Posted by alexandra_k on October 1, 2006, at 19:44:27
In reply to Re: psychosis as a choice?, posted by Dinah on October 1, 2006, at 10:12:04
> That was written a long time before MRI's etc.
Yes. Before the success of pharmacology, in particular.
> Now they've got proof that the brains of schizophrenics are different than the brains of non-schizophrenics...
Well...
http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20060922/msgs/688958.html
One trouble is that the theorists involved have become known as part of the 'anti-psychiatry' movement. Another trouble is that the anti-psychiatry movement tends to get muddled up with the scientologists. When people are simplifying a theorists position (to summarise it to make it manageable) sometimes they don't give the fairest summary. It can be hard to grasp what theorists are thinking when they have a huge body of work too. And here, the *intentional paradigm* isn't just a simplistic summary of one person, it is a simplistic summary of a whole bunch of people. You end up with a fairly short statement of a theory but you may well have your work cut out for you if you wanted to establish that anyones considered opinion was that that was a fair statement of their views.
> What I've found is that many to most traits (illnesses if they're traits that prevent effective functioning) are genetic. But their expression (how they manifest themselves in actual behavior) in many cases has to do with environment.Yeah. The genes determine (or fix the probablility of) unfolding / maturation / development from within, and the environment (incl social env. and nutrition and cognition and stuff) fix unfolding / maturation / development from without...
> Chosen? I don't believe so
Though they allow the 'choice' can be unconscious. This idea fits well with how some symptoms were prevalent at certain times while some other symptoms are prevalent at certain other times. Hysterical paralysis (for example) was a frequent complain around the time of Freud and Bruer whereas it is very rarely encountered today. That suggests that there are different 'choices' as to how one expresses ones distress... Biology can't explain that one (symptom 'choice' in those cases). Maybe symptom 'selection' sounds better than symptom 'choice'?
> although I'm not a huge fan of the mainstream biological reductionism of today either.
Yeah.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:689710
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060926/msgs/690926.html