Capture: Unraveling the Mystery of Mental Suffering

Why do we think, feel, and act in ways we wished we did not?

For decades, New York Times bestselling author Dr. David A Kessler has studied this question with regard to tobacco, food, and drugs. Over the course of these investigations, he identified one underlying mechanism common to a broad range of human suffering. This phenomenon—capture—is the process by which our attention is hijacked and our brains commandeered by forces outside our control.

"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?

Analysing 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.

About the Author

DAVID A. KESSLER, MD, served as Commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration under presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. He was the chief science officer In the Joe Biden administration during Covid-19 and co-leader of Operation Warp Speed.

Dr. Kessler is a pediatrician and has been the dean of the medical schools at Yale and the University of California, San Francisco, where he is currently a professor in the departments of pediatrics and epidemiology and biostatistics. A graduate of Amherst College, the University of Chicago Law School, and Harvard Medical School, he and his wife are the parents of two and the grandparents of three.

FDA Petition Could Redefine the Future of America’s Food System

Read Dr. Kessler's petition to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to remove processed refined carbohydrates from the U.S. food supply by revoking their “Generally Recognized as Safe” (GRAS) status.

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