Index of Placebo Effects

Carol Guess explains, "This tiny book is based on the index of my father's co-edited anthology, The Science of the Placebo. I selected terms from the index of his book and used them to organize a fractured, fragmented narrative that was originally part of a longer manuscript titled Hand mit Ringen. While I was working on Doll Studies: Forensics, I winnowed part of that longer manuscript into the story of a vet returning from WWII. It appears in Doll Studies as "Departure Lounge." Then I worried and revised and changed the remaining material, adding and subtracting, returning to the original narrative: the story of two women, a plane crash, and too many cameras. Guided at first by the NATO phonetic alphabet, I eventually used the index of my father's book to structure their story, which became Index of Placebo Effects. As always, I miss my father, and wish I could share this process with him. I suppose the path to scientific discovery is not that different from the path to a story: hard work and happy accidents."