Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us

Written by Rachel Aviv

Narrated by Andi Arndt

A New York Times Book Review Ten Best Books of 2022
A Wall Street Journal Ten Best Books of 2022

The acclaimed, award-winning New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv offers a groundbreaking exploration of mental illness and the mind, and illuminates the startling connections between diagnosis and identity.

In Strangers to Ourselves, a powerful and gripping debut, Rachel Aviv raises fundamental questions about how we understand ourselves in periods of crisis and distress. Drawing on deep, original reporting as well as unpublished journals and memoirs, Aviv writes about people who have come up against the limits of psychiatric explanations for who they are. She follows an Indian woman, celebrated as a saint, who lives in healing temples in Kerala; an incarcerated mother vying for her children’s forgiveness after recovering from psychosis; a man who devotes his life to seeking revenge upon his psychoanalysts; and an affluent young woman who, after a decade of defining herself through her diagnosis, decides to go off her meds because she doesn’t know who she is without them. Animated by a profound sense of empathy, Aviv’s exploration is refracted through her own account of living in a hospital ward at the age of six and meeting a fellow patient with whom her life runs parallel—until it no longer does.

Aviv asks how the stories we tell about mental disorders shape their course in our lives. Challenging the way we understand and talk about illness, her account is a testament to the porousness and resilience of the mind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Audio
• Release date: Sep 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9781250868862

Rachel Aviv

Rachel Aviv is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she writes about medicine, education, and criminal justice, among other subjects. In 2022, she won a National Magazine Award for Profile Writing. A 2019 national fellow at New America, she received a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant to support her work on this book. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Reviews for Strangers to Ourselves

[Jonni R Luke · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very well written in a case history format with exerpts of struggles with mental illness from the author's personal experiences. The theme that tied the cases together, however, seemed unclear. Was the author attempting to illustrate the failure of the mental health profession to accurately diagnose and treat mental illness? Upon returning to the introduction of the book, this reader continues to be unsure of a cohesive theme. Interesting read, nevertheless.

[Fabio Sanchez · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Moving, realistic, an honest assessment of psychiatry from the patient’s perspective. Thank you for your courage to share your experience.