Healing the Soul in the Age of the Brain: Why Medication Isn't Enough

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. He has written and lectured on Shakespeare as well as on psychiatry and psychoanalysis. This is his first book.