Sanity is a cozy Lie: From the perspective of R.D. Laing In his book ‘The Divided Self’ , R.D Laing aims to make ‘madness and the process of going mad understandable.’ While doing so, he puts sanity and madness on the same spectrum. He articulates that the degree of sanity or madness is dependent upon the relationship between the two parties. Understanding sanity in such a construct, the concept of sanity itself can be questioned. This paper substantiates that sanity is merely a façade by analyzing Laing’s text, ‘The existential-phenomenological foundations of understanding psychosis.’ R.D Laing wrote extensively on mental illness, and through his writings, his aversion towards psychopathology could be easily sensed.
The socio-cultural approach to psychological disorders examines the cultural and sociological pressures on an individual and how they affect them. Societies often have expectations and standards that individuals are expected to adhere to. Sociocultural therapist look to examine how the rules and expectations of groups of peoples effect its members. Failing to meet these standards can result in depression. A study by Kara L. Kerr looked into the socio-cultural influences of body image and the effects it had on adolescent females and depression.
(1999). Reciprocal limbic-cortical function and negative mood: converging PET findings in depression and normal sadness. Am. J.Psychiatry 156, 675–682. 8) Seminowicz, D.A., Mayberg, H.S., McIntosh, A.R., Goldapple, K.K.,Kennedy, S., Segal, Z., and Rafi-Tari, S. (2004).
This research is essentially guided by the psychoanalytic concepts of Abjection and The Uncanny propounded by Julia Kristeva (1982) and Sigmund Freud (1919) respectively. These concepts complement each other on the different analytical aspects of the texts under study. In some stages of the study, the analysis is reinforced by Propp (1968)’s narratological functions to examine the textual narrative processes that generate a horror world. An overview of these concepts is therefore necessary in order to understand how they relate to the texts the study is concerned with. The concept of abjection developed in Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection is a psychoanalytic concept that was brought forward by Julia Kristeva in 1980 in her analyses on the workings of the human body in contact with a dismal object or situation.
5. Paragraph 4: Prejudice through personality in Terkel A) Topic: Terkel shows us how personality can cause psychological prejudice through displaced
The movie Shutter Island is overwhelmingly filled with themes of mental health. Before moving into the content of this paper I would like to disclose this movie contains a false and melodramatic portrayal of mental illness, this is not an accurate representation of the field. The movie begins with Federal Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner traveling to a secluded island containing a mental facility for the criminally insane. They are supposedly there to investigate a missing patient, however, throughout the movie we see clips with signs and symptoms that point to Teddy’s own diagnosis of a mental disorder. That maybe Teddy isn’t exactly on the island for an investigation but has his own hidden secrets to uncover.
Stages of madness: comparing Augustine's and Jung's views This essay examines Augustine’s Confession and Jung’s The Structure of the Psyche of the stages of madness. Jung and Augustine wrote about the stages of human life. Jung consider the stages of human development from the very childhood to old age. He drew attention to the different behavior of a person in a certain stage of his life, changing his personality and gaining consciousness. He also analyzed the problems that are typical for a person at a certain time of his life.
In acute cases, liberalism produces a neurosis leading to psychosis, as reality finally slips away and internal defence mechanisms arise in an attempt to explain facts using subjective beliefs. Not surprisingly, psychosis has a direct correlation with depression and bi-polar disorder, prevalent among various social justice warrior groupings and little wonder that western liberal societies are the most heavily medicated in
Courtney Lopresti, in her article, “Why a Mental Health Misdiagnosis Can Be Dangerous,” goes into depth about how damaging a misdiagnosis can prove to be. One of her first points is that a misdiagnosis can lead to an incorrect prescription which could inevitably make the mental illness someone is suffering from so much worse. Lopresti gives the example of how mistaking someone who is bipolar from suffering from depression and putting them on antidepressants can exacerbate the illness, sending them into manic episodes. Another point she brings up is that therapy for a misdiagnosis can also prove to be harmful for patients. She uses the example of mistaking someone with OCD for someone with anxiety and how the encouragement for talking things out could worsen the obsessive behavior exhibited.
The prioritisation of meaning over behaviour forms the basis of understanding reactions and interpretations to situations, thus emotional disorders can be interpreted as a result of someone becoming ‘stuck’ in a continuum of negative situations and responses. In regards to depression (Beck, 1976) proposed what is known as the ‘negative cognitive triad’ relating to an irrational and pessimistic view of key elements of a persons belief system (e.g. a negative view of oneself, the world and the future). These are looked at from a cognitive perspective, examining how events or situations are experienced and how they emerge in the conscious and unconscious mind. Barker (2010) describes how mindfulness originates from Buddhist traditions that have been practiced over thousands of years and can be part of many traditional therapeutic approaches.