Posted by SLS on October 8, 2006, at 9:17:39
In reply to Re: Encephalitis lethargica » SLS, posted by Squiggles on October 8, 2006, at 8:26:50
> I'm not taking on the encyclopedias, no matter
> what I understand from reading him; i certainly don't want to give up my position as a humble bipolar for a schizoid megalomaniac. :-)
Even encyclopedias can be guilty of repeating historic errors for the sake of convenience, I guess. Perhaps your readings are uncovering new interpretations that more closely match the intended meanings of Kraepelin.Thanks for taking the time to put that stuff together.
Regarding the old dichotomy of "organic" versus "functional", I don't know what to tell you. When I was first diagnosed, affective disorders were considered functional, I think, because no structural pathology could be found nor was assumed. Similarly, no injury or other medical circumstance could be identified. I figured this was a good thing. I thought functional illness was just due to a problem with dysregulation of the system, but with fully intact hardware. My hopes were that this fully intact hardware would simply fire-up one day and be 100% ok. Now we know different regarding the hardware. Both bipolar and unipolar affective disorders show structural pathologies. Of course, we really don't know to what degree these are primary causes of the illness or secondary consequences to the illness, although I feel some of the new findings regarding bipolar disorder and abnormalities with myelination argue for the latter in that illness.
- Scott
poster:SLS
thread:691873
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20061003/msgs/692943.html