All manner of rhetorical flourishes and beautifully constructed phrases can pour out in a torrent. Often there is a magnetic quality to this verbal virtuosity, the meaning (semantics) of which can constitute a brilliantly creative flight of ideas. Beyond the grammar and meaning, the sheer musicality of it can elicit rapt fascination.
Forty-five years ago, while in my psychiatric residency, I moonlighted at DC General Hospital’s emergency room. I never knew ever knew who would come in the doors down there at the General. The “White House cases” were a staple, a motley collection of characters pulled off the fence surrounding the presidential residence. One evening is …
The genetics of mental illness, and particularly schizophrenia, is fraught with the history of the eugenics movement in the 1920’s and 30’s. In 1928 twenty states had compulsory sterilization laws, most including “lunatics” among the target population. This popular movement was based on the assumption that mental illnesses are caused by a small number of …
“WORKROOM” Bethlem Royal Hospital of London (1860) founded 1330 … you find yourself in a long and wide gallery, on either side of which are a large number of little cells where lunatics of every description are shut up, and you can get a sight of these poor creatures, little windows being let into the …
Below is the conclusion of a scholarly review of the association between violence and dissociation (similar to blackouts). The author found studies ranging from 10 to 49% correlation between the two. It describes how blackouts can lead to violence as well as the other way round. From: Dissociation and Violence: A Review of the Literature …
From Addiction Professional: “Take blackouts seriously” by Donal F. Sweeney, MD, FACP, FASAM, July 15, 2011: Long neglected and misunderstood, the alcohol blackout is now being recognized as a serious medical condition worthy of clinical treatment. Blackouts are as old as the grape and as common as swizzle sticks, yet until recently they were considered …
Second post in a series starting with previous post. Mental illness all in your genes? Think again. A major study by the Brainstorm Consortium comprised of hundreds of investigators over the course of five years was published in the June 22, 2018 issue of Science and entitled, “Analysis of shared heritability in common disorders of …
Passages from my current project entitled Evolutionary Psychoanalysis: Preface This book is written for those who care for and about the mentally ill. That includes psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, social workers, and psychiatric nurses. I am particularly eager for those in training to read it, as your attitudes toward the mentally ill are in the process …
With two high-profile suicides in the news, it is timely to discuss the inner experience of the most lethal form of depression. Seeking escape from an intense feeling of entrapment is intrinsic to melancholic depression, among the most dreaded of all mental illnesses. Aptly named by Hippocrates, melancholia means “black bile,” a potent metaphor for …
I practiced psychiatry during the period in which the paradigm of the mind shifted from the perspective of how it is experienced from the inside (i.e.: phenomenology, mainly psychoanalytic theory) to the examination of how it works from the outside, i.e.: neurochemistry, genetics, and cognitions. The impact of Prozac on this shift cannot be exaggerated. …
After drafting sections of an essay in the blog, it was finally published in the Montreal Review and can be seen by clicking here. This is the cover letter I sent: For many years the political right has implicitly drawn on the authority of Darwin’s paradigm of life as a struggle for fitness to support …
Third in series: click for first or second (two more coming) I entered the field of psychiatry forty-seven years ago imbued by Jung’s theory of a collective unconscious. Jung felt that Freud’s concept of his superego was an attempt to make the collective unconscious personal instead of “universal and deeply historical.” As I began to think …
In Yuval Harari’s widely acclaimed book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind (2015) he makes this sweeping statement: “The most important thing to know about prehistoric humans is that they were insignificant animals with no more impact on their environment than gorillas, fireflies or jellyfish.” He then makes the case that the event that catapulted …
There is plenty to be outraged about in the crude bigotry of our president, but it is little noted that, when he throws around epithets like “psycho,” he is denigrating the mentally ill. Do you or someone you love suffer from “major” depression, panic disorder, schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder? I am a psychiatrist and have …
BACK COVER OF THE BOOK The Ascension of the Human Spirit (excerpt) The remarkable aspect of evolution by sexual selection, which Darwin so courageously proposed, is that it is driven merely by the desire for a trait, in this case the desire for justice. I had realized that sexual selection is not only driven by …
Look at the back of a one-dollar bill. On the left, you will see a pyramid with the “eye of providence” at the apex. Above this image are the two words Annuit Coeptis, meaning “He approves [or has approved] [our] undertaking,” and below it are three more words, Novus Ordo Seclorum, meaning “New Order of …
A glaring weakness of the agenda of the political left is that social justice does not appear to be rooted in the flesh and blood of human nature. The two most influential thinkers on our attitudes about what makes us tick are Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud: we are ape-men who when psychoanalyzed are revealed …
I have chronicled how in my study of clinical depression I gradually came to the conclusion that the basic mechanism of all major mental illnesses is similar to cancer in that it represents the escape from regulation into unrestrained pathological hyperactivity. In cancer, the hyperactivity is the growth of cancer cells; in mental illness, it …
Andrew Solomon, after reading Old Mind, New Mind sent me these two sentences: In this breathtakingly original book, John Wylie proposes a new theory of mind, one that reconciles evolutionary biology with psychodynamics. This is a great endeavor of the intellect and a deep review of consciousness itself. In this post, I return the compliment. …
I recently got a note from someone about Old Mind, New Mind who has suffered from mental illness. As soon as he found out that the book was about the relationship between mental illness and human evolution, he assumed that I thought that mental illnesses are adaptive in some way and expressed his reservations about …
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