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(More customer reviews)This review is written by Paul R. Fleischman, MD.
Poets on Prozac compiled and edited by my friend and colleague, Dr. Richard Berlin, will be of great interest to psychotherapists interested in creativity, to poets and artists, and to anyone interested in the centuries long discussion of the relationship between madness and poetry. No one is more competent than Dr. Berlin to have compiled this book, as Dr. Berlin is a well published psychiatrist and poet.
One of the strengths of this book is that it is a collection of first-person narratives written by professional writers. This not only gives it compelling force of confession, but it also helps the poets speak freely outside of the confines of scientific imposition, questionnaires or tests. The editor's excellence has been in creating a dialogical atmosphere in which his subjects and fellow investigators feel they can write with remarkable freedom. This is a book of science and courage.
Dr. Berlin provides a thought-provoking Introduction in which he discusses the relationship between psychiatric disorders and poetic creativity. Avoiding any rigid conclusions, he nevertheless points to the recurrent theme that emerges in the rest of the book. Poets who have psychiatric disorders generally benefit from psychiatric treatment. Psychiatric treatments are generally effective. Most of the poets who write chapters for this book became more creative after successful treatment. Treatment does not reduce poetic creativity and may well augment it. All of this does not answer the question about whether this group of poets would have been equally creative if they had had not psychiatric disorders in the first place. Is it the absence of psychiatric disorder, or is it good treatment of preexisting psychiatric disorder, that is the most fertile ground for creativity?
This book makes us all feel befriended and hopeful in our personal turmoil and suffering, and in our will to create.
A full length review of Poets on Prozac has been posted by Cortney Davis online on The Literature, Arts, and Medicine database. Dr. Berlin has been interviewed about his book at the site called Treatment on Line.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Poets on Prozac: Mental Illness, Treatment, and the Creative Process
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