Sone notes on The Book of Woe by Gary Greenberg
Wallace Stevens "the blessed rage to order" (I looked this up and it's from Stevens' poem, "The Idea of Order at Key West). I'd never heard this quote before but find it very telling (although, I have to say, I don't understand the poem itself and am not sure what Stevens meant by the Blessed rage for order). Humans do seem to impose order, whether helpful, realistic or corresponding to experience, is of little importance. The map is important even if it isn't useful in the traditional sense, but useful only in that with a map you feel like you know where you are going even if the map has no correspondence or little correspondence with the reality.
Reoccurring problem of mistaking the map for the territory
Questions he raises:
Is disease really the best way to understand craziness (or even, what is craziness? The same as abnormal behavior or something else?)
What kinds of behavior are important to "label" and "characterize" and to whose benefit? I heard an interview on NPR with some community workers in SF working with the homeless. They acknowledge that there are times when the people they serve are "violent" and scary but they still think the greatest good is served by not institutionalizing people who do not want be institutionalized unless they commit a significant crime (and begging or swearing at passers-by is not a significant crime). If people with these behaviors are labeled "schizophrenic" who is helped? And why?
How much of our suffering do we want in the hands of the medical profession and /or psychology? Whose hands do we want our suffering in?
Why do we so value "the truth" when we so seldom if ever know what that means (I'm not talking about facts). If we believe what we say at one moment is true but then later realize we were wrong, did we lie?
100 men who went through reparative therapy told Robert Spritzer they were cured. He believed them but the psychology and gay community were outraged, and said those people were "lying" or at least fooling themselves. Spitzer eventually apologized and agreed that it wasn't true. What is true? Is holding onto the notion of true just another way we attempt to impose order?
It seems like there is general agreement that diagnostic criteria do not map the territory and are reductive at best and discrete in a way that does not correspond with the lived experience of the individual. And, that if between 20-80% of a population can fit into a diagnostic category, we have a problem of major proportions (in our diagnosing mechanism but not necessarily in our population). The issue is not one of faulty diagnosis as much as it is clear that symptoms do not make a mental illness. There is something more besides--what is the something more? It is probably lots of different something mores depending on the individual or the "mental illness" label.
How do we determine when being reductive is more beneficial than harmful?
Reoccurring problem of mistaking the map for the territory
Questions he raises:
Is disease really the best way to understand craziness (or even, what is craziness? The same as abnormal behavior or something else?)
What kinds of behavior are important to "label" and "characterize" and to whose benefit? I heard an interview on NPR with some community workers in SF working with the homeless. They acknowledge that there are times when the people they serve are "violent" and scary but they still think the greatest good is served by not institutionalizing people who do not want be institutionalized unless they commit a significant crime (and begging or swearing at passers-by is not a significant crime). If people with these behaviors are labeled "schizophrenic" who is helped? And why?
How much of our suffering do we want in the hands of the medical profession and /or psychology? Whose hands do we want our suffering in?
Why do we so value "the truth" when we so seldom if ever know what that means (I'm not talking about facts). If we believe what we say at one moment is true but then later realize we were wrong, did we lie?
100 men who went through reparative therapy told Robert Spritzer they were cured. He believed them but the psychology and gay community were outraged, and said those people were "lying" or at least fooling themselves. Spitzer eventually apologized and agreed that it wasn't true. What is true? Is holding onto the notion of true just another way we attempt to impose order?
It seems like there is general agreement that diagnostic criteria do not map the territory and are reductive at best and discrete in a way that does not correspond with the lived experience of the individual. And, that if between 20-80% of a population can fit into a diagnostic category, we have a problem of major proportions (in our diagnosing mechanism but not necessarily in our population). The issue is not one of faulty diagnosis as much as it is clear that symptoms do not make a mental illness. There is something more besides--what is the something more? It is probably lots of different something mores depending on the individual or the "mental illness" label.
How do we determine when being reductive is more beneficial than harmful?
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