Rachel Aviv

Rachel Aviv is the author of Strangers to Ourselves. She is a journalist and science writer at The New Yorker. When Aviv set out to write Strangers to Ourselves, she considered devoting “the entire book to each life” she writes about in the prologue” (25). However, as her research developed, she realized she needed to take a different approach. In order “to emphasize the diversity of experiences of mental illness,” she decided to frame the text around the lives of six distinct individuals (25). Each of the individuals has not only been diagnosed with a mental illness, but feels alienated and displaced by their diagnoses. In the prologue, Aviv explains that all of the individuals have attempted to overcome their feelings “of incommunicability through writing” (25). Therefore, Aviv draws on her research subjects' “diaries, letters, unpublished memoirs, poems, and prayers” throughout each of their chapters (25). In doing, Aviv is...