Posted by Squiggles on October 8, 2006, at 9:39:03
In reply to Re: Encephalitis lethargica » Squiggles, posted by SLS on October 8, 2006, at 9:17:39
> 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.
>:-)
I see from surfing the net, that the term
has been bounced around; it seems to have
made its reappearance in the field, with the
biological school; but i also saw Freud using
it in completely different ways. The Ancient Greeks must have seen people who were loopy
and said "that guy's head is cracked" or
"sometimes he's happy, sometimes he's suicidal-- the guy's head is split" or something to that
effect as "schizo" means torn or split and
"phreno" means "skull". The historians can probably pin it down to whatever medical context
was the flavour of the era at the time.http://www.ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/162/7/1393-a
>
> 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.
>
>Personally, i would find a biological explanation
more comforting as there is hope of treatment with a structural or "organic" brain problem; but of course you cannot eliminate the functional aspect that necessarily comes with a "broken" brain.
I suppose the gross abnormalities are easier
to recognize, e.g. head injury. I wonder where
structural pathologies come from.Squiggles
> - Scott
>
poster:Squiggles
thread:691873
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20061003/msgs/692946.html