The Shaking Woman or a History of My Nerves

ISBN-13: 9780312429577 / Angielski / Miękka / 2010 / 224 str.

Siri Hustvedt

Opis

In this unique neurological memoir Siri Hustvedt attempts to solve her own mysterious conditionWhile speaking at a memorial event for her father in 2006, Siri Hustvedt suffered a violent seizure from the neck down. Despite her flapping arms and shaking legs, she continued to speak clearly and was able to finish her speech. It was as if she had suddenly become two people: a calm orator and a shuddering wreck. Then the seizures happened again and again. The Shaking Woman tracks Hustvedt's search for a diagnosis, one that takes her inside the thought processes of several scientific disciplines, each one of which offers a distinct perspective on her paroxysms but no ready solution. In the process, she finds herself entangled in fundamental questions: What is the relationship between brain and mind? How do we remember? What is the self? During her investigations, Hustvedt joins a discussion group in which neurologists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, and brain scientists trade ideas to develop a new field: neuropsychoanalysis. She volunteers as a writing teacher for psychiatric in-patients at the Payne Whitney clinic in New York City and unearths precedents in medical history that illuminate the origins of and shifts in our theories about the mind-body problem. In The Shaking Woman, Hustvedt synthesizes her experience and research into a compelling mystery: Who is the shaking woman? In the end, the story she tells becomes, in the words of George Makari, author ofRevolution in Mind, "a brilliant illumination for us all."

O autorze

Siri Hustvedt wurde 1955 in Northfield, Minnesota, geboren. Sie studierte Literatur an der Columbia University und promovierte mit einer Arbeit über Charles Dickens. Sie lebt in Brooklyn. Mit ihrem Roman "Was ich liebte" hatte sie ihren internationalen Durchbruch. Im Februar 1981 lernte sie den Schriftsteller Paul Auster kennen, den sie 1983 heiratete und mit dem sie einen Stiefsohn und eine Tochter hat. Heute arbeitet Siri Hustvedt als Schriftstellerin, Essayistin und Übersetzerin aus dem Norwegischen.