The Captive Imagination

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Brought to you by Penguin.

What causes addiction, and how should we treat it? Today it is understood primarily as a brain disease, yet in this bold reimagining of addiction, pioneering psychiatrist Elias Dakwar argues that this is false. It fails to explain, among other things, why many people can enjoy drugs without developing a dependency on them. Despite decades of neuroscientific research, we aren’t much closer to truly understanding the nature of addiction, nor to addressing it effectively.

In The Captive Imagination, Dakwar argues that addiction is an existential challenge, requiring a more philosophical and multidisciplinary approach, as well as a lens through which we can better understand ourselves. Addiction stems from our desire for happiness: whether addicts or not, we all struggle against meaninglessness, and resort to false solutions to our despair. Dakwar also shows how our individual capacity for self-delusion relates to our collective self-inflicted crises, from environmental destruction to social injustice.

Drawing on vivid stories of his own patients, path-breaking research, and decades of clinical experience, The Captive Imagination offers a novel framework for understanding and overcoming addiction, as well as human suffering more generally.

©2024 Elias Dakwar (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critics Review

In rich and arresting prose, and with radical originality, Dakwar expands initial, pragmatic insights about addiction into a far-reaching examination of authenticity, exploring how we define a happy life, a good life, a valid life
Andrew Solomon, author of THE NOONDAY DEMON
A psychiatristu2019s fascinating quest to understand drugs and addiction u2013 and to describe the indescribable... I was drawn to Dakwaru2019s vivid stories of patients and their different histories of drug use... The Captive Imagination is rich in wordsu2026 [Dakwar] writes lucidly of brain-based models of addiction, while making it clear that they cannot fully explain peopleu2019s experiences
Guardian
A riveting, compassionate meditation that navigates philosophy, psychedelics, religion, biomedicine, neuroscience, critical theory, and contemporary culture with brilliant and understated insight, shedding new light on the role of fiction in addiction as well as in our existence more fundamentally. Incredibly erudite and informed, this book forces us to reconsider the nature of desire and of our capacity to undermine our own fulfillment u2013 while also offering a means of restoration
Patricia Dailey, author of PROMISED BODIES
This book is a much-needed stabilizing force in the fraught public discourse on addiction, which relies heavily on tropes that dehumanize. Dakwar, an admirably unique psychiatrist who is before all else human, places the suffering of those afflicted with addiction in the larger context of human suffering. For that reason alone, this book is a must read
Carl Hart, author of DRUG USE FOR GROWNUPS
This seductively written, likely landmark book about addiction and its treatments asks important and haunting questions about what Coleridge (addicted to opium yet never in doubt of his creative freedom) called u201cthe shaping spiritu201d of a strong imagination. Is even great art a condition of our endemic hunger for self-delusion? How to shape the world into our truest likeness? Dakwar offers brilliant insight, with a scientistu2019s originality, a physicianu2019s profound experience
Joseph McElroy, author of WOMEN AND MEN
If depression was the word for a previous generation, addiction is certainly ours to inherit. The Captive Imagination shows us the depth of our addictive passions for so much more than substancesu2014for comfort, for narratives, and for a feeling of control. In a world that is more and more impoverished on the level of imagination, we can only but grow more and more addictive in our search for stability, even when that can only be the most predictable delights and pains. Elias Dakwar shows us how to unearth and let breathe this fundamentally human will-to-be
Jamieson Webster, Psychoanalyst and Writer

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