A Liberal Awakening - Part III

Human Nature – Part III: The Evolution of the Invisible Hand

Filed under: Evolution of Emotion, Evolutionary psychology, Justice, Mental illness

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 …

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What we caught from Neandertals

SAD is an STD (and we caught it from the Neandertals!)

Filed under: Mental illness

major mental illnesses are an epiphenomenon—or “side effect”—of the major adaptation that bestowed upon us the miraculous capacities of reflective self-consciousness and the deep complexity of syntactical language that has enabled our rich symbolic culture. Therefore we should look at the mentally ill as paying the price for our extraordinary capacities.

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The Stigma of Mental Illness

Filed under: Uncategorized

In the course of my wife’s rising career in the administration of a university, I was placed in the position of being the chatty spouse of an increasingly important player in the state politics that is part of a large public university. One of the main venues was the president’s box at football games, to …

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Philosophical Journey – Discovering the Mystery of Creation in the Mind – a memoir; #6: Schizophrenia, Group Beliefs, and the Chasm of Politics

Filed under: Belief, Group Selection, Summary of Philosophy

Schizophrenia is the most mysterious major illness in all of medicine, made all the more fascinating to me because my own family’s secret was an afflicted aunt who had been banished to a sanatorium for her entire life. In a small room in the mortuary, I spend a half hour with her corpse meditating upon …

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Schizophrenia and Normal Communication from Our Groups (eg: cable news)

Filed under: Emotional Fossils, Evolution of Emotion, Evolutionary psychology, Group Selection

First and foremost, as stated above, the diagnosis of Schizophrenia is made when the patient reports that their thoughts are perceived as deriving from an external source.  As well as the emotional turmoil created by this strangest of experiences, I came to the conclusion that the other dramatic symptom associated with Schizophrenia, hearing voices, was …

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Emotional Fossils III – The Sacred Disease

Filed under: Belief, Emotional Fossils, Evolution of Emotion, Evolutionary psychology | 5 Comments

In Hippocrates’ time, epilepsy was known as the sacred disease, because it was if the gods had seized the patient’s body.  Schizophrenia could have also been called a sacred disease, because it is as if the gods have seized the patient’s mind.  The most central symptom in Schizophrenia is the unshakable belief that an external …

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