"Just as a cake recipe requires you to use flour, sugar, and baking powder in the right amounts, your brain needs a fine chemical balance."

— Anonymous

Author

Anonymous

Work Title

[Promotional Material for Paxil]

Date
1988
Metaphor
"Just as a cake recipe requires you to use flour, sugar, and baking powder in the right amounts, your brain needs a fine chemical balance."
Metaphor in Context
Focus shifted from norepinephrine to the neurotransmitter serotonin, and, in 1988, Prozac appeared, soon followed by other selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Promotional material from GlaxoSmithKline couched the benefits of its SSRI Paxil in cozy terms: "Just as a cake recipe requires you to use flour, sugar, and baking powder in the right amounts, your brain needs a fine chemical balance."
(p. 68)
Categories
Eating and Drinking::Food::Cake Eating and Drinking::Flour Eating and Drinking::Sugar Eating and Drinking::Baking Powder Eating and Drinking::Recipe Uncategorized::Balance
Provenance
Reading
Citation
GlaxoSmithKline, promotional material for Paxil. Cited by Jerome Groopman, "Medicine in Mind: Psychiatry's Fraught History," The New Yorker (May 20, 2019): 66-69, 68. <Link to New Yorker>
Date of Entry
05/28/2019

The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.