August 6, 2004

'Prozac as a Way of Life'

By NINA C. AYOUB

What does it mean to be ourselves? If authenticity is a value, can it come in a capsule? Is the self more a given to be discovered, or more a project to be created? And is there something suspect in self-transformation via medicinal shortcuts?

For these and like questions one might prescribe Prozac as a Way of Life (University of North Carolina Press), a collection of essays edited by Carl Elliott, an associate professor of philosophy and pediatrics at the University of Minnesota's