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Rating: 
Summary: A Lacanian guide to sadness
Review: Dr. Hassoun is smart, compassionate, and well-read. He can keep lots of ideas going simultaneously. In this substantial slim book he draws from literature (Proust, Tsvetaeva, Dostoyevsky, Christa Wolf, Kafka, Primo Levi, etc.), history, psychoanalytic studies, especially the works of Jacques Lacan. His own clinical practice informs his observations. He is a French medical doctor, and a Lacanian psychoanalyst - and in this book you must wrap your mind around Lacanian standards such as the Other - defined in a footnote on p. 25 as "that who internally represents all the wealth of signifiers (yet who can nevertheless be imagined as relay for the first Other, the mother)." His thoughts on substance abuse, addiction, eating disorders as they relate to mourning and melancholy are presented well. A main point is that depression and melancholy can't be "cured" with anything quick or pharmaceutical. Dr. Hassoun ranges far and wide in the service of his treatise; he quotes (among others) Thomas Mann, Andre Breton, Cocteau, St. John of the Cross, and his interesting patients - fluidly and appropriately. Not for the lazy reader. The Lacanian linguistic acrobatics are hard for the uninitiated. This good book requires readerly effort, and is worth it.
Rating: 
Summary: The Cruelty of Misinformation
Review: Yes, this is a most interesting, yet ultimately arcane and outdated work. Clinical Depression is a muddy area, wherein the biological and psychological often overlap. The fact is, a normally healthy and happy woman can descend into a severe postpartum depression, and depressive disorders often run in families. Something is genetically amiss, and to relegate the treatment of this illness to philosphers and psychoanalysts exclusively is a painful and unkind step back into the Dark Ages. Nevertheless, there is some value to this book, yet it needs to be taken with a grain of salt.
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