Capture: Unraveling the Mystery of Mental Suffering

by David A. Kessler Narrated by Sean Pratt

Overview

""A breakthrough book. In a world of increasingly specialized knowledge, it takes a particular gift and some stubbornness to cut across the fields of neuroscience, psychiatry, philosophy and psychology and to ask the fundamental question: Why it is that we can allow our best selves to be captured by and torpedoed by thoughts and actions that sink us?. . . . [Kessler's] ultimate answer is profound and one that could be life-changing and life-saving. I know I will be handing this book out for just that reason.” - Abraham Verghese, MD, author of Cutting for Stone

In Capture, New York Times bestselling author Dr. David A. Kessler considers some of the most profound questions we face as human beings: What are the origins of mental afflictions, from everyday unhappiness to addiction and depression-and how are they connected? Where does healing and transcendence fit into this realm of emotional experience?

Analyzing an array of insights from psychology, medicine, neuroscience, literature, philosophy, and theology, Dr. Kessler deconstructs centuries of thinking, examining the central role of capture in mental illness and questioning traditional labels that have obscured our understanding of it. Looking to the emotionally resonant lives of figures such as David Foster Wallace, Virginia Woolf, William James, Tennessee Williams, John Belushi, Sylvia Plath, and Robert Lowell, among others, he explains how this concept is at play in their lives and-by extension-our own.

Ultimately, Capture offers insight into how we form thoughts and emotions, manage trauma, and heal. For the first time, we can begin to understand the underpinnings not only of mental illness but also of our everyday worries and anxieties. Capture is an intimate and critical exploration of the most enduring human mystery of all: the mind.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

02/29/2016
In this fascinating book, Kessler (The End of Overeating), former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, probes the nature of the “hijacked” mind, offering a straightforward and plausible explanation of a neural mechanism by which a range of human behaviors can be understood. Drawing on his two decades of research, Kessler calls this underlying mechanism “capture” and reveals its three basic elements: “narrowing of attention, perceived lack of control, and change in affect, or emotional state.” He catalogs the kinds of activities that capture people’s attention—including love, trauma, gambling, and art—and demonstrates that in individual cases these phenomena, or sometimes specific events, can lead from positive mental health to mental illness. Kessler devotes considerable attention to David Foster Wallace as an example of capture turning on the self, with the acute self-awareness that seized Wallace’s attention developing into the self-hatred that led to his suicide. He also carefully points out that capture can lead to violence as well as exalted spiritual experiences. Kessler ends on a note of hope, presenting a range of ways that people can potentially gain more control of their lives through an understanding of capture. This is a hefty yet accessible tome, and Kessler gives readers much to ponder. Agent: Kathy P. Robbins, Robbins Office. (Apr.)

From the Publisher

In this richly documented, beautifully written, and original work, David Kessler has given us an idea that explains one of the most strange and most powerful processes in the human brain.” — E. O. Wilson, University Professor Emeritus, Harvard University

“This book offers a bold, overarching explanation for many of the great problems of the mind, problems that are often merely named. Dr. Kessler writes persuasively and with unusual clarity. Capture is an engrossing book, impressive in its cultural as well as its scientific reach.” — Tracy Kidder, New York Times best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Mountains Beyond Mountains and The Soul of a New Machine

“Kessler’s cogent argument is that a great deal of the apparently inexplicable behavior is the result of impulses, drives, and obsessions that may share fundamental neural and psychodynamic mechanisms. This carefully researched book is both startling and engaging, and written with brio.” — Andrew Solomon, National Book Award-winning author of The Noonday Demon

“Capture is a breakthrough book. It takes a particular gift to cut across neuroscience, psychiatry, philosophy, and psychology and to ask the fundamental question: Why do we allow our best selves to torpedoed by thoughts and actions that sink us? His answer is profound, life-changing, and life-saving.” — Abraham Verghese, MD, author of Cutting for Stone

“Capture definies a shape of human experience that seems to inform everything from the smallest action to the largest life aim, a unified-field theory of human activity that draws in how we form thoughts, manage trauma, and even try to reconcile will and cause.” — Chris Ware, author of Building Stories

“Kessler writes about the concept of capture, or forces that strongly influence the mind, overriding reason and will. Invoking novelists, Freudian drives, and current neuroscience, Kessler explains how capture motivates, clarifies thoughts, and provides insight. A challenging and rewarding book for both scholars and lay readers.” — Library Journal

“Kessler is an excellent storyteller, and Capture is bursting with human drama drawn from real lives rather than the bland, composite case studies that clinicians tend to favor.” — Washington Post

“[A] Big Idea about how to conceptualize the mind and the brain… capture offers a new lens through which to understand human behavior.” — New York Times Book Review

Abraham Verghese

Capture is a breakthrough book. It takes a particular gift to cut across neuroscience, psychiatry, philosophy, and psychology and to ask the fundamental question: Why do we allow our best selves to torpedoed by thoughts and actions that sink us? His answer is profound, life-changing, and life-saving.

Edward O. Wilson

In this richly documented, beautifully written, and original work, David Kessler has given us an idea that explains one of the most strange and most powerful processes in the human brain.

Chris Ware

Capture definies a shape of human experience that seems to inform everything from the smallest action to the largest life aim, a unified-field theory of human activity that draws in how we form thoughts, manage trauma, and even try to reconcile will and cause.

Andrew Solomon

Kessler’s cogent argument is that a great deal of the apparently inexplicable behavior is the result of impulses, drives, and obsessions that may share fundamental neural and psychodynamic mechanisms. This carefully researched book is both startling and engaging, and written with brio.

New York Times Book Review

[A] Big Idea about how to conceptualize the mind and the brain… capture offers a new lens through which to understand human behavior.

Tracy Kidder

This book offers a bold, overarching explanation for many of the great problems of the mind, problems that are often merely named. Dr. Kessler writes persuasively and with unusual clarity. Capture is an engrossing book, impressive in its cultural as well as its scientific reach.

Washington Post

Kessler is an excellent storyteller, and Capture is bursting with human drama drawn from real lives rather than the bland, composite case studies that clinicians tend to favor.

Washington Post

Kessler is an excellent storyteller, and Capture is bursting with human drama drawn from real lives rather than the bland, composite case studies that clinicians tend to favor.

E. O. Wilson

In this richly documented, beautifully written, and original work, David Kessler has given us an idea that explains one of the most strange and most powerful processes in the human brain.

Library Journal

09/15/2015
Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration under presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, New York Times best-selling author Kessler considers where the line falls between ordinary unhappiness and mental illness. He concludes that all mental suffering falls on a spectrum and is rooted in the same biological bases, with our minds "captured" by physiological processes that seem beyond our control. With a 150,000-copy first printing.

JUNE 2016 - AudioFile

Sean Pratt’s cool and relaxed voice makes Kessler's prose less anxiety-inducing to listen to, given how scary this book can be. Kessler explores the process of becoming entranced by or fixated on certain things such as food, drugs, and other addictions. He highlights the ways that people learn to cope, redirect, or find replacements for their addictions in both positive and negative ways. Pratt moves through the book with a calm and inviting voice that still provides emphasis and good pacing. His delivery makes listeners feel as if he’s right there in the room with them. His hypnotic, rhythmic narration could be another form of “capture”—this one for listeners. L.E. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2016-01-05
Why do we do things—overeat, obsess, fight, commit suicide—that make it seem like our rational minds have been hijacked by something we cannot control? Everyone deals with this "capture," writes Kessler (The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite, 2009, etc.), the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner and dean of the medical schools at Yale and the University of California, San Francisco, in a skillful combination of history, medicine, and scientific (but not pop) psychology. Since Aristotle, explanations of behavior relied almost entirely on philosophy. Psychoanalysis did not improve matters, but "by shifting the study of mind away from morality and rationality and toward the unstable ground of desire," writes the author, "Freud moved science toward a clearer understanding of human thought and behavior." Since Freud, scientists have discovered that every stimulus triggers a particular response from a series of brain neurons. Each repetition of that stimulus strengthens the response: "neurons that fire together, wire together." That's how we learn or remember, but it also influences emotions. The sight of someone we love or a work of art triggers intense feelings, but what happens when feelings about a drug, a stranger's glare, or one's defects become irresistible? After nearly 50 pages of argument, Kessler devotes 150 pages to the dismal impact of capture over the years: autobiographies of individuals driven to lives of torment (Dostoyevsky) that often ended in suicide (Ernest Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, David Foster Wallace), addiction (John Belushi, Tennessee Williams), assassination (John Lennon, Robert Kennedy), or mass murder. In the final 50 pages, the author reveals the concept of capture in a positive light through those who have fended off depression (Winston Churchill, William Styron) or channeled intense feelings into religion, work, or creativity. A reasonable theory of the science behind extreme behavior illustrated by excessive but gripping case histories.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173424822
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/12/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

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