Modern myths

Well, pathology is a strange choice to make when there can be no evidence for it. Maladaptive behaviour sounds better but not much. Within this culture, natural spirituality and powerful or unusual experiences have been systematically repressed for centuries, and are still being suppressed. The deleterious effect on individuals of needing to continually reject their own unusual thoughts or experiences in order to survive in a society that has set up vast institutions dedicated to the eradication of particular thought patterns, has not been ascertained. I suggest this is the dimension that creates schizophrenia - it is a phenomenom of a culture, not of an individual. Neither has it been ascertained how much an effect it can have on an individual if there is no access to patterns of group behaviour that regularly discharge powerful energies in a natural and positive way. This can be very important for youth, and their need to experiment with drugs reflects this frustrated need to reach these levels of the mind in a supportive environment. I also refer to tribes that participate in sacred or ritualistic practices that regularly promote health through trance, death rebirth experiences, or natural relationship with realms that put them in touch with very deep layers of their psyche- realms of the mind not acknowledged by science where deep individual transformations are made, more transforming for an individual than anything psychiatry can offer from its armoury. Of these practices we are almost completely ignorant, neither are these practices in place. So I therefore said that this is disastrous for a societies mental well-being.

And yet we do not question why it is precisely in THIS culture that schizophrenia is so prevalent. I would say that it is because we, as a culture, not only generated a phantom, but misinterpreted what we generated and reacted to the misinterpretation! And that this reaction that is geared to eradicating observed powerful negative feelings is a reaction against our own phantom. And that there is, in fact, no such 'condition' as schizophrenia or a 'mental' illness. A pathological, or mechanical concept of mental processes has caused more grief than the concept we adopted in earlier ages called 'sin'. Every age has their dark prejudice. This one is peculiarly ours.

Replies:

Schizophrenia and gravity, two modern scientific myths, by Todd I. Stark (toddstark@aol.com), 12/27/00 "First images" claimed to be found of the impact of Schizophrenia on the brain, by Todd, 09/25/01 Re: Schizophrenia Brain Research, by Robert DePaolo, 02/12/02 Re:first imgA, by craig, 06/08/02 Re:first imgA, by craig, 06/08/02 Re:Schizophrenia and gravity, two modern scientific myths, by Monica, 06/23/02 Heritability and mental illness (long), by Todd, 06/28/02 Re:Schizophrenia and gravity, two modern scientific myths, by anonymous, 04/12/03 Culture and the origins of illness, by Todd I. Stark (toddstark@aol.com), 12/27/00 Re:Modern myths, by James Le Lievre (Australia), 09/16/03

| Behavior OnLine Home Page | Disclaimer |

Copyright © 1996-2004 Behavior OnLine, Inc. All rights reserved.