Posted by JohnHenry on May 30, 2000, at 18:22:05
In reply to Re: So, what's your point?, posted by Ginny on May 30, 2000, at 13:34:17
> Dear bob,
>
> “So, what’s your point?”
>
> My primary point, plainly stated, was to question and challenge the validity of Freudian (broadly construed) analysis. I view this to be an issue of practical (that is, non-academic) consequence to psychiatric patients.
>
> Your remarks regarding linguistics, epistemology, philosophy of science, cosmology, physics, and truth with a capital “T” are irrelevant to my primary point and illogical, to boot, and not something I have any interest in discussing.This JohnHenry would not be interested in forcing anyone to discuss bob's remarks regarding linguistics, etc., even though one writer deemed them illogical without qualifying what rules of logic they fail to meet, or establishing their qualifications as an arbitrer of logic. I am prepared to accept most people's internal logic, for the sake of better understanding the human experience, regardless how inconsistent it may be with that of the scientific community.
Regarding the unconscious, anyone who presumes that humans are not motivated by biological attenuations of which they are not conscious, well, they are offering further proof of an unconscious by demonstrating their lack of consciousness of even well-documented traits of the homo sapiens nervous system. Sorry, puns are not good logic, eh?
Freud, like generations of shamans, seers and whatnot before him, recognized the complexity of our character, but he began to articulate in western scientific terms the existence of an unconscious. His research was a first step into a century of further study that eventually left his drug-influenced speculation in the dust. But the theraputic worth of exploring the makeup of our individual and collective unconscious will likely continue to be recognized long after we, the now living, all join Freud in the dust-bin of history.
ECT might have saved one person's bacon (I keep mine in a refrigerator) but a few individual's experience does not eclipse the overall pattern of ECT administration, with more than half of all ECT treatments given to people over the age of 65, and in most cases to people whose health care is provided by public assistance. Perhaps those individuals with nice, fresh bacon can assure these elders that ECT mitigation of feelings is a fine replacement for the discovery of a referant for their feelings. But pro-ECT testimony, as part of an informed consent process, implies an oppurtunity for anti-ECT testimony.
bob's post seemed to be a step away from the "depression is a biological brain disease" rhetoric. Efficacy is a fine defense for medication, but when efficacy of medications becomes proof to fill in the blanks of an incomplete science, and the science is then used to bully individuals for whom the medications are not efficacious, the logic becomes dangerously circular.
We can accurately say the sky *is* blue because blue is universally accepted to refer to a particular segment of the electromagnetic spectrum. Kidney stones are far more tangible than the collection of neuroscience currently informing the development of psychotropic medications. The definitions of mental disease are extremely controversial, and the academic, clinical and scientific recognition of various "brain diseases" is even less universal.
My interest is also strictly non-academic. I want to be able to have meaningful feelings. When the academies tell me my feelings, whether bright-white, dull-grey, red, green or blue are meaningless, and are simply a biological expression of a brain disease, well, my agitation seems to swell until I feel like tearing down whatever defective walls of civility protect the academic community. Such a presumption of what *is* *my* disease infringes on my humanity.
This is an issue of practical importance to me because I wish to remain a member of the civilized community, and do not wish the non-conformity of my feelings to become a basis for my being forced or otherwise coerced into a psychiatric setting.
It's just a bannana, Anna, and Oedipus is just folklore, but my feelings are mine, and they mean something. In my case, medications just might force that meaning deeper behind the shroud of my unconscious. In some people, such buried feelings might erupt as sociopathic behaviour.
poster:JohnHenry
thread:34863
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000526/msgs/35271.html