"Mouse Taste"
Mouse taste is a metaphor for those tiny, anxiety-ridden bites of food people—kids mostly—hesitantly take when faced with an authority figure telling them they must try at least one sample of food on the plate. The book begins with the author's own personal story of being the youngest recorded patient ever hospitalized for anorexia. It all basically began with a teacher noticing that she was no longer even submitting to a "mouse taste" of offerings from the school cafeteria.
"Pharmacological Calvinism"
Most people would be expected to view the concept of dealing with mental illness through taking medication to be a comprehensively good thing. This is not a universal opinion. Some think “if a drug makes you feel good, it’s either somehow morally wrong, or you’re going to pay for it with dependence, liver damage, chromosomal change, or some other form of secular theological retribution." The metaphorical term for this belief is "pharmacological Calvinism." The reference is to the Protestant denomination founded by John Calvin which places a heavy emphasis on the morality of acts.
"The Psychic Hinterlands"
The author explains that the case studies presented in this book represent people from different eras and cultures who really share just one thing: a setting she terms "the psychic hinterlands." This is a metaphor meant to represent not just those suffering from mental disorders, but those whose situations are worsened due to a lack of communication. To further delineate, she suggests that there is a divide—permeable, but fraught peril—between those hinterlands and what is referred to as normality.
Anguish
One of the case studies is about an Indian woman whose rituals of religious devotion have been misdiagnosed as schizophrenia. She is a devotee of an Indian poet who lived in the 1500s and wrote of going mad with love: "Anguish takes me from door to door, but doctor answers." Within the context of residents of the "psychic hinterlands" and the problem with communication, the context of this metaphor easily pivots from the madness of love to the maddening search for a correct diagnosis.
