In Strangers to Ourselves, Rachel Aviv examines how individuals understand themselves amidst mental health crises and societal psychiatric explanations. Drawing on extensive original reporting, unpublished journals, and her own childhood experience in a hospital ward, Aviv presents four intimate portraits. She follows an Indian woman revered as a saint, an incarcerated mother seeking reconciliation after psychosis, a man pursuing vengeance against his psychoanalysts, and a young woman navigating identity after a decade defined by her diagnosis, now considering life without medication.

Why You Should Read?

• Explores the limitations of psychiatric frameworks and societal narratives around mental illness.
• Offers deeply empathetic and meticulously researched accounts of individuals grappling with their minds.
• Challenges conventional understandings of mental distress, identity, and healing.
• Provides insight into the resilience and fluid nature of the human mind.