Listening to Prozac

Introduced into Britain in 1989 and already prescribed to over half a million people, Prozac is said to transform pessimists into optimists, turn loners into extroverts, give the timid confidence - in short, to be able to alter the very core of human personality. Nicknamed "bottled sunshine" and "the feminist pep pill", Prozac is fast becoming a cult drug, almost a status symbol. But should we resist the lure of a "happiness pill" that may actually change character and temperament? For if personality can be shaped by chemicals then some very serious questions must be asked about the nature of the self. This book takes the experiences of Dr Peter Kramer's patients on Prozac as the jumping-off point for an exploration of the most up-to-date ideas about what we think of as the "mind" and its intimate links with the biochemistry of the brain. The book raises a host of questions - about the shifting cultural norms that favour one type of personality over another at given time; about the possibility that temperament is an inherited trait; about the advisability of purely "cosmetic" psychopharmacology.