Book Review: Emmons’ Black Dogs Present Tense, Vol. 2, Issue 2, 2012.
www.presenttensejournal.org | editors@presenttensejournal.org
Book Review: Emmons’ Black Dogs
Emmons, Kimberley K. Black Dogs and Blue Words: Depression and Gender in the Age of Self-Care. New Brunswick, NJ:
Black Dogs and Blue Words contributes
adaptation” (5). In this regard, Emmons
illnesses such as hysteria, anxiety, and
posttraumatic stress disorder. Emmons’
critical interpretive tactics and responses
carries out her investigation of language
Newsweek and the New York Times
takes place in the absence of diagnostic
the Psychology Today newsletter Blues
blood work, such that the language Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness
and Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Prozac Nation: A Memoir, as well as semi-structured
black dog of depression”; “the blues”)
gendered self, and individuals learn how
language structures (5). As a rhetorical
readers—humanities and social sciences
scholar, Emmons intends “to interrogate
illness. The book would be of particular
a substantive contribution to a syllabus
“a rhetorical illness: it functions
individual consciousness” (6; emphasis
identification of self-doctoring diagnostic
both “expert” and “patient.” In the role
available patterns of expression. Direct-
like “Talk to your doctor” and symptoms
checklists proliferate in the social realm
linguistic typifications of pharmaceutical
advertising for medications like Prozac,
in first-person memoirs, “the rhetorical
reinscribe traditional gender roles. The
individuals limited interpretive resources
for the articulation of the self outside
The first chapter includes an historical
Association’s (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
bodily self-regulation and surveillance:
Book Review: Black Dogs and Blue Words
(DSM-I, 1952 to DSM-IV-TR, 2000)
depression. Emmons argues that DSM-
response to the discourse of depression.
III and subsequent editions locate the
individual’s negotiation of personhood
“articulate depression” (in two senses: to
principles. Emmons’ historical critique
and determine what illness and health
“vocabulary of data collection” serves
the professional discourse community’s
the service of patients (22). The critique
gendered illness identities (monological)
and purposes of the DSM, yet how the
author situates the DSM in relation to
out in the earlier chapters together with
rhetorical analysis produces substantive
that engage in “a rhetorical care of the
self” (58). In place of self-doctoring
practices that entail “the submission of
an isolated self to biomedical discourses
(58). On this view, the term rhetorical
Emmons identifies terms of art central to
the discourse of depression: condition,
disease, disorder, and illness, and analysis
processes and experiences (chronic,
severe, cyclic, recurrent). Emmons argues
that with the publication of DSM-III the
principle for the biomedical orientation
(“the black dog”; “le chat bleu”) who take
suggests that “strategic impression”
of definitions for the illness itself and
rather than eradicated” (102-103). These
wellness—and, as a result, imprecise
interventions (63). That is, the “vague
metaphors: drugs act as “keys” fitting
into the “locks” of neurotransmitter
emerge. Definitions, then, provide a site
for rhetorical intervention, and a critical
gendered illness identities and positions
the isolated individual within biomedical
counter, available illness identities. depression remains an ambiguous term
definitional practices, “metaphors for
Book Review: Black Dogs and Blue Words
patients to perform their own diagnoses.
linguistic terminology and structures of
psychiatry’s diagnostic criteria into a
list, narrowing the discursive field and
Zoloft advertisement appropriates visual
structure to tell “Kathy’s story”—Kathy
interactions and promote self-diagnosis.
artifacts and illustrate how, in the age of
self-care, language helps construct self
kind. So I asked my doctor about Zoloft”
as a site for medical and pharmaceutical
(123). At the end of the story, medication
(grocery shopping with her child, sitting
illness identities by bringing them into
role alignment with circulating cultural
fosters critical discourse and reflection,
promotes tactics of self-care, and enacts
outlines one such critical tactic of self-
competence informs rhetorical action.
to the DSM, specifically to the current
diagnostic criteria for Major Depressive
theoretical contributions to scholarship
Disorder (DSM-IV-TR), to show how
analysis. Following the thread of analysis
interviews, Blues Buster newsletters,
trained on a particular text or two, for
produce insightful analysis and fruitful
Black Dogs and Blue Words offers a timely
critique of the discourse of depression.
The DSM is currently under revision,
date of May 2013 for DSM-5. The draft
diagnoses including eight classifications
under the rubric “Depressive Disorders”
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
critical stance in relation to the language
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