By Elaine Showalter



"He believes the symptoms of angst are so common and widespread that they "must have served some kind of purpose for us in our evolutionary past." He readily admits that there is not much hard scientific evidence for his ideas, let alone a "smoking gene" for disorders like panic anxiety.

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Perhaps we can get a little perspective by asking ourselves whether Americans are more anxious than Syrians, or more depressed than the British during the Blitz. Or whether academics are more depressed than unemployed factory workers or phased-out journalists.


American anxiety seems like a cultural chimera created by, yes, social and economic problems, and by personal crises, but also by media attention. Perhaps too much attention to feelings creates a self-fulfilling prophecy and risks making us a "solipsistic, self-consumed, bottomless emotional vacuum and sponge," like the "The Depressed Person" in David Foster Wallace's wickedly funny 1998 short story.


Maybe if we are really feeling yucky, with or without medications, we need to organize rather than somatize, and to act rather than brood."