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Wed 31 Aug, 2005 03:07 pm
Medicine has become creepy. It's changed its philosophy, imperceptibly. Now we are all hooked to the doc as ideological clone zombies. Here's why:
Now, we suffer 'from' our 'experience' and our own emotions.
Nobody panics any more. Now, people 'have' panic 'attacks'. People 'have' a nervous 'breakdown'.
People 'have' an 'attack' of the giggles.
People suffer 'from' stress. What on earth does that mean?
People have a nervous collapse.
People 'crack up'.
Nobody 'cries' any more. Now, they 'break down'.
Now, some people are not people any more. They are 'dysfunctional'.
Now, automatic healing responses like hyperventilation and flash-backs are 'disorders', 'syndromes'. People possess 'clinical' conditions, confirmed (!) by diagnosis - that dark document of a belief. A plethora of strange obscure words has replaced the commonsense words of the past. Worse yet, medicine has created a strange notion of identity, of a person that is 'affected by' experience or feelings. Now, people 'suffer from experiences' like depression, schizophrenia. Now, people are affected by their brain chemicals, their serotonin, their dopamine. What, then, are people?
Now, medicine wants us to believe that brain matter is not like ordinary matter. It is different. It can be 'disordered', 'dysfunctional'. Strange words with no meaning except the suggestion of non-material spirits of disorganization residing in the brain.
Todays medicine tears apart mind and body. Everything that was mind such as experience, feelings, is now in the body, and the identity of a person is reduced to a helpless ghost in the machine, beyond even God's rescue.
I like what you had to say here.
Book Mark.
That's one way to look at it. I'd have to agree in some instances.
Luckily, we can each choose whether or not to 'subscribe' to this form of so-called medicine. There are a lot of other forms of medicine!
Great post Jones.
It's all about the denial of our dark sides. We are entirely good creatures, so the fevered dream says, so all these words you've so beautifully highlighted are there as excuses we can use whenever our sheet of fantasy cracks.
Wouldn't be so bad phoenix, if that was all it was. The new lingo negates the posibillity that a person is capable of being bad, that it's all exterior influences. Pesonally I don't buy that. I reserve the right to be demon ridden thank you. To ascribe all my problems to illnesses and dysfunctions of this and that is nothing but weakness.
"Drug abuse is an illness", it is said.
"Pedophilia is a mental disorder."
"Alcoholism is genetical".
I'll go stand next to John Jones and ask as he does, what are people, because what this new way of thinking implies is that people are but animals.
"The most powerful weapon of ignorance--the diffusion of printed matter."
Count Lyof Nickolayevitch Tolstoi.
So keep it coming JJ.
Re: creepy medicine
The first vital step in the pathologisation of human experience is to make the claim that 'we are affected by our experience'. Experience can then be said to attack us, or impose itself on us. Another essential step in the pathologisation of experience is to make the claim that a brain can tell us, simply by a physical examination, if it is 'ill'.
The pathologisation of experience has succesfully made illnesses of the extremes of human experience and now encroaches on everyday feelings. Extreme experiences such as hyperventilation, flashbacks, mystical visions, large differences in personal skills and behaviour, etc, are all regarded as illnesses and have their own labels - autism, dyslexia, PTSD, schizophrenia, personality disorder, etc.
But now everyday feelings are being regarded as illnesses or medical conditions. Grief now has stages, deviation from which is regarded in some instances as illness. Counsellors now provide necessary therapeutic changes demanded by a mind 'gone wrong'. But..we never quite know what we mean by 'gone wrong', or by similar phrases that we are taught to use, such as 'dysfunction'. Again, the assumption works hard for us - that we are affected by feelings. With this assumption medicine can claim that a bad feeling or a lack of skills is a condition - a condition of the brain perhaps, or of the genes, and then medicine can claim that there could be a 'cure'. Subsequently, medicine spends a lot of time finding, not a 'cure', but an acceptable way of enforcing behaviour.
Medicine encourages and otherwise tacitly acknowledges the new medi-speak used by a public who have grown used to describing feelings as being somehow alienated or apart from who they, as individuals, really are. No such claims are made for feelings such as happiness. Here, we never speak of 'conditions'..until very recently that is. Now we are told that our happiness is 'driven' by chemicals or genes. This is to invoke a somewhat dodgy argument that says that matter and mind are in a one-way causal relationship. If that were the case, then everything we do is driven. But if I am the thing that is determined, how can I be determined by the thing that I am?
Re: creepy medicine
John Jones wrote:Worse yet, medicine has created a strange notion of identity, of a person that is 'affected by' experience or feelings. Now, people 'suffer from experiences' like depression, schizophrenia. Now, people are affected by their brain chemicals, their serotonin, their dopamine. What, then, are people?
Now, medicine wants us to believe that brain matter is not like ordinary matter. It is different. It can be 'disordered', 'dysfunctional'. Strange words with no meaning except the suggestion of non-material spirits of disorganization residing in the brain.
Todays medicine tears apart mind and body. Everything that was mind such as experience, feelings, is now in the body, and the identity of a person is reduced to a helpless ghost in the machine, beyond even God's rescue.
You need to stop taking words so literally and try to understand what is meant. People are still people, but the brains that are the source of our sense of being and subsequent behavior can indeed be dysfunctional, due to chemical imbalances or wiring problems that prevent electrical signals from being transmitted normally. Sometimes drugs can correct the problem. Sometimes therapy can rewire neural networks sufficiently to alleviate the symptoms. Sometimes surgery can remove a tumor or repair an artery.
Despite what you seem to be saying here, modern medicine does not recognize demonic possession as a legitimate diagnosis.
It goes beyond mere lingo, tho it seems the lingo comes first. We used to go to the doctors office, right? Where do we go now? A Family Practice, maybe a Wellness Center. I think the message is "Sick people not welcome." And we're getting the message, too, aren't we? If we're sick or injured, we go to Urgent Care, or possibly the ER. We do not bother a Wellness Center with our bloody little injuries and disgusting sicknesses.
Re: creepy medicine
Terry wrote:John Jones wrote:Worse yet, medicine has created a strange notion of identity, of a person that is 'affected by' experience or feelings. Now, people 'suffer from experiences' like depression, schizophrenia. Now, people are affected by their brain chemicals, their serotonin, their dopamine. What, then, are people?
Now, medicine wants us to believe that brain matter is not like ordinary matter. It is different. It can be 'disordered', 'dysfunctional'. Strange words with no meaning except the suggestion of non-material spirits of disorganization residing in the brain.
Todays medicine tears apart mind and body. Everything that was mind such as experience, feelings, is now in the body, and the identity of a person is reduced to a helpless ghost in the machine, beyond even God's rescue.
You need to stop taking words so literally and try to understand what is meant. People are still people, but the brains that are the source of our sense of being and subsequent behavior can indeed be dysfunctional, due to chemical imbalances or wiring problems that prevent electrical signals from being transmitted normally. Sometimes drugs can correct the problem. Sometimes therapy can rewire neural networks sufficiently to alleviate the symptoms. Sometimes surgery can remove a tumor or repair an artery.
Despite what you seem to be saying here, modern medicine does not recognize demonic possession as a legitimate diagnosis.
How do you decide when an experience is a 'symptom', or that a chemical in the brain is 'disordered' or 'imbalanced'? You cannot use the brain to infer what is, or what is not, a symptom or imbalanced. And besides, feelings cannot be 'ill'. Your views are dangerous. They imply that simply by 'looking at a brain', correction can be indicated.
Why should modern medicine not regard demonic possession as legitimate diagnosis? Does this not point to their adherence to a belief system? -medicine already accepts feelings, so medicine should be consistent.
I think the point is, medicine believes that judgements of illness are 'found'; and that anything that is found must be physical and conform to the behaviour of a typical object of science. This needs combatting.
medicine is derived from science, and only refers to that wich is rational. We have witch doctors and the like if you feel you are possessed by some supernatural force.
I do not think that psychiatry understands the mind all that well. It only seems to understand behavior and medication. Some say that mental disorders are the cause of chemical imbalance, others do not. Chemicals surely have something to do with it, because one can drug someone out of a psychosis. However, i think that it is not the only reason one enters into a psychosis or insanity.
i have a somewhat buddhist bias on the issue. I have also suffered from a psychosis. I believe it erupted because of how I attached to my more irrational thoughts and beliefs unquestioningly. I think medicne just suppresses the chaotic. Psychiatry does not really help that much, but for people who cannot comprehend attachment, perhaps medication is the only way.
bloodcam2000 wrote:medicine is derived from science, and only refers to that wich is rational. We have witch doctors and the like if you feel you are possessed by some supernatural force.
I do not think that psychiatry understands the mind all that well. It only seems to understand behavior and medication. Some say that mental disorders are the cause of chemical imbalance, others do not. Chemicals surely have something to do with it, because one can drug someone out of a psychosis. However, i think that it is not the only reason one enters into a psychosis or insanity.
i have a somewhat buddhist bias on the issue. I have also suffered from a psychosis. I believe it erupted because of how I attached to my more irrational thoughts and beliefs unquestioningly. I think medicne just suppresses the chaotic. Psychiatry does not really help that much, but for people who cannot comprehend attachment, perhaps medication is the only way.
Chemicals have something to do with 'what'? A judgement of 'disorder' cannot be made by examining a chemical, so how can you say that 'psychosis' is chemically caused?
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