The following appeared in Volume 98, Number 2 (Spring, 1999) of the APA Newsletters

Zita urges women not to rely on SSRIs to become our "real selves." She argues that in the spirit of postmodernism we should undertake a "radical crafting of the self, with or without Prozac." However, she maintains that we need to resist the promise of medication to sculpt personalities in a way that reconstitutes the postmodern chaos of sex, gender and work. More specifically, we should resist pharmaceutical attempts to induce compliance to the white, middle-class, capitalist work ethic, "hyperthymic heterosexuality" through medication with SSRIs.

Zita contests the vision of feminism which is developed by Peter Kramer, in Listening to Prozac. He appropriates (as do other popular writers) feminist tropes to recommend SSRIs: "It would seem that the Prozac feminism transacted in Kramer’s office displaces the language of middle-class feminism--women’s need for autonomy, self-determination, resilience, and defiance-- as qualities made available through Prozac. In Prozac feminism the problem is in the body, the solution is individual, and the emotions are reduced to the impact of neurochemicals."

Kramer’s "Prozac feminism" relies on what Zita argues is the paradigm of the communications sciences: emotions are understood as a problem of neurochemical coding. In this way, the emotions can be, as Donna Haraway says, "submitted to disassembly, reassembly, investment and exchange;" that is, they become part of "the informatics of domination." Zita maintains that feminists should stand against the location of emotional problems in the body, which reinforces the incarceration of women in their biology. Medication should be understood in the context of a social understanding of the emotions, as in Naomi Scheman’s Wittgensteinian analysis which leaves "spaces for imagination and oppositional agency." Self-politicization can allow the postmodern woman to re-establish and redefine her subjectivity.

Zita recommends that we "talk back" to Prozac in terms of politics, as a way of resisting the "tabloid liberalism" debate over side-effects. However, she does not succeed in eluding the debate surrounding the side-effects of SSRIs that has created a circus in the popular press. The need to address the specific results of treatment with SSRIs is especially evident given Kramer’s portrayal of Prozac sexuality. Zita repeatedly emphasizes the sexual vivaciousness of the feminism appealed to by Kramer. She problematizes this vision of women of the future on the basis of its direction by a political ideal, but she does not address the specific irony of Kramer’s account: women on SSRIs frequently experience new limitations on sexual motivation and arousal.

Kramer’s representation of women’s sexuality demonstrates the validity, and concrete importance, of Zita’s analysis of the problems with "Prozac feminism." The influence on sexuality needs to be politicized. The irony of the popular portrayal shows the need for her analysis to be extended to cover the details of the implications of using SSRIs. Accepting the consequences of medication as desirable "effects" rather than detrimental "side-effects" has political significance. This seems especially clear for women on SSRIs who face new forms of sexual frustration but are being told that they are more sexual. Kramer’s "Prozac feminist" is reduced to a sexual object; she seems sexual in a traditional sense, although she may not respond sexually.