Finished Mary Pipher's book. There are lots of little tidbits of wisdom scattered throughout, certainly (e.g. when she calls herself a "stress monkey" or reminds one of the importance of mindfulness), but I have an underlying problem with the book as a whole. The premise of the book is that she had some kind of nervous breakdown following the Reviving Ophelia maelstrom and that she cured herself...with Buddhism. This might be plausible if her major depressive episode had been purely situational and could be cured by a kind of Rilkean "you must change your life" kind of move, but she makes it very clear that her depression had a great deal to do with her environment growing up, her parents' failings, and so forth. Her episode was the product of a lifetime, not just the stress and overwork and uncomfortable lifestyle of the celebrity shrink.
To hear her tell it though, she basically cured herself through mindfulness, meditation, and expanding her perspective. Now, these are all good things--and it's amusing to read about her attempts to settle her mind for the purposes of meditation--but to suggest that a major depressive episode can be essentially self-cured is, frankly, dangerous. And she's a shrink--she knows that. It's like she's taken the adage "physician, heal thyself" to its most dangerous limit. At the very least her story takes away from the very real struggles of the unenlightened majority who find they cannot cure themselves. It suggests that there is an element of shame in admitting that one needs help, perhaps even that those who fail to lift themselves up by their own bootstraps are in fact weak. And I don't really understand this failing, because, for heaven's sakes, she's a therapist--she knows the value of therapy. Maybe she even got therapy for her depression, but if she did she fails to mention it.
Additionally, the one brief mention she makes of psych meds is a comment that she recommends them for her patients only in dire situations. She also admits to taking an anti-anxiety medication to help her get through one of the worst book tours. I'm not suggesting that psych meds would have cured her...far from it. I am suggesting that they might have helped alleviate some of the worst symptoms and made her more comfortable, and really, if that's an option, why not take advantage of it? To write an entire book about a major depressive episode and hardly mention these medications seems grossly irresponsible. Again, it suggests that those who take advantage of these medications are somehow weak, and perhaps even sets up a false dichotomy between biological depression (treated with medication) and situational depression (treated with therapy or mindfulness). It's generally accepted that this dichotomy is totally misleading and that the best treatment for depression is therapy and meds, but to hear her tell it, she took advantage of neither. This is perhaps most frustrating when she describes her lifelong struggles with insomnia. She seems willing to try anything...anything that is except a sleeping pill. One wants to shake her and tell her to take a goddamn Ambien already.
Finally, throughout the book Pipher is extremely, um, forgiving. She seems at least as interested in understanding the reasons behind her parents' failings than in analyzing how these failings shaped her development. This is noble (noble beyond belief, actually), especially considering just how neglectful and damaging her parents were. I'm not saying that she shouldn't forgive them, forgiveness being a virtue in all major religious traditions and all that, I just wish she had a harder time doing it. Basically, I want her to be like Anne Lamott on this front: recognize the value of forgiveness, but also acknowledge just how bloody hard it is to pull off in reality.
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