The Unquiet Mind

Cancer is an emotive event, emotive because despite its obtrusion into the body the assault is on the experiential realm of one' being. The natural whim to survive or just be attains a new perspective. This book is about how we incisively take recourse to the experiences of a new meaning. Empathetically dwelling on the emotional pain of cancer diagnosis, the need to purge, the need to vent out to something one is conversant with becomes necessary. Making the need for skilled communication even more urgent, this emphasizes the role of the physician from a paternalistic one into one who naturally flows into the rhythm of the healing process. The protean nature of depression related to cancer also demands that more meaning-oriented psychotherapies need to be embraced to assuage the person at any given stage of the disease. Studies from the 60s and recent ones have shown how psychedelic substances can incite spiritual and existential insights, and can alter the dying experience of a person into a process of spiritual growth. The ethical demands entrenched with this form of therapy is under immense speculation and the book dwells on this from the terminally ill person's perspective.With the proclivity to heal, art is also cathartic, as it allegorically allows the perceiver the liberty to self-heal. Extending this to the repository of self- experience, we have delved into how this act can mobilize the throes of the human emotion and compel one to re-engage with the world; something necessary to reckon with one's being.