Posted by alexandra_k on May 2, 2005, at 19:41:54
In reply to The Lexicon of Madness., posted by Shame on May 2, 2005, at 15:00:29
> I think there are only so many ways to describe how depression feels... without sounding crazy that is.
Yeah. Metaphor. One tends to get lost in metaphor. Someone said that that is the difference between crazy and not crazy. Not crazy people use similes while crazy people get lost in metaphor. I think that was Margaret Atwood. Not sure whether she is right or not - but I liked that.
>I'm not sure my descriptions even make sense to the people that are going through the same thing I am.
Because you are trying to describe a FEELING. The descriptions aim is to evoke that feeling in the reader - and some people are incapable of feeling the intensity of that feeling. Some people never know it and others cannot / will not let themselves muster it at that time.
>The fact that the word 'grief' does no justice to what we feel is lost on the public at large.
YES!
We are forced to use a public language with standard meanings. But the feeling words in the public language refer to standard emotions.Someone (maybe Sass) wrote about how some delusional subjects seem to have retreated into their own solipsistic world where they didn't use words with their standard meanings anymore. Standard meanings were inadequate to capture what they wanted / needed to say and so they used words with idiosyncratic / private meanings.
... But... What is interesting to me (and others) about this is whether delusional subjects... If you had enough of them together to constitute a community... If they would develop their own language and whether they could make sense of / understand each other.
I think:
YES
YES
YES
Just look at the way people can understand each other / communicate with each other (unconventionally) on the psych ward.> We use the same language to describe our illness that they might use to define a bad day or an off mood.
Yeah. And thats not fair to our experience.
Some people say that people with mental illness should claim language.
Take the power back off the clinicians who get to name everything.Bravo.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:492758
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20050419/msgs/492875.html