title: Knowing More by Knowing Less? A Reading of Give Me Everything You Have. On Being Stalked by James Lasdun, London: Jonathan Cape, 2013.
abstract: James Lasdun's memoir of being stalked, Give Me Everything You Have, has provoked considerable controversy. Whilst the quality of the writing is widely praised, some critics object to the way Lasdun documents in unsparing detail his experiences without taking any account of the stalker's apparent mental health problems. There are ethical and conceptual problems with Lasdun's approach, but side-stepping medical knowledge and relying on what we might call common sense help Lasdun to find ways to interpret his stalker's actions as meaningful and human. I suggest three interlinked implications concerning: medicalization, stigma, and the relationship between ethics and scientific knowledge.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Warneford Hospital, Oxford University, Oxford, OX3 7JX, UK. neil.armstrong@psych.ox.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Neil
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Armstrong
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D008131:London; D062528:Medicalization; D001523:Mental Disorders; D009014:Morals; D011932:Reading; D012070:Religion and Science; D057545:Social Stigma; D014956:Writing
keywords: Ethics; Expert knowledge; Medicalization; Science and religion; Stigma