Healing the Soul in the Age of the Brain: Why Medication Isn't Enough NOT Becoming Conscious In An Unconscious World

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Chapter 18: Repetition, Reflection, and the Search for Meaning
Throughout this book, I have tried to convey a sense of the process of healing the soul-the inward journey of self-discovery and self-actualization-as I have experienced it in the psychotherapeutic process.

Chapter 18: Psychiatry at the Center of Our Cultural Crisis
This choice is the underlying theme of the recent television smash hit The Sopranos, which-judging from its immense popularity and the extravagant critical acclaim it has inspired-seems to have struck a deeply resonant chord in our cultural consciousness.

Chapter 18: Once More with Feeling
To restore the balance, let me give you the more personal side of what I have just been speechifying about. Perhaps the most important lesson about healing the soul that I hope you will take from this book is that the symptoms and painful emotions

We would all like a quick fix for our problems, a simple pill to take away our anxiety and lift us out of our depression. But there is no quick fix for the soul, and anxiety and depression may be signals of the soul's unmet needs. In this landmark work, Dr. Elio Frattaroli challenges our fixation on psychiatry's "Medical Model," which treats mental illness solely with drugs instead of seeking a deeper understanding of our problems - in other words, treating symptoms rather than people.

Combining a Renaissance humanism with a sophisticated understanding of modern science, he makes an impassioned, persuasive case for "listening to the soul" - paying attention to the inner life of the emotions, both in psychotherapy and in our everyday lives. Drawing upon philosophy, literature, psychology, and riveting case histories from his own life and practice, Frattaroli explores what has happened to a culture that has been "listening to Prozac" and hearing nothing else.

Elio Frattaroli, M.D., is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in full time private practice. He is on the faculty of the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia and is also an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. He studied Shakespeare at Harvard and trained with Bruno Bettelheim at the University of Chicago before turning to medicine.

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