If you have spent more than five minutes with me, you most likely know I am fascinated with therapy and passionate about initiating open discussions about mental health and mental illness. So it’s surprising that, nearly a year into this column, I have yet to recommend a mental health book. I suppose I’ve subconsciously been waiting for the right book to come along that would allow me to gush sufficiently. Fortunately for all of us, Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories that Make Us, by New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv, is just that book.
Before I say more, a quick story: I recently decided to create a Psychology section at Still North (forthcoming late Sept. 2022 for those intrigued). While books about psychology and mental health care are well represented on our shelves, they don't currently have their own section. In discussing what to name the new section, my fiancé suggested cheekily, “uh, Self-Help?” I was a bit taken aback.
I don’t mean to insult the Self-Help genre or its readers, but rather to point out that despite significant overlap, Self-Help and Psychology are two distinct categories. While Self-Help supposes there is a problem and offers a solution wrapped up in an imperative title and a cheerful cover, the best books about psychology seek to sit in human experience. They champion the process of exploration over answers.
It’s notable, then, that Strangers to Ourselves takes to task the very question of whether to consider mental illness a “problem." Through the stories of five individuals with vastly disparate life experiences and diagnoses, Aviv offers a nuanced portrait of how our society makes sense of mental illness. In addition to deep, original reporting, Aviv lays out the historical context of the development of the mental health profession. Aviv shares her subjects’ stories through an intellectual, nonjudgmental lens—and then turns this same lens on her own experiences with mental illness and recovery.
Through her work, Aviv implicitly suggests a perhaps novel approach to mental health care—one that is compassionate, calm, curious and without judgment, one that takes social factors and the history of the field into close consideration. One that champions process over answers. That Aviv does so with incisive prose and stunning detail is icing on the cake. Strangers to Ourselves is a moving, satisfying blend of memoir, reporting, and cultural commentary.
Strangers to Ourselves is not yet published—though you won’t have to wait long, as it goes on sale next Tuesday, 9/13. In the meantime, swing by and I’ll be more than happy to pile all my other favorite psychology books into your arms.
Allie Levy owns and runs Still North Books & Bar in Hanover.