On the History of Psychiatry

The term psychiatry is derived from two Greeks words: psyche, meaning soul or mind, and iatros, meaning physician (“History of Psychiatry”). A psychiatrist is one who assesses both the psyche, the psychological and mental inclinations of patients, and who acts as a doctor, exercising the authority to prescribe medication.

Mental illnesses have existed for as long as humans have existed. During the latter part of fifth century BC, Ancient Greeks saw a connection between emotions and physiology. Hippocrates argued that there are both physiological and emotional aspects to diseases (Fink 31). However, up until the eighth century when psychiatric hospitals were first set up in the medieval Islamic world, it was commonly understood that mental diseases had supernatural origins. Common treatments involved exorcism, magic, and sorcery (“History of Psychiatry”). Most people believe that modern psychiatry began c. seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when French insane asylums were built (Szasz 1247).

Johann Christian Reil, born in 1759, coined the term “psychiatry.” He had a deep interest in the natural sciences and studied medicine at the University of Göttingen in Eastern Friesland. He moved to Halle and completed a thesis on yellow humor in the blood. He became a professor of therapeutics. In 1795 he started a book in which he described his belief that the “vital force” can be explained in physical terms. He commenced to observe fevered patients in delirium, which sparked his interest even more in the underlying psychiatric causes of illnesses. He then wrote what is considered the first psychiatric journal with his colleague Kayssler. The term psychiatry was first used in this journal. Reil’s findings were impressive, as he noticed a difference in personality integration between normal and abnormal patients. He proposed that symptoms like delusions, dreams, and fantasies should be addressed and treated through both the body and the mind. He favored research of Greek, Roman, and Arab psychiatric cures. For him, the best way to cure insanity was to eliminate obsessions. He also argued against insane asylums feeling like prisons and argued in favor of mental hospitals that allowed their patients sufficient time for exercise and fresh air (Armytage).

Up until the nineteenth century, insane asylums were essentially prisons for both madmen and the socially undesirable. The old, the chronically ill, prostitutes, and abandoned children could all be found in an asylum. Even if they did not commit any crimes, they would be sent into these prison-like establishments for being “insane,” “psychotic,” or “mentally ill.” The hospitals were like prisons, the patients like inmates, and the doctors like wardens (Szasz 1247).

In 1841 the Association of Medical Officers of Asylums and Hospitals for the Insane was established in England as group of medical superintendents of public or private asylums. This foundation was important in advocating for moral and humane treatment of the clinically insane. By 1926 it received a Royal Charter of Incorporation, and it eventually took on the name Royal College of Psychiatrists (“Royal College Of Psychiatrists”).

The first American Association of Medical Superintends met in Philadelphia in 1844. This association secured a good reputation for American insane asylums (Curwen 5).

At the start of the twentieth century, Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical theories marked the dawn of modern psychiatry. He essentially founded diagnostic and therapeutic medicine, and investigated psychoneuroses. His comprehensive theory of mental function proved that psychoanalysis could be applied to a range of different psychological abnormalities and peculiarities (“Sigmund Freud”).

In 1917, the first Statistical Manual for the Use of Institutions for the Insane was written. A Standard Classified Nomenclature of Disease was released in 1942. In 1943, the Armed Forces created a nomenclature for mental illnesses called the “Medical 203.” In 1952 the American Psychiatric Association wrote the first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for mental disorders, adapted from the Medical 203. It categorized 106 mental disorders. The DSM-II, released in 1968, described 182 disorders. The DSM-III was published in 1980 and described 265 disorders. The third DSM represented the medicalization of psychiatry and received heavy influence from science and data. The DSM-IV was released in 1994, and the DSM-IV-TR in 2000. They documented 297 disorders (Ferranti).

As of 2013, the DSM-5 is used to diagnose mental disorders. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, the major refinements to the DSM-5 deal with diagnosing Anxiety and Depression. It focuses on examining symptoms across a lifetime, including older adults and children. Anxiety disorders are separated into three sequential broad chapters: Anxiety Disorders, Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders, and Trauma- and Stress-Related Disorders. The DSM-5 is designed to provide understandable language for mental health professionals, patients, and caregivers (“DSM-5: Changes to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders | Anxiety and Depression Association of America, ADAA”).

Pastoral Counseling Policies and Awareness

According to Dr. Raynard Smith, New Brunswick Theological Seminary Assistant Professor of Pastoral Care, “We are living in stress-filled times which directly impacts people’s quality of life. This places high demands upon clergy who, as the research suggests, are usually approached first by members of their congregations seeking answers and relief” (“NBTS E-Story”). As people cope with high-stress levels, the church seems to be the perfect place to find respite. But we must consider the role of the pastoral counselor, and the liability risks that come along with pastoral counseling sessions.

According to the AAPC (American Association of Pastoral Counselors), to be licensed as a pastoral counselor in Texas you must have an LPC (Licensed Professional Counseler) or an LMFT (Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist), as well as an MA (Master’s), D Min (Doctorate of Ministry) or PHD (Doctorate of Philosophy) in a specified counseling field (“Licensing”). Pastoral counseling can be divided into two different categories: non-secular, religious counseling or secular, nonreligious counseling. Deborah Van Deusen Hunsinger argues for integration of theology and psychology in her book Theology and Pastoral Counseling: A New Interdisciplinary Approach (Howe, Leroy T.). In a review of Hunsinger’s book, Leroy Howe says that it is “a welcome sign that Athens may be catching sight of Jerusalem yet again among pastoral counselors” (Howe).

Although I am not arguing for either the integration of theology into pastoral counseling or for secular pastoral counseling, I do believe it is important to understand the differences between the two. It is also important to understand that some pastoral counselors are not even licensed, and offer their services simply as a spiritual obligation to encourage a biblical healing process.

Both secular and religious pastoral counselors face the risk of malpractice. Clergy malpractice is usually based on an accusation of misconduct or wrongful advice (Fain 228). For “life coaching” counseling, pastors, especially unlicensed pastors, are practically walking on eggshells when they give advice, because almost anything they say can be interpreted as hate speech, and they have no counseling policy to protect them if a lawsuit were to arise.

There are two aspects to my argument: the charge to the pastoral counselor, and the charge to the pastoral counselee. All pastoral counselors should abide by a policy that requires the counselor to emphasize a spiritual counseling style during sessions and to recommend the patient to a more qualified professional when applicable. The charge to the counselee is to understand the precise type of pastoral counseling they are receiving.

A pastoral counseling policy should be administered for all churches in order to prevent harm to the parishioner and to protect the pastor or church from being unnecessarily sued for liability issues. To enact this policy, I assert that there should be official documents that both pastoral counselors and counselees sign. Compliance with this policy would mean the counselor emphasizes the spiritual nature of his counseling style by praying, referencing the Bible, and possibly even assigning scripture-based homework during sessions (Fain 253). Constance Fain argues that

the pastoral counselor or church official, who is providing spiritual guidance to parishioners, should emphasize and restrict his or her assistance to biblical counseling unless he or she has received training from an accredited institution and is licensed by the state as a professional counselor (Fain).

This means that non-licensed pastoral counselors should avoid offering advice that pertains to medicine, mental health, and family therapy. If such issues arise during sessions, I believe that the pastoral counselor should refer the parishioner to a professional counselor or psychiatrist immediately.

The next part of the policy pertains to a counselor-patient consent form. Signing the form would mean that the patient understands that the pastoral counselor is not a social worker, therapist, or other state affiliated worker. Fain states that the patient should indicate they agree “not to file a claim against the church for any costs or damages caused by the counseling services of the pastor, other church official or pastoral counselor” (Fain 254). The form would also enforce acknowledgement of the law-mandated requirement to disclose to authorities any knowledge of “child abuse, threats to seriously harm or kill another, or other menacing remarks of violence that could lead to personal or property damage” (Fain 254).

Members of our community seeking pastoral counseling should agree to sign this document. It is also important for families to be aware of the differences between LPC ministers and pastors without counseling licenses, because each one lends to different types of counseling. It is ideal to seek help from a licensed pastoral counselor who shares your own spiritual beliefs. Risk of liability can be avoided if the parishioner understands the integration the specific pastor is utilizing in their care.

It may be argued that the beliefs of the client should not matter, because according to the AAPC, pastoral counselors are required to offer care without imposing their own beliefs on the client (“About Us”). However, despite advertisements of nonsectarian counseling, it is important for the patient to understand that pastoral counselors have had extensive training in religion or theology. So counselors do bring a bias with them to the counseling session, and that will show when the talk therapy begins. If the patient finds him/herself uncomfortable with the spiritual biases of the counselor, the chances of liability suits being filed against the church increases.

Some people argue against the concept of pastoral counseling in general. There are many cases where biblical counseling has led parishioners away from taking medication or seeking the professional help they need. For example, 24-year-old Kenneth Nally became depressed and suicidal after converting from Roman Catholicism to Protestant Calvinism. Instead of taking the advice of his parents to committing himself to a mental hospital, he decided to stay at the home of his pastor. According to an article on biblical counseling written by Kathryn Joyce, Kenneth spent six days at his pastor’s house during which “he read the Bible, listened to tapes of [his pastor’s] sermons, and helped to take care of [his pastor’s] family’s children” (“The Rise of Biblical Counseling”). Upon returning to his parent’s house a week later, Kenneth shot himself, leaving behind only a tattered piece of paper with Bible verses scribbled on it. After discovering that Kenneth’s “biblical counselor” received no professional training, his parents filed $1 million wrongful death lawsuit against Kenneth’s church and pastors (“The Rise of Biblical Counseling”).

This is why I am arguing for an awareness of what type of pastoral counselor you are seeking. Licensed pastoral counselor, John Messerschmitt, says, “We need to be clear to others about the differences between ourselves and untrained or parochial clergymen” (“Pastoral Counseling”). In the case of the Nally family, Kenneth’s refuge in his pastor’s house could not be defined as professional pastoral counseling. It is important to understand that pastoral counseling, especially unlicensed biblical counseling, alone is not a sufficient way to address severe psychiatric disorders.

In conclusion, pastors should not use secular counseling methods if they do not have an LPC. It is not necessarily better for a pastor to be a professionally licensed counselor; regardless, he should understand the risks of offering counseling services. As a community, this should not deter us from pastoral counseling. Instead, church members should seek out church counseling with a different mindset: its purpose is to provide help and healing in an environment that does not center on medical diagnoses and psychiatric assessment.

Emotional Appeal to the Mind: A Pathos Speech

I find the concept of emotion particularly intriguing when mere words have the power to inspire an audience. I have written a speech dealing with a topic I am passionate about – literature. It is entitled Kill Your Darlings, and I intended it to be an unstructured and blotchy piece of work, purposed to imbue the listeners with an emotional response towards two polar forms of literature.

“To find your own voice, forget about it being heard. Become a saint of your own province and your own consciousness.” Allen Ginsberg said that. I think he meant that writers should maintain the standards, stick to structure, worry about rhyme, meter, and syntax; but only if they wish never to write beautifully and truthfully. A writer, a true writer, does not seek the approval of other men. The other men being those staunch geniuses, who retreat into clouds of cigar smoke, congratulating each other on degrees that give them authority determine the proper use of commas and apostrophes. Play by their rules and your writing will be prohibited. No run on sentences, no stacking of adjectives, and no fervor.

So let’s toast to illiteracy. Only the illiterate understand the true nature of life; their noses are not glued into the empty pages of scholarly books, but their eyes see and their hearts feel what most authors only write about, never actually experiencing. They understand what it’s like to live day to day with nothing. They understand the cruelty of the world. They understand the way people will let you down.

That’s what writing is about. Write of truth. What would literature be like if we only wrote the truth? No illustrious fluff, no sentence structure. Write what you are thinking. Write exactly what’s circulating through your mind this very instant. First thought best thought. Unfortunately, self-consciousness has become too large a burden. We all care too much about how our writing will be viewed; we are forced to think that way.

So let’s have our students keep idly staring at computer screens, “writing their theme” but actually speculating about their performance in last night’s game. Let’s keep up the collective groan that rises in the classroom every time the lit teacher announces an upcoming theme. Let’s continue training our students to absolutely dread any assignment that has to do with writing. Or let’s look at writing for what it truly is – a gift from God. Humans have the incomparable ability to tie letters and words together in infinite combinations.

Try pulverizing a student until the contents of his body flood into the space of his head, and see if anything good and creative comes out of that. How do we expect kids to find their own voice if they’re being forced to worry about the meticulous details and structure of their writing? It’s not a pleasurable thing, as it should be. Rather, it’s a task that stigmatizes creativity.

Take the Beat Generation of the 1950’s as an example. Artists like Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs sat in countless university literature classes, wondering how these highly educated professors refused to tolerate “slack” writing styles. According to these tradition-based teachers, literature was not the place to express the inextinguishable flame of the scandalous and risqué business of the secular world around us. For them, professional writers should create literature only according to age-old rules of structure.

But all of that changed when Lucien Carr and his close friends opened their eyes to the oppressive and unwelcomed force of the typical “writer” of their age. These “writers” clung too ferociously to the accepted standards, and neglected to appreciate the affects of World War II, the degenerative human condition, the use of drugs, alternate sexuality, and the appeal of religion to the human psyche. When writers like Allen Ginsberg realized that these modern and sometimes profane occurrences could be manipulated into beautiful poems and pieces of literature, an innovative new writing style was born. Of course, this movement paralleled the cultural phenomena of the 1960’s; yet it still introduced the idea that the truth of life, no matter how messy and disgraceful, was always welcomed in literature.

Writing is a common ground – a way for people to relate to each other through similar experiences and feelings. A poem without rhyme, a page without periods, a thought without filter may reflect the unstructured, incessant, and remorseless pain that inflicts itself upon the life of so many readers. And sometimes beauty is not expressed simply, but requires the use of multiple and unique adjectives that, outside of post-WWII literature, would be considered poor writing.

Wake, melancholy lover, wake and weep for the misunderstanding of writing. The years have distorted the most appropriate purpose of literature – the true, unrestricted manifestation of the self. Ambition for beauty will help us seek truth and sincerity in writing. Turn your eyes towards the splendor of words and reject the encumbrance of structure, rules, and standards.

Music as a Door to Understanding Human Neurology

I recently read Oliver Sacks’ intriguing novel, Musicophilia. In a collection of unique anecdotes, he explores the links between music and neurology. The following is an essay I wrote in response to the book.

In Musicophilia Oliver Sacks supports the claim that music can provide insight into the complex neurological workings of the mind. Because rhythm is so highly represented in the functioning brain, Sacks claims that music is an art form that specializes not in external expression, but in conveying internal emotions and feelings (Sacks, 300). He deductively proves this by relating to his audience instances of patients affected with musical hallucinations, amnesia, Tourette syndrome, Parkinsonism, autism, Williams syndrome, and many other mental abnormalities. In almost all cases, music serves as a form of internal expression or healing power.

In order to grasp the premise of Sacks’ book, it is important to understand his assertion that rhythm is central to the workings of the nervous system and the overall human community. The nervous system is constantly binding a wide range of senses, like sight, sound, and hearing, in response to certain emotional triggers. “Such binding in the nervous system is accomplished by rapid, synchronized firing of nerve cells…. Just as rapid neuronal oscillations bind together different functional parts within the brain and nervous system, so rhythm binds together the individual nervous systems of a human community” (247). This binding plays out in what is known as “neurogamy” – the binding of two or more nervous systems. When external music or rhythm is internalized identically in everyone listening, there is an emotional connection amongst all participants (244-245). The “seductive and enigmatic power of music” then makes it hard for others to resist joining into the chanting or dancing that rhythm gives rise to (293). This irresistibility to rhythm is perhaps best explained by theories of cultural evolution. We see rhythm utilized in many aspects of society, ranging from military and funeral marches to rhythmic songs that arouse agricultural labor and other forms of group efforts (246). Therefore, it can be said that rhythm is a prerequisite to many essential aspects of society that bind people together and result in productivity or the expression of internalized feelings.

Oliver Sacks goes farther than simply proving that rhythm is vital to human activity – he draws up a collection of several individuals he had professionally overseen who all have some sort of mental anomaly relating to music. He uses these people as examples to argue that music is powerful not only as an external force useful for connecting human nervous systems or helping a patient with amnesia revive his memory, but that music is also something that comes from within the human mind. Musical talent, or even musical depravity, is something that can be “switched on,” so to say, by the damage or dominance of the left or right hemispheres.
In the case of Martin, a musical savant, he grew up functioning normally until the age of three when “he contracted meningitis, which caused seizures and a spastic weakness of his limbs and voice” (151). Martin also had severe vision problems. As he developed an impulsive and “odd” personality, he became heavily fascinated with listening to and performing music. This fascination led to a phonographic memory – he memorized nearly everything he heard. By the time he was an adult he had memorized one of Bach’s entire cantatas as well as two thousand operas. The question, then, is what was the origin of this auditory and musical capability? Sacks argues that “his auditory and potentially musical powers…[gained] strength from the poorness of his vision” and the loss of cortical control as a result of his meningitis (152-153). Essentially, because Martin was nearly blind, he relied on hearing to orient himself to the world. And because he was out of control of some major motor functions, his brain automatically stimulated the release of higher powers in other parts of the brain (particularly the auditory processing region).

Like Martin, Jerome Bruner exercised extraordinary musical abilities as a result of lack of vision. Oliver Sacks claims that Jerome “is immensely sensitive to music and possesses…powers of musical memory and imagery” (160). When asked about this talent, Jerome says that in his first two years of life he was blind (until he had his cataracts removed) – this blindness forced him to pay close heed to sounds of all sorts, especially music and voices. This sensitivity to anything that has to do with hearing grew with him and remains a significant aspect of his adult life.
Using this anecdote, Sacks points out that it is not uncommon for blind people to have intense auditory powers. He addresses and corrects the common stigma surrounding blind people; that they are cut off from society and it is a phenomenon that they could engage in musical activity. “Social forces here are matched by strong internal forces” (161). In this case, social forces would be the stereotype that it is rare for blind people to be musical, and internal forces would be the strong development of verbal and auditory aspects in children born blind or in people who experience a sudden loss of vision. Because “a third or more of the human cortex is concerned with vision,…if visual input is suddenly lost, very extensive reorganizations and remappings may occur in the cerebral cortex, with the development, sometimes, of intermodal sensations of all sorts” (163). This is confirmed in studies performed by Pascual-Leone et al., which show that in patients born blind, the visual cortex “is reallocated to other sensory inputs, especially hearing and touch, and becomes specialized for the processing of these” (163). Therefore, because of the internal power of music, senses are not necessarily lost in blind people, but are redistributed to strengthen other parts of the brain, especially parts involved with music processing.

Another way that music shines as an internal powerhouse plays out in Tourette’s syndrome. Some people with Tourette’s use music to harness and control their incessant ticcing. John S., a Tourette’s syndrome patient, described to Sacks that “music is a huge part of [his] life. It can be both a blessing and a curse when it comes to ticcing. It can send [him] into a state where [he] forget[s] all about Tourette’s, or it can bring on a surge of tics that is difficult to control or bear” (226). It is important to note that music heavy with rhythm particularly trigged the patient’s tics – the ticcing sped up and slowed down according to the tempo of the music. There are wide ranges of Tourette’s syndrome, and each patient has a unique reaction to music. However, there is most always some sort of reaction. For drummer David Aldridge, music was a sort of “permission to explode” in relation to his Tourette’s. Aldridge wrote: “Rhythm and Tourette’s syndrome have been intertwined from the first day I found that drumming on a table could mask my jerky hand, leg and neck movements” (228). Aldridge learned that the rhythm of drumming helped him harness the power of his violent outburst of tics and essentially masked his symptoms for a period of time. Tourette’s is a syndrome that forces people to fight the autonomous and rebellious tendencies of their brains; music, however, can serve as a creative release that acts as a form of self-awareness and intentionality. For some patients, being engaged in music is the only way they can feel in control of themselves at all. Therefore, music and rhythm are internal factors that have the power to control the workings of the lower levels of the brain.

Clive Wearing, a victim of amnesia, further represents the profoundness of music. Clive’s amnesia was so severe that he felt as if he was just waking up every moment of his life. His wife wrote to Oliver Sacks, “His talk might be a jumble no one could understand, but his brain was still capable of making music” (204). The only time that Clive seemed to be a normal, functioning person, was when he was hunched over his organ producing beautiful music or when he was singing a duet with his wife. It was as if music animated him, or brought him back to life so to speak. As Oliver Sacks explored how a man with practically no memory at all could remember perfectly how to produce music, he introduced the idea that music is not something that requires explicit memory. “It may be that Clive, incapable of remembering or anticipating events because of his amnesia, is able to sing and play and conduct music because music is not, in the usual sense, remembering at all” (212). Sacks goes on to explain that participating in music does not require remembering the past or anticipating the future, but rather is a present consciousness. He quotes a philosopher of music, Victor Zuckerkandl: “Every melody declares to us that the past can be there without being remembered, the future without being foreknown” (213). This philosophy coupled with Clive’s ability to participate in music despite his amnesia proves that music is a power that originates within the human brain, requiring no explicit memory and transcending the natural course of time.

In conclusion, there is a strong case that because music is so deeply engrained in the workings of the human mind, it can be utilized as an internal power that can give us insight into the way humans communicate, sense, and remember. Sacks ties together several aspects of music and rhythm to formulate his proposition – music’s capability to bind multiple nervous systems together, auditory processing enhancing as a result of reallocation of other sensory inputs, music as a way for Tourette’s patients to harness impulsive ticcing, music as a way for patients with memory loss to function normally, and many other examples. We should all learn to appreciate the neurological and social power of music on a deeper level.

 

Sacks, Oliver W. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007. Print.

Borderline Personality Disorder

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. My apologies. I’ve been interested in borderline personality disorder especially since reading Girl, Interrupted. I decided to do some research. I found that the primary theme of this disorder is impulsivity. According to the DSM, Fourth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR), these impulsive behaviors can include

• Extreme reactions—including panic, depression, rage, or frantic actions—to abandonment, whether real or perceived
• A pattern of intense and stormy relationships with family, friends, and loved ones, often veering from extreme closeness and love (idealization) to extreme dislike or anger (devaluation)
• Distorted and unstable self-image or sense of self, which can result in sudden changes in feelings, opinions, values, or plans and goals for the future (such as school or career choices)
• Impulsive and often dangerous behaviors, such as spending sprees, unsafe sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, and binge eating
• Recurring suicidal behaviors or threats or self-harming behavior, such as cutting
• Intense and highly changeable moods, with each episode lasting from a few hours to a few days
• Chronic feelings of emptiness and/or boredom
• Inappropriate, intense anger or problems controlling anger
• Having stress-related paranoid thoughts or severe dissociative symptoms, such as feeling cut off from oneself, observing oneself from outside the body, or losing touch with reality.

These symptoms are not exclusive to Borderline Personality Disorder. It is typical to find someone with BPD also experiencing depression, anxiety, substance abuse, suicidal behaviors, and other co-occuring disorders. The causes of BPD can vary. One of the most common issues in psychology is pinpointing whether certain illnesses are inherited or acquired as a result of certain environmental or social factors. Of course there are studies that show the illness is commonly inherited, or that specific qualities characterized with BPD, like impulsiveness or aggression, are passed along genetically from generation to generation. However, it is also common for crime/rape victims, and people living high-stress or dysfunctional lives to develop BPD later on in their lives. There is no specific medication that is prescribed to people with BPD, but the most common and historically successful treatment is psychotherapy. The types of therapy used include: Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and Schema-focused Therapy. I won’t get into the details of each form of therapy. However, each type provides the patient with different ways to understand and cope with being diagnosed with BPD. Psychotherapy essentially provides a way for BPD patients to learn how to better interact with others. Borderline Personality Disorder is a serious mental illness that plagues about 1.6 percent of adults in the United States. This is a significant disorder because it covers such a wide scope of symptoms commonly associated with mental illnesses in general. I hope to eventually learn more about how to help someone with BPD, and also further understand the physiological and neurological aspects behind this sickness.

Case profile: Carl Jung

Very interesting history behind psychological terminology we often take for granted today.

Freud et al

This is inspired by having  just watched the film A Dangerous Method. I’ve never studied Jung before, it was very interesting.

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Carl Jung (1875-1961)  founded analytical psychology. He proposed and developed a range of concepts including introversion and extroversion, archetypes and the collective unconscious. During a period of his life he worked closely with Freud on concepts of the unconscious but their differing opinions caused a break in their working relationship, despite Freud’s significant influence on Jung’s later work.

The central concept of analytical psychology is individuation—the process of integrating the opposites, including the conscious and unconscious, while still maintaining their relative autonomy. Jung considered individuation to be the central process of human development. Jung is also one of the best known contemporary contributors to dream analysis and symbolisation.

Though he was a practicing clinician he considered himself  a scientist, and much of his life’s work was spent exploring a wide range…

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Girl Interrupted at Her Music, by Vermeer

The girl at her music sits in another sort of light, the fitful, overcast light of lie, by which we see ourselves and others only imperfectly, and seldom.

Susanna Kaysen makes this comment on Vermeer’s powerful painting, a piece that most likely played an integral role in her mental illness. In her best-selling novel Girl, Interrupted, she recounted how, at the age of eighteen, she had failed to graduate high school, and found herself housed in a prestigious mental hospital in Massachusetts. She was eventually diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, an illness that I will be writing on in an upcoming post. The entire narrative is profound and moving; a memorable recovery story.

Psychology-Driven Propaganda Is the Rule of the Day

This is a great acknowledgement of the psychology behind propaganda, along with a healthy solution to address it without being overly paranoid.

Animal Therapy

I find the concept of pet-assisted therapy exceedingly fascinating. More than that, the bond that humans and animals share is extremely intriguing. Some biological evolutionists might propose that for thousands of years humans have depended on animals to warn them of threats and keep them safe, ensuring human survival. But to this day, the relationship between animals and people can sometimes serve as a healing power. I wish I could understand why this is. All I know is that those who suffer emotional or physical pain often find solace and companionship in pets. When humans see animals in a restful state, a feeling of security and safety is conjured in human minds. This animal-person bond helps nurture children, war veterans, and disturbed people who have emotional, social, or cognitive issues. The companionship of animals is a beautiful thing that God offers the human race.

Commentary on the Eden Express III

This will be my final post on schizophrenia. After reading Mark Vonnegut’s memoir, I have discovered how mysterious schiz actually is. The visions, hallucinations, and delusions of an affected person seemingly give them insight into a world of genius. Schizophrenia can also produce extreme bliss. Yet on the other end of the spectrum, the outlandish behavior and completely helpless loss of sanity make schizophrenia a curse that should never be wished upon another person.

There are two factors to solving the problem of schizophrenia: the origin of the sickness and its remedy. Anti-psyochtics and Thorazine seem to help in some cases, but not always. Mark Vonnegut claims that orthomolecular therapy is the way to go – all natural vitamins that correct biochemical deficiencies in the body. Although Mark “very likely owe[d] [his] own life to Thorazine,” he reasoned that the lack of risks with taking vitamins outweighed the numerous side affects of heavy drugs. Your body will simply dispose of anything harmful and will absorb the vitamins it needs in order to heal chemical imbalances. I personally am not well-informed enough to agree or disagree with Vonnegut. 

The origin of the disease continues to be an unsolved issue to this day. Some would say that it’s poetic, meaning that the symptoms occur strictly as a result of environment or socio-economic position. “Laing has called schizophrenia a reasonable response to an insane world.” Maybe some people realize the depravity of their lives, or the world in general, and go insane trying to prevent this existential crisis. Their hallucinations and dreams could even point to the specific environmental factors that led to the sickness. Nationalism, or extreme placement of identity in a specific cause, could also play into insanity. There are so many factors that support the theory of schizophrenia being a purely psychological response to one’s surroundings. At the same time, there is just as much evidence that the illness is purely scientific. It could be genetically inherited or just a result of chemical imbalances. Mark Vonnegut comforts a girl diagnosed with schizophrenia by saying, 

While there is certainly plenty to be upset about in these strange times, and as much as I tried to place the blame there when I went under, there is precious little evidence that our troubled world can be realistically blamed for schizophrenia. Schizophrenia occurs in all cultures, all times, displaying remarkable consistency…Translated to your situation: your mental health is not dependent of the moral, sociopolitical health of the world.

Again, I am not well versed enough to say whether I believe, like Mark, that schizophrenia is purely biochemical. But if I had to say, I would probably lean away from Mark’s hypothesis. If there is some way (and I believe there is) of reconciling the medical and social theories for schizophrenia, I would have to agree with that category.