Carl Elliott
Carl Elliott prefers to write about himself in the third person in order to give the impression that he is too important to write his own biography. A native of South Carolina, Elliott currently teaches bioethics and philosophy at the University of Minnesota. His articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Mother Jones, Slate, The London Review of Books, and The New England Journal of Medicine. His younger brother ridicules him periodically at the website http://wwww.whitecoatblackhat.com.
“The very use of the term "mental illness" (rather than, say, "neurosis", "insanity", "nervous breakdown", or other euphemisms) can be seen as an effort to move certain kinds of psychological distress into the biomedical realm.”
Carl Elliott
“On Prozac, Sisyphus might well push the boulder back up the mountain with more enthusiasm and creativity. I do not want to deny the benefits of psychoactive medication. I just want to point out that Sisyphus is not a patient with a mental health problem. To see him as a patient with a mental health problem is to ignore certain larger aspects of his predicament connected to boulders, mountains, and eternity.”
Carl Elliott