The suggestions herein stem chiefly from her personal experience: her periods of deep depression, followed by manic incidents that led her, for example, to launch poorly conceived business ventures that lost money. She also, somewhat capriciously, left her husband and children for a year to live in an ashram. She explains how she freed herself from years of ups and downs by following her own program of "directed thinking." According to Curtiss, as soon as one becomes aware of depressed or manic feelings, one must "as an act of will, replace the accidental, unchosen thoughts that have caused the problem with new, positive, neutral or commonsense thoughts or actions." Even in cases resulting from chemical imbalances in the brain, contends Curtiss, it's simply a question of learning how to employ the mind. She feels strongly that prescription drugs coupled with "psychologized thinking" (i.e. the Freudian premise that "the mind and the self... are one and the same") will only mask, not help with depression. Curtiss also emphasizes the importance of traditional family values versus the current pursuit of individual happiness. However one feels about Curtiss's ideas, "directed thought" comes off as a murky offshoot of standard therapy; wading through the author's convoluted thought processes may cause rather than cure depression. Radio interviews. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. Product Description: In our culture, it is taken as an unquestionable fact that depression is a disease, that it is quite common, and that it is the explanation for everything from lethargy to conditions and actions that are much more serious. In her thoughtful and at times explosive new book, A. B. Curtiss takes a look at these assumptions, exploring them from a philosophical, psychological, and often a deeply personal point of view. She tells us that for many, depression is a choice. Using a technique the author labels "directed thinking," Curtiss creates a road map for converting the energy we put into being depressed into a strength that can ultimately lead us out of depression. As someone who has suffered from depression herself, and who is also a practicing psychotherapist, Curtiss is uniquely qualified to pose these questions. For example, she asks whether, in the name of depression, we excuse ourselves of responsibility in certain areas of our lives. While acknowledging the seriousness of depression, she asks whether at times we falsely classify what we are feeling as depression, the disease, when in fact we are simply experiencing the difficulties that are part and parcel of the human condition, part of the process of living. Curtiss suggests that we are living in a culture that is deeply "psychologized," and that psychological terms and perspectives have become so imbedded in who we are and how we categorize people and things that at times we may rest on those categories, and therefore give up the chance to overcome them, on our own.