This was a solid and interesting collection that I struggled a little bit with in the middle. I think the opening essay and the final essay felt the best, to me--I think some of the other essays straddle a line of navel-gazing and voyeurism (which Jamison acknowledges!) that didn't hit home for me personally, and I think also because those essays felt more reaching for an answer that was not there, rather than, as in "Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain," refusing an answer altogether. I think I also found her reflections on empathy frankly to be more interesting when rooted in what she wanted from others in terms of empathy (which is what I mean, I think, by a kind of "internal" world of empathy--the work we want others to do for us--rather than how we should extend empathy to others, which comes across as weirdly stilted for me--almost a kind of floundering, which, while maybe that's what she was trying to convey about conscious empathy, kind of fell flat.) 

But I do think that this collection was definitely powerful, and as I said, the first and the final essays definitely were incredible and left me a lot to chew on. I definitely feel like I will return to the last essay again and again.