Projections: reviews and commentary

Toward the end we touch on the much-discussed Gedankenexperiment that also closes Projections, as published last year.

The whole episode is clickable, but you can jump right to the thought experiment here if the preceding 3 hours is too much at the moment.

As a humble scientist, who just likes words, I feel incredibly fortunate to have written and shared a literary adventure like Projections, especially since it is so far from being a traditional scientific text.

The positivity from literary critics and biologists alike has been amazing, and via the international editions, to make contact with so many cultures and languages around the world, just by writing, is simply a dream come true.

This resulted in the 2021 Lasker Public Lecture. The lecture was designed for everyone, as well as for scientists, and it’s just a moment in time of sharing the joy: basic science discovery, through curiosity-driven exploration of the natural world.

The image was sent from Berlin by Peter Hegemann: the Lasker emblem, the winged Nike, or victory, of Samothrace.

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following a wonderful event at Mount Sinai with eminent psychiatrist and neuroscientist Eric Nestler and colleagues.

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And fantastic book clubs in Canada (University of Toronto),

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and England (University College London and the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre).

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More to come soon, in Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Texas, New York, and beyond…

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Great conversation with Alan Alda on Projections, optogenetics, psychiatry, and more. He’s very well-read, and every bit as much fun as you might think. The conversation wound from science to sprung rhythm; then he sprang seven surprise questions around the 31-minute mark.

This kind of response from the reading public is so valuable since it can feel awkward, in conveying exciting modern science, to also make clear the limits of knowledge. But it was worth the effort for this book, and the public response shows that readers get it, understanding that many exciting discoveries are still in our future…

Thanks to all readers who are sharing #Projections by word-of-mouth or posting photos and favorite passages, as well as to all the local or indie bookstores. (Menlo Park/Kepler’s shown).

The photo was sent from a bookstore in Soho. It is strange and amazing for just a humble scientist, used to communicating with a specialized community, to see one’s work out there for the public, for all, to see, and to access. It’s hard to describe the feeling, but it is one of unity, perhaps like introducing two of your closest lifelong friends to each other, who had somehow never met, for the first time.

The Prologue to Projections (a personal origin story of sorts — before getting to the stories that form the heart of each chapter) describes my first real interaction with a patient on the locked psychiatry unit, turning a neurosurgeon-to-be into a psychiatrist.

“These days, I sometimes imagine seeking out that schizoaffective disorder patient, with whom I shared that heart-pounding first awakening, to sit down together for a quiet moment of communion, though it has been a long time. A receptivity to the improbable comes very close to the essence of illness on the schizophrenia spectrum, and so he might not be at all surprised to learn that his crossing of the threshold of the nurses’ station that day could have helped in its own way…”

In retrospect it makes some sense, though it didn’t fully at the time. Now I can see that helping psychiatric patients, and writing these stories, and investigating the brain, can be all somehow the same thing: just trying to get to, and describe, a place deep within all of us — a place that is shared.

Spanish, Turkish, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, German, etc. translations are coming along… Delighted to see international reactions already from Dr. Sue Black, Dr. Kathryn Mannix, and the Bookseller (and others) (& others: https://publishersweekly.com/978-1-984853-69-1).

Viking, our UK publisher, came back with Connections instead of Projections for the UK edition — and with a cover I like for its own rich connotations and lovely imagery. So, unexpectedly, even translation to English was nontrivial.

I was a bit embarrassed, but glad, to learn how to pronounce a few words I had read and written many times but only heard in my head before, like “arboreal.” 🙂

It was an honor to work with Natalie Naudus and Karen Chilton, in key roles (thanks to these amazing voice actors for joining such an unusual project for the public!)

I am delighted to announce that Projections can be preordered now. The initial book announcement (below) is from February 24, 2021 on Twitter:

This book has been incubating in many ways for 20 years — I wrote the first chapter during my psychiatry residency, before I started my lab at Stanford.

Projections is unusual, not easily captured in a few characters — except I could begin by saying that universal inner experiences of humanity may sometimes be revealed, in the chaos and tumult of emergency psychiatry.

Caring for those with severe mental illness has been a constant thread in my work, starting with 8 years of dedicated medical training and psychiatry residency, followed by inpatient and outpatient care for the past 17 years at Stanford Medicine. I don’t usually speak or write about it.

Still, scientists and artists alike know that the broken might describe the unbroken — whether in geology or genetics or poetry. And part of Projections is the telling of human stories through the throes of personal, or geopolitical, upheaval. Sometimes both at once.

There is a personal side for me as well, in Projections: moments of terror and grief, which helped set me onto the path leading to where we are now; but some of these experiences are tempered now, with later joys that could not have otherwise come to be.

In each story, threads from literature and imagination, from human history and prehistory, and from modern neuroscience, can all be found interwoven with the connections from psychiatry (which alone, I think, would not be enough to show the full picture).

Projections is written for all, but especially for those who have always wondered about mysteries of the mind (whether working smoothly or somewhat less so), and who think about the hope, and the challenges, that may come with understanding.

Projections is for anyone (non-scientist or scientist, art-lover or artist) pondering those feelings that make us human, broken and unbroken as we all are — as individuals and as humanity — by joy and defeat, peacemaking and violence, parenting and loss. And mental illness.

And so Projections belongs also to all who have suffered from (or borne witness to) major illnesses and disorders of the brain: stroke and dementia, brain tumors, bulimia and anorexia, borderline and antisocial personality, depression and bipolar, schizophrenia and autism.

As a physician treating, and seeking to understand, these conditions, I’m profoundly grateful to my patients for their courage — and to my wonderful family who supported me throughout, to the exceptionally brilliant members of my lab, and to my visionary agent and editor.

Take a look if you like, and share if you wish!

-Karl