{"product_id":"the-captive-imagination-addiction-reality-and-our-search-for-meaning-isbn-9780063340480","title":"The Captive Imagination: Addiction, Reality, and Our Search for Meaning","description":"\u003cp\u003eA USA TODAY BESTSELLER!\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA profound, humane, and revolutionary new framework for understanding and addressing addiction. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAddiction has been called a moral failing, a social problem, a spiritual crisis, a behavioral disorder, and a brain disease. It has also been called a class issue, a supply problem, a problem of learning, a memory disorder, and a result of trauma. And some propose that addiction is neither a disease nor a problem, but a transgressive expression of freedom, a maligned sub-culture, a therapeutic relationship. Even the term ‘addiction’ is open to question. There are few human phenomena so elusive and intractable; after decades of neuroscientific research, we aren’t much closer to understanding addiction, nor to addressing it effectively. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis profusion of interpretations, meanings, and models reflects a hidden truth about addiction: that it is profusely generative of meaning itself. In this bold reimagining, pioneering psychiatrist Elias Dakwar examines addiction as a sustained creative act—and specifically as a process of personal world-building, complete with its own rituals, systems of value, modes of suffering, and sources of support. In this regard, addiction is something we all do. But there is a crucial difference. In the case of those of us suffering from addiction explicitly, this meaningful world keeps us in clear captivity, worsening the suffering and confusion we hoped it would console. And we remain stuck because we have trouble imagining it differently.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDrawing on vivid stories of his own patients, path-breaking research with meditation, psychotherapy, and psychedelics\/hallucinogens, and decades of clinical experience, Dakwar explores this captivity at the heart of our addictions, and shows how we might move beyond its bounds to reclaim our freedom. He also relates addiction to our collective self-inflicted crises, from environmental destruction to militarism to social injustice, rendering this often stigmatized condition relevant to all of us. With fluid, rich, and often startling prose, The Captive Imagination offers a novel path for better understanding and overcoming addiction, as well as human suffering more generally.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDakwar’s revolutionary framework challenges conventional thinking on mental health and offers:\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eA Critique of the Brain Disease Model:\u003c\/b\u003e Why decades of neuroscientific research have failed to explain addiction, and why we must look beyond seeing it as a simple disease.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eAddiction as World-Building:\u003c\/b\u003e Explore the book’s central thesis—that addiction is a creative act, a system of meaning we build to console our suffering, only to find ourselves captive within it.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003ePsychedelics, Meditation, and Psychotherapy:\u003c\/b\u003e An inside look at the author’s path-breaking clinical research into how these modalities can disrupt cycles of suffering and help us reclaim our freedom.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eThe Philosophy of Mind and Suffering:\u003c\/b\u003e A profound philosophical inquiry into the nature of consciousness, imagination, and the fictions we inhabit that shape our reality.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e | \u003cp\u003e\"Provocative...Dakwar, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia, draws on his extensive clinical and research experience to offer what he calls 'a work of imagination' that reframes addiction as a complex and universal form of meaning-making. A potent, incisive reconsideration of a fundamental human behavior.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“\u003cem\u003eThe Captive Imagination\u003c\/em\u003e is a much-needed stabilizing force in the fraught public discourse on addiction, which relies heavily on tropes that dehumanize. Dakwar, an admirably unique psychiatrist who is first of all human, places the suffering of those afflicted with addiction in the larger context of human suffering…this book is a must read.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eCarl Hart, PhD, Mamie Phipps Professor of Psychology at Columbia University, author of Drug Use for Grownups\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“With rich prose and radical originality, Elias Dakwar\u003cem\u003e \u003c\/em\u003eexpands pragmatic yet thrilling insights about addiction into a far-reaching examination of meaning, authenticity, and reality, challenging persuasively how we define nearly everything. Clinical anecdotes reveal startling flashes of intense generosity and wisdom, then grow into powerful abstractions, creating a fractal spectacle as arresting, glowing, and brilliantly revelatory as those induced by the substances he studies.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eAndrew Solomon, New York Times bestselling author of The Noonday Demon and Far and Away\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A riveting, compassionate meditation that navigates philosophy, psychedelics, religion, biomedicine, neuroscience, critical theory, and contemporary culture with brilliant and understated insight, shedding new light on the role of fiction in addiction—a world knit into knots, narratively and chemically—as well as in our existence more fundamentally, while reminding us, with astonishing beauty, of the infinite plasticity of the self. Incredibly erudite and informed, this book forces us to reconsider the nature of desire and of our capacity to undermine our own fulfillment—while also offering a means of restoration, with a strange humility and grace.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePatricia Dailey, PhD, Columbia University, author of Promised Bodies\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“This seductively written, likely landmark book about addiction and its treatments asks important and haunting questions about what Coleridge (addicted to opium yet never in doubt of his creative freedom) called “the shaping spirit” of a strong imagination. Is even great art a condition of our endemic hunger for self-delusion? How to shape the world into our truest likeness? Dakwar offers brilliant insight, with a scientist’s originality, a physician’s profound experience.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eJoseph McElroy, author of Women and Men\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“\u003cem\u003eThe Captive Imagination\u003c\/em\u003e is brimming with intuition. Learning, unlearning, and relearning Earth's language-creating, language-transcending spirit begins with acknowledging her profound understanding of us. May these words bring consciousness to the premeditated ignorance of humans and guide us to stop creating and repeating our atrocities. \u003cem\u003eWowas’ake kin Slolyapo wowahwala he e.\u003c\/em\u003e Read closely and know now the power that is Peace.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eTiokasin Ghosthorse, Itazipcola\/Mnicoujou Lakota\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Harper","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44890643955941,"sku":"NP9780063340480","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780063340480.jpg?v=1730233754","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-captive-imagination-addiction-reality-and-our-search-for-meaning-isbn-9780063340480","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}