At 10:01 PM 21/08/2001 -0400, Eric wrote:
>To those interested,
>
>I am interested in how science contributes to the constructive process of
>mapping progress. I am interested in how studying people's personalities
>contributes to helping a person navigate their current situation. I am
>interested in how mentally ill people march to their own drummer and do not
>accept cultural norms.
It's good to see your interests, Eric. I wish I could be so specific. But
on this last point of interest: I wonder if (even by simple inversion) we
might ask the question "why are people who march to their own drummer and
do not accept cultural norms considered to be mentally ill"? OR less
simplistically, "what kinds of disrhythmic marchings or cultural norm
rejectings might be considered symptomatic of mental illness?" OR "to what
degree do the violent rhythms of highly technologised and regimented
cultures produce nervous recoilings in the human organism and concomitant
refusals to march, to conform, or even to continue?"
OR OR OR
Is the term "mental illness" even helpful anymore? Single motherhood and
homosexuality used to be considered symptomatic of mental illness. Today
depression is considered to be mentall illness, when it seems rather like a
mass state of being, and not the least bit "abnormal".
Even if we continue with the fiction that the mind can be ill and the body
quite healthy (i.e. the "cartesian" fallacy), or vice versa, how would we
proceed to describe the kinds of "mental" anguish that people who are dying
from "non-mental" illnesses (almost always painful, always degrading) feel
as something other than mental illness.
Just so you know, I'm not being provocative or glib. I really want to know
what you and others think.
If psychological "order" and "disorder"; "well-being" and "disease";
"health" and "illness" are fictions, inseparable from the state of the
ecosocial system and the entire human organism, what is the focus of
psychology?
Best regards,
Phil
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 01 2001 - 01:02:14 PDT