Family Practice Vol. 20, No. 6, 735
© Oxford University Press 2003, all rights reserved
Book Review |
Better than well: American medicine meets the American dream: Carl Elliott. (378 pages, US$26.95.) W. W. Norton & Company Ltd, 2003. ISBN 0-393-05201.
GP in Wembley
Are you comfortable with who you are? Have you realized your full potential? Shouldn't you be taller, thinner, sexier, more self-confident? If you answer yes to any of these questions and you are a (wealthy) American, the chances are, according to the author of this well written book, you will be going to see your doctor about it.
Carl Elliott qualified as a physician in South Carolina but soon switched to bioethics and philosophy. He is very concerned about the way his fellow citizens are constantly medicalizing their low self-esteem. What are the major causes of discontent with the self? Well, it could be your voice, your gender (trapped in the wrong body) or your inability to speak in public without blushing, sweating and making an idiot of yourself. According to a survey which Carl read somewhere, having to speak in public is the worst thing that can happen to most Americans—death comes only seventh in the list. Then there's having an ageing face or an unattractive body, having a black skin or a pale one, living in a boring suburb, sacrificing your family to your career or the other way round; the list is endless. When you consider your children, you will probably find that they have buck teeth, attention deficit disorder or are too short or tall to be successful in the competition for good jobs and attractive partners.
Fortunately the doctors and the drug firms are ready. They will happily tell you that your predicament is an illness and therefore you are entitled to treatment. You are not just shy, you have social phobia so need some paxil (alias paroxetine). Your chronic whinging about your life is due to clinical depression, so have some prozac. Your unsatisfactory shape is a surgical disorder which can be cured by liposuction or facial tucks. Interestingly, many people who go in for ‘enhancement technology’ will feel that the changes they have undergone have enabled them to ‘discover their true selves’ or ‘to be the person I really am’. But curiously, the authenticity of the self seems heavily dependent on what other people think of you.
Should you buy this book? It has a striking cover in magnolia and duck-egg blue. It is, on the whole, well written and, here and there, will make you pause for thought. Alternatively you could re-read Jane Eyre, which is a story of a young woman who struggles to undergo personal growth without medical intervention and eventually discovered her true self. But of course that was in those days.
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