drastic change in the way we approach it. In the past, a person going through a time of difficulty might keep a journal or see a therapist, but now the psychological has been replaced by the biological: instead of treating the heart, soul, and mind, we take a pill to treat the brain.

Chemically Imbalanced is a field report on how ordinary people dealing with common problems explain their suffering, how they’re increasingly turning to the thin and mechanistic language of the “body/brain,” and what these encounters might tell us. Drawing on interviews with people dealing with struggles such as underperformance in school or work, grief after the end of a relationship, or disappointment with how their life is unfolding, Joseph E. Davis reveals the profound revolution in consciousness that is underway. We now see suffering as an imbalance in the brain that needs to be fixed, usually through chemical means. This has rippled into our social and cultural conversations, and it has affected how we, as a society, imagine ourselves and envision what constitutes a good life. Davis warns that what we envision as a neurological revolution, in which suffering is a mechanistic problem, has troubling and entrapping consequences. And he makes the case that by turning away from an interpretive, meaning-making view of ourselves, we thwart our chances to enrich our souls and learn important truths about ourselves and the social conditions under which we live.

Praise for Chemically Imbalanced

“Chemically Imbalanced is an excellent addition to the works in social sciences and humanities that examine the distress of ordinary Americans from the second half of the twentieth century onward, a period when commercialized pills and the psychology-based notion of self-improvement entered the minds of Americans.” —Metascience

“Chemically Imbalanced raises important questions, offers new insight into the power and reach of the biomedical model and neurobiological thinking, and I highly recommend it. I encourage readers to assign it, especially in graduate-level mental health and illness classes—or any class looking for a discussion on people’s experiences with suffering and the broad impacts of biomedical thinking and treatment.” —Social Forces
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    The University of Chicago Press
  5. Publication date
    March 10, 2020
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Davis’s Chemically Imbalanced tackles a profound issue. Twenty years ago, most of us would have figured people always have and always will explain themselves and what they do in terms of reasons and motives. It was inconceivable we might think in terms of some glitch. Now, as Davis shows, many of us figure it’s natural to think in terms of glitches that can be adjusted with meds, the way you might manage your eyesight. In this illuminating book, Davis doesn’t force an explanation for this change down our throats, but he will leave readers wondering just how this happened and what, if anything, we should be doing about it.” -- David Healy, author of Pharmageddon and Let Them Eat Prozac

"In our 'troubled quest for self-mastery,' Davis implies, the risk that we’ll misconstrue factors as pervasive as self-criticism and self-contempt by rendering them somatic malfunctions all but guarantees that the suffering will continue—and will, as a result, continue to be misunderstood and mistreated." ― Psychology Today

“Suffering is that experience that seems to escape the bounds of our rational explanations and of the science mobilized to cure it. Chemically Imbalanced documents the ways in which neurobiological metaphors have taken hold of such experience of suffering, reducing it to a mechanical response to the world. This book is an urgent and much-needed addition to our understanding of the many ways in which social control is exerted through the control of suffering. It will compel us to ask questions about the very nature of therapy.” -- Eva Illouz, author of The End of Love and Manufacturing Happy Citizens

"Chemically Imbalanced is an excellent addition to the works in social sciences and humanities that examine the distress of ordinary Americans from the second half of the twentieth century onward, a period when commercialized pills and the psychology-based notion of self-improvement entered the minds of Americans." ― Metascience

"Recommended"  ― Choice

"It can be difficult for pharmaceutical historians to know as much as we should about the single most important characters in our histories: the people who actually consume medicines... Ethnographies and interview-based research provide a crucial resource for filling this gap, especially historically informed works like Joseph Davis’s Chemically Imbalanced, which is based on eighty interviews with people who identified themselves as struggling with sadness, anxiety, or concentration and attention problems... Davis’s analysis is insightful and empathic, and historians will find it useful as we work to understand the archivally elusive main characters in our own narratives." ― Bulletin of the History of Medicine

"In any event, we have sort of two ideologies working together in sync today: one of the 'neurobiological imaginary,' to justify taking drugs for everyday unhappiness, and to keep people from feeling badly for doing so; the other of the imagined higher self, which lets people feel proud in another way. What Davis has helped to expose is the contradiction in all this, the juxtaposition of the biological with the purely psychological. Tocqueville may have put the situation best when, over a century ago, he criticized scientists who went on stage to preach their doctrine of pure materialism, not unlike the way some scientists today preach the link between brain matter and mood. He observed they were as proud as gods, while declaring that man was less than a beast. Davis may have caught the same peculiar, yet, oh so human, tension within the 'neurobiological imaginary.'" ― Law & Liberty

"Chemically Imbalanced will no doubt motivate important scholarship."  ― Medical Anthropology Quarterly

"Chemically Imbalanced raises important questions, offers new insight into the power and reach of the biomedical model and neurobiological thinking, and I highly recommend it. I encourage readers to assign it, especially in graduate-level mental health and illness classes—or any class looking for a discussion on people’s experiences with suffering and the broad impacts of biomedical thinking and treatment." ― Social Forces

About the Author

Joseph E. Davis is research professor of sociology and moderator of the picturing the human colloquy of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Accounts of Innocence: Sexual Abuse, Trauma, and the Self, also from the University of Chicago Press, and coeditor, most recently, of To Fix or to Heal: Patient Care, Public Health, and the Limits of Biomedicine and The Evening of Life: The Challenges of Aging and Dying Well.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B084LC2MR4
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ The University of Chicago Press; First edition (March 10, 2020)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 10, 2020
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1442 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 10 ratings

About the author

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Joseph E. Davis

Joseph E. Davis

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Joseph E. Davis is Research Professor of Sociology and Moderator of the Picturing the Human working group at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. His new book, Chemically Imbalanced: Everyday Suffering, Medication, and Our Troubled Quest for Self-Mastery, has recently been published by the University of Chicago Press. It is an exploration of our growing turn toward imagining important aspects of ourselves in neurobiological terms and our suffering as a mechanism that can be "fixed."

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
10 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Sarah Genay
5.0 out of 5 stars Important perspective, well written
Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2020
Verified Purchase
Chemically Imbalanced is well written and thoughtful exploration of history and interpretations of many mental illnesses. It can feel a little gauche to question the medical interpretation of depression, ADHD, etc. these days, and Davis boldly builds his case around kind, attentive case studies and interviews. He talked to about 80 'regular' people with depression/sadness/anxiety to see how they understand themselves: Why am I depressed? Is this part of me? How do I make sense of changes to my personality that result from an antidepressant?

He finds that many people have come to understand themselves as neither sick nor well, but a tenuous 'third condition.' They have a mental illness and need medication, but they're not really sick; deep down, they're the non-depressed version of themselves which just needs a little help to come out. Many interviewees referenced some amorphous 'other' people with 'serious mental illness.'

He also reviews the history of such interpretations, reviewing how conditions have been reified by the DSM and how federal advertising rules and FDA restrictions have cultivated a drug-centric approach. I remain dismayed that the FDA found "direct to public prescription advertising was not in the public interest" in 1985, only to permit it a few years later.

I was particularly bewildered to learn that while most areas of medicine have graduated from system-based diagnosis and treatment, mental health remains stuck treating symptoms. When mental health drugs began being developed around the 1950s, they were expected to herald a deeper, causal understanding of mental health - and it has never come. The "chemical imbalances" we speak of colloquially are about as scientific as physiognomy.

One thought - Davis consistently presents talk therapy as the main alternative to medications. I would be interested to see more discussion of other types of therapies and how those successes might further inform our understanding. Hallucinogenic drugs (see Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind) and meditation come to mind as other non-medicalizing approaches that have been successful for many people. Talk therapy locates the cause and solution to mental illness within one's personal history; some alternatives (arguably) locate it in one's relationship to a community.

Overall, very good, thought-provoking and learned book working through a very needed perspective. I found it through Davis's essay on aeon.co.

Thank you.
8 people found this helpful
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Nora L. Ishibashi
5.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous.
Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2021
Verified Purchase
So far, I am underlining every sentence in the introduction. What a much much needed book for the moment we are in. What clear thinking, careful and thoughtful explanation. This book is incredibly fulfilling to read. I"m so glad I got it. It is even better than I expected.
As I have continued to read, I am continuing to underline. Davis talks about a light version of a self, which is focused on social expectations with a "depth model" of self, which is based on an inner narrative and an attempt to align ourselves with our values or ideals. As a metaphor, he notes the distinction between a diary, where our thoughts are confidential and introspective and Facebook, that requires a moldable outer self. A careful and nuanced perspective, this book provides a lot to think about.
2 people found this helpful
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N.T.B.
5.0 out of 5 stars A necessary read in our times
Reviewed in the United States on October 10, 2021
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This kind of book is necessary in our troubled times. Most of us would say we have a conception of selfhood, free will, and their relation to our “mental health.” But, how deeply have we explore such things. This book invites us to reconsider, based on stories of those suffering and their search for “viable” living, how medication, modern science, and psychology are shaping a version of humanity that most of us would feel quite uncomfortable with. Really easy to read, cannot recommend this enough.
2 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Philippa
3.0 out of 5 stars Good ideas but dense text
Reviewed in Australia on August 22, 2020
Verified Purchase
This is deep and rather verbose, but it doesn't pretend to be otherwise. There's some valuable insights, but you have to dig a bit to find them.
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