Capture
Unraveling the Mystery of Mental Suffering
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3.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"A breakthrough book. In a world of increasingly specialized knowledge, it takes a particular gift and some stubbornness to cut across the fields of neuroscience, psychiatry, philosophy and psychology and to ask the fundamental question: Why it is that we can allow our best selves to be captured by and torpedoed by thoughts and actions that sink us?. . . . [Kessler's] ultimate answer is profound and one that could be life-changing and life-saving. I know I will be handing this book out for just that reason.” — Abraham Verghese, MD, author of Cutting for Stone
In Capture, New York Times bestselling author Dr. David A. Kessler considers some of the most profound questions we face as human beings: What are the origins of mental afflictions, from everyday unhappiness to addiction and depression—and how are they connected? Where does healing and transcendence fit into this realm of emotional experience?
Analyzing an array of insights from psychology, medicine, neuroscience, literature, philosophy, and theology, Dr. Kessler deconstructs centuries of thinking, examining the central role of capture in mental illness and questioning traditional labels that have obscured our understanding of it. Looking to the emotionally resonant lives of figures such as David Foster Wallace, Virginia Woolf, William James, Tennessee Williams, John Belushi, Sylvia Plath, and Robert Lowell, among others, he explains how this concept is at play in their lives and—by extension—our own.
Ultimately, Capture offers insight into how we form thoughts and emotions, manage trauma, and heal. For the first time, we can begin to understand the underpinnings not only of mental illness but also of our everyday worries and anxieties. Capture is an intimate and critical exploration of the most enduring human mystery of all: the mind.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this fascinating book, Kessler (The End of Overeating), former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, probes the nature of the "hijacked" mind, offering a straightforward and plausible explanation of a neural mechanism by which a range of human behaviors can be understood. Drawing on his two decades of research, Kessler calls this underlying mechanism "capture" and reveals its three basic elements: "narrowing of attention, perceived lack of control, and change in affect, or emotional state." He catalogs the kinds of activities that capture people's attention including love, trauma, gambling, and art and demonstrates that in individual cases these phenomena, or sometimes specific events, can lead from positive mental health to mental illness. Kessler devotes considerable attention to David Foster Wallace as an example of capture turning on the self, with the acute self-awareness that seized Wallace's attention developing into the self-hatred that led to his suicide. He also carefully points out that capture can lead to violence as well as exalted spiritual experiences. Kessler ends on a note of hope, presenting a range of ways that people can potentially gain more control of their lives through an understanding of capture. This is a hefty yet accessible tome, and Kessler gives readers much to ponder.
