The Captive Imagination

“The Captive Imagination 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.” – Carl Hart, PhD, Mamie Phipps Professor of Psychology at Columbia University, author of Drug Use for Grownups

“With rich prose and radical originality, Elias Dakwar expands 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.” – Andrew Solomon, New York Times bestselling author of The Noonday Demon and Far and Away

“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.” – Patricia Dailey, PhD, Columbia University, author of Promised Bodies

“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.” – Joseph McElroy, author of Women and Men

“The Captive Imagination 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. Wowas’ake kin Slolyapo wowahwala he e. Read closely and know now the power that is Peace.” – Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Itazipcola/Mnicoujou Lakota

“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.” – Kirkus Reviews

Elias Dakwar works as a psychiatrist, addiction specialist, researcher, and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University. He lives in New York City and the Hudson Valley.