Prozac on the couch

the long version

Jonathan Michel Metzl, a psychiatrist and women's studies scholar, shows that there's a lot of Dr. Freud encapsulated in late-twentieth-century psychotropic medications. Metzl provides a cultural history of psychiatric "wonder drugs" from the 1950's to the early twenty-first century. in tracing a lineage from Miltown to Valium to Prozac, he uncovers the surprising ways that Freudian gender categories and popular gender roles continue to shape understandings of depression and its treatment.