Structure

Strangers to Ourselves is organized into six sections. They appear in the following order: Prologue: “Rachel,” “Ray,” “Bapu,” “Naomi,” “Laura,” and Epilogue: “Hava.” Each section of the text is therefore inspired by the research subject it traces. In the prologue, the author outlines her approach to and reasons for structuring her work in this manner. She reveals that she originally “contemplated devoting the entire book to each life I have written about [in the prologue]” (25). She ultimately strayed from this formal approach, because she “wanted to emphasize the diversity of experiences of mental illness, the fact that, when questions are examined from different angles, the answers continually change” (25). Therefore, the author is using her structure and form to enact her overarching thematic considerations. The structure also seconds Aviv’s philosophic explorations and her goals for deconstructing stereotypical beliefs about mental illness. On an overarching scale, the text...