Rachel Aviv’s 'Strangers to Ourselves'

Listening back to Rachel Aviv's discussion of her first book, how mental illness can defy psychiatric explanation, and more

By LARB Radio HourJuly 17, 2026

• LARB Radio Hour

This week we are listening back to Kate Wolf and Medaya Ocher speak with New Yorker staff writer Rachel Aviv as she discuss her first book, Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us.

The book collects the stories of people whose mental health crises subvert our usual understanding of diagnosis, treatment, and healing. It begins with Aviv herself, who was hospitalized at the age of 6 for anorexia, before she even knew the term for her illness.

Each chapter is then dedicated to a different person: Bapu, an Indian Brahmin woman, who shortly after giving birth dedicates herself to religious asceticism and mysticism; Naomi, a Black woman, who in her psychosis, despairs of the very real racism and generational oppression that surrounds her; and Ray Osheroff and Laura Delano whose chapters both show the ways in which psychiatry is still grappling with medication and biology. Aviv explores how mental illness can defy psychiatric explanation, requiring a broader view of the economic, social and lived realities of the people who experience it.

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