Embracing the Flames

Afghanistan, a country that is primarily located at the centre of Asia is also considered as one of the most dangerous countries of the world after decades of wars that have ravaged this once-beautiful country. It is also one of the countries of the world where a large number of women burn themselves to death. In 2010 there were about 22,000 burn cases that were recorded in the hospitals acrossAfghanistan according to Ms. Suray Dalil, the acting minister for health ofAfghanistan. Among them, 2,000 people were admitted to the hospitals as in patients - thereby pointing to the serious nature of the injuries. Naming several top notch hospitals in the Capital Kabul and Herat, Ms Dalil said that about 234 people had died there in the year 2010. The beginning of 2011 was welcomed inAfghanistan by 850 patients being treated for burns in the first 5 months.

The number of women who resort to self immolation is shockingly high. Various cases are brought to the hospitals where women are severely burnt. Until recently, majority of such cases were heard in the western Heart province near the border with Iran. However this issue is increasingly becoming national, than a regional one. Some women are treated in the hospital for burnt feet, inflicted by spilling hot water on them. Some others burn themselves by lighting an oil lamp, and yet another burnt herself by falling against a hot water heater. Now the crucial question which arises is why such hideous acts are committed.  These acts are committed by women who are the victims of domestic violence and other forms of abuse. The outcomes of these acts are often fatal.

What is ironical, is that majority of the population of Afghanistan are followers of Islam. The Islamic religion preaches that all males and females are to be treated alike in all the spheres of life. About 1400 years ago Islam preached that women too, like men must be given rights to vote and are all equal before god. Women too must be given various rights such as the right to inheritance, right to work and even right to choose their own life partners. However despite what their religion preaches the women of Afghanistan have not been able to enjoy these rights for centuries now. Afghanistan witnessed the rule of the Taliban for a brief period between 1996 and 2001. The condition of the women during that time was deplorable. They were denied the basic rights and ill treated to a very large extent. They were forbidden to work or even leave their houses without a male be it a brother or husband. They were ordered to cover themselves from head to toe including their eyes. They were even forbiddened from consulting male doctors during times of illnesses. Women who held prestigious positions and were doctors or teachers had to soon give up their professions and found themselves on the streets either as beggars or some even as prostitutes in order to feed their families. After the fall of The Taliban rule in Afghanistan many people have agreed that the condition of the country especially in relation to the condition of women has improved. Women have been allowed to go back to work and they are no longer forced to wear the burqua to cover their body. However despite all these changes which seem to have been made for the better still many challenges remain whose solutions are yet to be found. Women are still being denied certain rights in the rural areas where the male members do not allow their wives, sisters and mothers to take part in the public life. They are still being forced into marriages. In many parts of the country, girls are still being denied of education and many schools for girls have been burnt down. Cases are known where girls have been poisoned to death for daring to go to school. Many a time young girls who still adolescents or teenagers are married to men who are about 40. Even such young girls are not spared from sinister remarks that are thrown at them and are beaten ruthlessly by their husbands for no fault of theirs. Men are who are addictive to drugs often beat their wives because they do not have enough money to buy heroin. It seems that most men find their wives only as a tool for ventilating their anger. Women are invariably blamed by their husbands when things go wrong – when the crops fail, when a child falls ill, women are invariably made the scapegoats and are punished often ferociously. All these factors have forced many women to end their repressed life by setting themselves on fire. 

A recent study has shown that in most of the cases women burn themselves as a result of domestic violence or because they have voiced their thoughts that challenge the authority of men and have been punished severely. The women who survive after trying to kill themselves in the scorching flames state that they did not intentionally try to kill themselves. Most of them state that the accident occurred when they were cooking. They are very often threatened by the family members to not say anything to the outside world that would put their family name to disgrace. In such cases the only way that a woman can survive without telling anyone her miseries is to not survive at all. The main problem that seems to arise is that the law of Islam is left to be interpreted by the people. Most of the women are staunch believers and followers of Islam but they end up as the ultimate victim of the very same religion. It is highly ironical that a religion that preaches equality and brotherhood and equal respect to men and women is interpreted by the people in the very opposite sense.

However it is sad and unfortunate to see that it is not only Afghanistan which alone witnesses abuse on women and make them seem trifle. These acts of crime happen much closer home too. For instance, Punjab, which is one of the richest states in India, witnessed a horrible and heart wrenching abuse on a woman named Mukhtaran Mai in the year 2002. In the village of Meerwala the Panchayat falsely accused her 12 year old brother having an affair with a woman who belonged to a higher cast. In order to punish him the elders of the village ordered the accused sister Mukhtaran to be raped. As 100 people watched this horrific scene where four men dragged her screaming through a cotton field. They finally pushed her into a mud walled house and assaulted her for more than an hour- all for mo fault of hers. Jharkand, another state in the Indian subcontinent witnessed the torture of Ramani Devi after being branded a witch by the so called “witch doctors”.  In Ghana when crops fail or children die of mysterious illness the people suspect witchcraft and as a result many women have lost their lives owing to false beliefs.

In Guatemala, a country in Central America, men can escape rape charges if he marries his victim if she is above the age of 12. A wife who is beaten by her husband can prosecute against him only if the wounds that are caused by the beating are visible for more than ten days. In the same country, girls and women have been found with insults carved into their flesh and bodies of young girls and women have been found badly mutilated, raped murdered beheaded and dumped on the roadside. In Gujranwala, which is about 135 km from Islamabad, mob threw petrol bombs at women runners who were participating in a marathon which was taking place because they were running along with men.

Apart from these countries a few well developed and industrialized nations are also witnessing abuses and torture that women have to bear. For example- The fundamental Christians in USA, Muslims in the UK and Europe, certain Ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel, and Catholics in Ireland also ill treat women in various ways.    

 As Khaled Hosseni has rightly mentioned in his highly acclaimed novel “ A Thousand Splendid Suns”- “ Like the needle of a compass always points towards the North, a man’s accusing finger always points towards a woman.” Hosseni's prophetic words ring true not only in Afghanistan but in several other countries as well. 

The Cave of Swimmers, Egypt, 8000 years ago

விளக்கத்துடன் சிவபுராணம்

மறை நீர் (Virtual water)

What is Virtual Water?

Virtual water is defined as the total volume of water needed to produce and process a commodity or service.

For example, it is estimated that 1700 litres of water are required to create 500g of riceIn early 1990s the water footprint concept was introduced, also referred to as 'embedded water'. 

Traditionally water use has been calculated adding the withdrawals of domestic, agricultural and industrial sectors of a country.This however does not give a true indication of the water actually needed by the population in relation to their Professor Tony Allen was awarded the Stockholm Water Prize in 2008, for his unique, pioneering and long lasting work in education and raising the international awareness of interdisciplinary relationships between agricultural production, water use, economies and political processes.consumption pattern. 

There are 2 types of virtual/embedded water:

Blue water - the surface water in our rivers, lakes and in the ground (aquifers)

Green water - water hidden in soils, and is often not recognised and valued. Green water is estimated to enable 85% of the world's crops to grow.

.பாட்டிலில் அடைக்கப்பட்ட சுத்திகரிக்கப்பட்ட ஒரு லிட்ட.ர் குடிநீரின் சராசரி விலை ரூ.20. தமிழகத்தில் சுத்திகரிக்கப்பட்ட அம்மா மலிவு விலை குடிநீரின் விலை ரூ.10. இது நமக்கு தெரியும். ஆனால், எத்தனைப் பேருக்கு மறை நீர் (Virtual water) விலை தெரியும்?

மறை நீர் என்பது ஒருவகை பொருளாதாரம். மொத்த உள்நாட்டு உற்பத்தியை (Gross domestic product) ஒரு நாட்டின் பணத்தைக் கொண்டு மதிப்பிடுவதுபோல ஒரு நாட்டின் நீர் வளத்தை கொண்டு மதிப்பிடும் தண்ணீர் பொருளாதாரம் இது. இதை கண்டுபிடித்தவர் இங்கிலாந்தை சேர்ந்த பொருளாதார வல்லுநர் ஜான் ஆண்டனி ஆலன். இந்த கண்டுபிடிப்புக்காக ‘ஸ்டாக்ஹோம் வாட்டர் -2008’ விருது பெற்றவர்.

ஒரு பொருளுக்குள் மறைந்திருக்கும் கண்ணுக்கு தெரியாத நீர் - இதுவே மறை நீர். இது ஒரு தத்துவம், பொருளாதாரம். ஒரு மெட்ரிக் டன் கோதுமை 1,600 கியூபிக் மீட்டர் தண்ணீருக்கு சமம் என்கிறது மறைநீர் தத்துவம். மறை நீர் என்பதற்கு ஆலன் தரும் விளக்கம், “கோதுமை தானியத்தை விளைவிக்க நீர் தேவை. ஆனால், அது விளைந்தவுடன் அதை உருவாக்கப் பயன்பட்ட நீர் அதில் இல்லை. ஆனால், அந்த நீர், கோதுமை தானியங்களுக்காகத்தானே செலவிடப்பட்டிருக்கிறது அல்லது மறைந்திருக்கிறது. இதுவே மறை நீர். கோதுமை தேவை அதிகம் இருக்கும் ஒரு நாடு, ஒரு மெட்ரிக் டன் கோதுமையை இறக்குமதி செய்யும்போது, அந்த நாடு 1,600 கியூபிக் மீட்டர் அளவுக்குத் தனது நாட்டின் நீரைச் சேமித்துக்கொள்கிறது'' என்கிறார் ஆலன்.

புத்திசாலி நாடுகள்!

நீரின் தேவையையும் பொருளின் தேவையையும் துல்லியமாக ஆய்வுசெய்து அதற்கு ஏற்ப உற்பத்தி, ஏற்றுமதி, இறக்குமதி கொள்கைகளை வகுக்க வேண்டும். சீனா, இஸ்ரேல் மற்றும் சில ஐரோப்பிய நாடுகள் அப்படித்தான் செய்கின்றன. சீனாவின் பிரதான உணவு பன்றி இறைச்சி. ஒரு கிலோ பன்றி இறைச்சி உற்பத்திக்கான மறை நீர் தேவை 5,988 லிட்டர். அதனால், சீனாவில் பன்றி உற்பத்திக்கு கெடுபிடி அதிகம். ஆனால், தாராளமாக இறக்குமதி செய்துகொள்ளலாம். ஒரு கிலோ ஆரஞ்சுக்கான மறை நீர் தேவை 560 லிட்டர். சொட்டு நீர் பாசனத்தில் கோலோச்சும் இஸ்ரேலில் ஆரஞ்சு உற்பத்தி மற்றும் ஏற்றுமதிக்கு கெடுபிடிகள் அதிகம். இவ்விரு நாடுகளும் ஒவ்வொரு பொருளுக்குமான மறை நீர் தேவையைத் துல்லியமாகக் கணக்கிட்டு அதன்படி ஏற்றுமதி, இறக்குமதி கொள்கைகளை வகுத்துள்ளன.

இது இந்திய நிலவரம்!

முட்டை உற்பத்தியில் இந்தியாவில் முதலிடம் வகிக்கிறது மகாராஷ்டிரம். நாமக்கல்லுக்கு இரண்டாவது இடம். நாமக்கல்லில் ஒரு நாளைக்கு மூன்று கோடி முட்டைகள் உற்பத்தி செய்யப்படுகின்றன. அதில் 70 லட்சம் முட்டைகள் தினசரி வளைகுடா நாடுகள், ஆப்பிரிக்கா மற்றும் ஐரோப்பா நாடுகளுக்கு ஏற்றுமதியாகின்றன. இதன் மூலம் ஆண்டுக்கு 4.80 கோடி டாலர்கள் அன்னிய செலவாணி கிடைக்கிறது.

மூன்று ரூபாய் முட்டைக்கு 196 லிட்டர் மறை நீர்

வளைகுடா மற்றும் ஆப்பிரிக்க நாடுகள் தண்ணீர் பற்றாக்குறை கொண்டவை. ஐரோப்பிய நாடுகள் மறைநீர் தத்துவத்தைப் பின்பற்றுபவை என்பதை இங்கு கவனிக்க வேண்டும். சரி, சராசரியாக 60 கிராம் கொண்ட ஒரு முட்டையை உற்பத்தி செய்ய 196 லிட்டர் மறை நீர் தேவை. மூன்று ரூபாய் முட்டை 196 லிட்டர் தண்ணீரின் குறைந்தபட்ச விலைக்குச் சமம் என்பது எந்த ஊர் நியாயம்?முட்டையினுள் இருக்கும் ஒரு கிராம் புரோட்டீனுக்கு 29 லிட்டர் மறை நீர் தேவை. ஒரு கிலோ பிராய்லர் கோழிக் கறி உற்பத்திக்கான மறை நீர் தேவை 4325 லிட்டர்.

சென்னை கதைக்கு வருவோம். பன்னாட்டு நிறுவனங்கள் இங்கு ஆண்டுக்கு லட்சக்கணக்கான கார்களைத் தயாரித்து அவர்கள் நாடு உட்பட வெளிநாடுகளுக்கு ஏற்றுமதி செய்கின்றன. ஏன்? அவர்களின் நாடுகளில் அவற்றை உற்பத்தி செய்ய முடியாதா? இடம்தான் இல்லையா? உண்டு. இங்கு மனித சக்திக்கு குறைந்த செலவு என்றால், நீர்வளத்துக்கு செலவே இல்லை. 1.1 டன் எடை கொண்ட ஒரு கார் உற்பத்திக்கான மறை நீர் தேவை நான்கு லட்சம் லிட்டர்கள்.

இந்தியாவில் இருந்து ஏற்றுமதி செய்யப்படும் தோல் பொருட்களில் 72 % வேலூர் மாவட்டத்தில் இருந்தே ஏற்றுமதி செய்யப்படுகின்றன. இந்தியாவில் 2013-14-ம் ஆண்டில் தோல் பொருட்கள் ஏற்றுமதிக்கு 850 கோடி டாலருக்கு இலக்கு நிர்ணயிக்கப்பட்டுள்ளது. தமிழகத்திலிருந்து ஆண்டுக்கு சராசரியாக 5,500 கோடி ரூபாய்க்கு தோல் பொருட்கள் ஏற்றுமதியாகின்றன.

அன்னிய செலவாணி வருவாய் ஆண்டுக்கு சுமார் 10,000 கோடி ரூபாய். ஒரு எருமை அல்லது மாட்டின் ஆயுள்கால மறை நீர் தேவை 18,90,000 லிட்டர். 250 கிலோ கொண்ட அக்கால்நடையில் இருந்து ஆறு கிலோ தோல் கிடைக்கும்.

ஒரு கிலோ தோலை பதனிட்டு அதனை செருப்பாகவோ கைப்பையாகவோ தயாரிக்க 17,000 லிட்டர் மறை நீர் தேவை.

பனியன், ஜட்டி உற்பத்தியில் முதலிடம் திருப்பூருக்கு. ராக்கெட் தயாரிக்கும் வல்லரசுகளுக்கு ஜட்டி தயாரிக்க தெரியாதா? 250 கிராம் பருத்தி உற்பத்திக்கான மறை நீர் தேவை 2495 லிட்டர்கள். ஒரு ஜீன்ஸ் பேண்ட் தயாரிக்க 10,000 லிட்டர் மறை நீர் தேவை.

தண்ணீருக்கு எங்கு கணக்கு?

ஒரு பொருளின் விலை என்பது அதன் எல்லா செலவுகளையும் உள்ளடக்கியதுதானே? அப்படி எனில், பெரும் நிறுவனங்கள் எல்லாம் தண்ணீருக்கு மட்டும் ஏன் அதன் விலையை செலவுக் கணக்கில் சேர்ப்பது இல்லை. ஏனெனில், நம்மிடம் இருந்து இலவசமாகத் தண்ணீரைச் சுரண்டி நமக்கே கொள்ளை விலையில் பொருட்களை விற்கின்றன அந்நிறுவனங்கள்.

இப்படி எல்லாம் முட்டையில் தொடங்கி கார் வரைக்கும் கணக்கு பார்த்தால் நாட்டின் வளர்ச்சி என்னவாவது? நாம் என்ன கற்காலத்திலா இருக்கிறோம் என்கிற கேள்விகள் எழாமல் இல்லை. கண்ணை மூடிக்கொண்டு பொத்தாம்பொதுவாய் ஏற்றுமதி, இறக்குமதி செய்ய வேண்டாம் என்கிறது மறை நீர் பொருளாதாரம்.

மறை நீருக்கு மதிப்பு கொடுத்திருந்தால் உலகின் பணக்காரர்களிடம் பட்டியலில் என்றோ இடம் பிடித்திருப்பான் இந்திய விவசாயி. இனியாவது இந்திய அரசு மறை நீர் தத்துவத்தை உணர வேண்டும்.

India's Missing Girls

The number of girls who are being aborted in India is equal to the total number of girls born in the United Kingdom. In India, approximately a total number of 30 million to 70 million girls are being aborted every year. The total number of girls born are significantly reducing due to Sex Selective abortion and the sex imbalance has been aggravated by higher mortality rates as boys receive better care. A recent report by the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF) has shown that about 50 million girls and women are missing from India'spopulation due to the gender discrimination that is still practiced in India. In most of the countries in the world there are approximately 105 female births for about 100 male births. However, in India there are about less than 93 female births for 100 male births in the population.The 2011 Census results were received with shock in India as the results showed a sharp decline in the female to male sex ratio. This alarmingly growing gap has been attributed to the doctors and commercial interests who sell ultrasound machines; both make huge amounts of profits from the illegal sex selection procedures. Many of the diagnostic teams who use ultrasound scanners for determining the sex of the fetus advertise using shrewd catchy slogans such as “Spend Rs 6000 now and save Rs 50,000 thousand later on” in order to show that the parents can find out the sex of their child and save themselves from emptying their pockets in giving dowry during their daughters marriage. According to a study carried out by Sonia Bhalotra from the centre for market and public organization (CMPO) at the Bristol University, the cost of conducting an ultrasound scan is about 10 euros which is a small amount relative to the amount which has to be given as dowry by the girls family.

All the above mentioned mentioned facts and figures would be shocking for most of the people. The very vagueness of the figures itself shows how poorly the whole phenomenon is misunderstood. Seldom do we find people who are aware of this great misfortune that is happening in the very country that we live in. We all take great pride in telling that our country is a developing country and very often we compare India with the major countries in the globe. Despite all the evidences which are mentioned in the paragraph above which very clearly shows that there certainly is an alarming fall in the female births in India, many within the country are not ready to accept this fact and discredit it by stating that such reports are brought out only to make India seem inferior among the comity of nations. In fact, the study that was carried out by the UNICEF has been criticized by the Indian Medical Association for “utilizing outdated data and for deliberately demonizing Indians for the purpose of politics”.

It has been known that there is a tendency to abort female children in India since the first Census which was carried out on 1871. Even though the Pre Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act was passed by the Indian Government in the year 1996, the government's attempt in tackling the issue by proscribing ultrasound scan that identify the sex of a fetus has been in vain.

A large number of reasons can be attributed as to why this inhuman practice is still practiced largely in many parts of India even today. Even now in many parts of India, sons are considered as the real bread winners of the family and they are called upon to provide the income for the families. On the other hand in many rural parts of India, girls are denied education as it is felt that education is of no use to them and their entire existence is confined to the four walls of the house and in the performance of household chores and later on, merely taking care of the husband and the children. The second reason is that the dowry system is still practiced to a very large extent in many parts of India where the girl's family has to provide payment in cash or in kind to the bridegroom's family. This is probably one of the biggest reasons as to why people resort to sex selective abortions. Further more, in a typical Indian society the entire expenses of conducting a marriage is borne by the girls family. So in a poor family, most of the hard earned money is spent in getting the daughter married along with the dowry that is paid. During old age the parents usually stay with their sons rather than their daughters as it is assumed that the sons can support them as they earn the income for the family in contrast to the daughter who is considered to live off her husbands income having no financial independence.

Year	1972	1975	1980	1985	1990	1995	2000	2003	2007	2010
Number of abortions reported	24300	214197	388405	583704	581215	570914	723142	1229937	1895721	2529979

Now the shocking news is that recent studies have shown that it is the rich and the higher classes of the society rather than the poorer sections who are seen practicing this inhuman deed. This indeed challenges the assumptions that the practice is driven by traditional thoughts or poverty. The 2001 census results in Punjab one of the richest states of India has shown that there were 125 boys per 100 girls in the 0-6 age groups. The predominant pattern is to use sex selection not for the first child but for subsequent children; the ideal seems to be two sons and one daughter. Shocking as the results are, it is interesting to note that it is the more educated people who practice this as it is very well understood that the more educated you are the more likely it is for one to understand the evil consequences of practicing female infanticide.

All that is said about the drawbacks and the burden of having female child the continuation of practicing this deed will have disastrous consequences. For instance, in future it will be extremely difficult for a family to find a bride for their sons due to shortage of females. Hence people would have to resort to the old custom of sharing wives as was done by the Pandavas in the Mahabharata. Very often, while aborting girl children people tend to forget that girls are required to give birth to children!

We always wish to view our country as a superpower and among the most developed countries of the world. However, this dream, can only become a reality if we are successful in eliminating social evils such as female infanticide and save more lives. Some effective tools which can be used to promote awareness about the dangers of Female infanticide would be carrying out effective campaigns and catchy advertisements to prevent female abortions. And, strict penalties for those who indulge or abet this crime. India is certainly making some amount of progress in trying to spread awareness and put an end to female infanticide however this process needs to speed up and it requires the effective participation of the citizens.

So let us all join hands and help our country take a step forward in the area of development by saving millions of lives and make Female abortion a history that is never to be repeated again.

Most Beautiful Betta Fishes

Are “Mental Illnesses” Really Potentially Helpful Tools?

If your behavior, thoughts, or feelings become a concern, for a fee, many psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers are eager to translate your experiences into a language of symptoms, diagnoses, psychopathology, and mental illness. In earlier posts I provided negative criticism about this type of name-calling from several different angles ((see here, here, here, here and here).  Today, we focus in on an additional problem with the pathologizing approach.

Psychiatric Name-Calling Simplistically Devalues What William James Referred to as “Exceptional Experiences”

Tools can be used for good or evil.  A hammer can be used to drive in nails in the construction of a life-preserving shelter or to bludgeon an innocent person to death. A car can be used to rush a child to an emergency room so that life-preserving treatment can be administered, or it can be used to tragically end a prom night. Are experiences that are oftentimes referred to as pathological really tools, and is it up to each one of us to use them either for good or evil?

William James

The first time I came across this question occurred while reading about William James’s 1896 series of lectures on “Exceptional Mental States.”  Harvard psychologist, Eugene Taylor, had reconstructed these lectures from James’s original handwritten lecture notes, newspaper reports, letters, and a variety of other sources.

At the very beginning of the lectures, James argues that experiences that are commonly viewed as unhealthy or morbid are really “an essential part of every character,” and give life “a truer sense of values.” To support his contention, James first provides three examples of famous individuals who suffered from melancholy, a term that corresponds closely with what modern pathologizers call “major depressive disorder.” St. Paul, the religious figure of the New Testament, Cesare Lombrosa, a late 19th-century Italian criminologist, and Immanual Kant, the 18th-century German philosopher, became, according to their histories, better as a result of their troubling experiences.

Not only is melancholy far more normal and potentially beneficial than the pathologizers would like us to believe, so too, James argues, are delusions and hallucinations. James tells us that the belief in the possession by demons, which is often viewed as a delusion by pathologizers, is remarkably common. “[It] is the one most articulately expressed doctrine of both Testaments, and . . . reined for seventeen hundred years, hardly challenged in churches.”

James then goes on to tell his audience about Buddhist sects in Japan that have priests who believe they can put themselves into a trance so that a god can speak through them. These people seek to cultivate these experiences, apparently believing that they provide some benefits to their sect.

Although hallucinations can be construed as a symptom of mental illness to some, James presents the case of Socrates who “once stood motionless for many hours in the cold and spoke of having a guiding demon.” Attempting to counter the association between pathologies and hallucinations, James states,

Even if this demon [of Socrates] were really meant hallucinations of hearing, we know now that one in eight or ten of the population has had such an experience and that for insanity we must resort to other tests than these.

Like melancholy, delusions, and hallucinations, the “symptoms” of obsessions and manias are treated in James’s lectures as experiences that are normal and potentially beneficial. Thus, James states that there is no end to the possible types of obsessions that we see all around us. And what about “the anti-slavery mania?” Is this to be viewed as pathological? What benefit can such experiences have? James tells his audience about Henry Borg, founder of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; Charles Henry Parkhurst, a Presbyterian clergyman and reformer who launched a furious attack on organized crime in state government that led to an official investigation; Dorothea Dix, a mid-19th-century humanitarian who visited the insane asylums and successfully advocated for legislation to improve the care for those now labeled mentally ill; General Booth, founder of the Salvation Army; Frances Willard, a suffragette; and others. “These persons,” said James, “are not insane, not maniacs, not melancholics, not deluded.”

Later, he states, “Individuals are types of themselves and enslavement to conventional names and their associations is only too apt to blind the student to the facts before him.”

As Taylor (1984) closes his reconstruction of the lecture series, he quotes James as follows:

There is a strong tendency among these pathological writers I have cited… to represent the line of mental health as a very narrow crack, which one must tread with bated breath, between foul friends on the one side and gulfs of despair on the other. Now health is a term of subjective appreciation, not of objective description….There is no purely objective standard of sound health. Any peculiarity that is of use to a man is a point of soundness in him, and what makes a man sound for one function may make him unsound for another…. The trouble is that such writers . . . use the descriptive names of symptoms merely as an artifice for giving objective authority to their personal dislikes. The medical terms become mere appreciative clubs to knock a man down with. . . . The only sort of being, in fact, who can remain as the typical normal man, after all the individuals with degenerative symptoms have been rejected, must be a perfect nullity . . . Who shall absolutely say that the morbid has no revelations about the meaning of life? That the healthy minded view so-called is all?

William James and the Leo Tolstoy Example

A few years after this series of lectures, James wrote one of his classic works, The Varieties of Religious Experience.  There he tells us about the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy’s 2-year period of despair.

Leo Tolstoy

In his painfully personal book, My Confession, Tolstoy relates how, at about the age of 50, his life had become “flat, more than flat: dead.”

I felt that something had broken within me on which my life had always rested, that I had nothing left to hold on to, and that morally my life had stopped. An invincible force impelled me to get rid of my existence, in one way or another…. Behold me then … hiding the rope in order not to hang myself from the rafters of the room where every night I went to sleep alone; behold me no longer going shooting, lest I should yield to the too easy temptation of putting an end to myself with my gun.

All of this took place at a time when Tolstoy’s outer circumstances seemed excellent.

I had a good wife who loved me and whom I loved; good children and a largeproperty which was increasing with no pains taken on my part. I was morerespected by my kinsfolk and acquaintances than I had ever been; I was loaded with praise by strangers; and without exaggeration I could believe my name already famous.

Tolstoy goes on to explain how his melancholy stimulated a gnawing questioning that eventually led to one insight after another. His trouble had not been with life in general, not with the common life of common men, but with the life of the upper, intellectual, artistic classes, the life that he had personally always led, the cerebral life, the life of conventionality, artificiality, and personal ambition. He had lived wrongly and had to change. Then, one day in early spring, while he was alone in the forest listening to its mysterious noises, he was filled with a sense of deeper meaning. “After that,” he wrote, “things cleared up within me and about me better than ever, and the light has never wholly died away.”  According to Tolstoy, his suicidal feelings disappeared, and he went on to live a productive life until he passed away at the age of 82 of natural causes.

Now, as we look over the information provided, much of it in Tolstoy’s own words, we see that no pathology words are used, and yet we have enough detail to get a pretty clear picture of Tolstoy’s experience.

When James uses a brief phrase to refer to Tolstoy’s experience, he chooses “an attack of melancholy,” rather than “mental illness.” Melancholy serves us well. It is an experience that is familiar to us all. To me, it evokes the beautiful words from the Joni Mitchell song “Hejira”:

Joni Mitchell

There’s comfort in melancholy where there’s no need to explain. It’s just as natural as the weather in this moody sky today.

In our Tolstoy example, his melancholy appeared at first to come on him as if out of the blue. Later, Tolstoy came to understand it as having been due to living wrongly. Only by questioning deeply and repeatedly the meaning of his despair did he come to this understanding.  Thus, Tolstoy’s experience, it seems to me, is far more aptly construed as a tool for personal growth than a mental illness.

The Review of the Evidence

Robert Whitaker

It may seem a fanciful theory that the experiences now referred to as mental illnesses can be potentially helpful.  However, in 2010, Robert Whitaker published a book titled Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness. To write the book, he pored through the scientific literature for the past 50 years and found a dramatic increase in the number of people who are pathologized, which led to an astonishing increase in psychiatric drug consumption.  And more people then ever before became disabled for longer and longer periods of time.

Here is just one of many such studies that Whitaker describes.

In the 1980s, Martin Harrow, a psychologist at the University of Illinois, began a long-term study of 64 newly diagnosed schizophrenia patients. Every few years, he assessed how they were doing. Were they symptomatic? In recovery? Employed? Were they taking antipsychotic medications? The collective fate of the off-med and medicated patients began to diverge after two years, and by the end of 4.5 years, it was the off-medication group that was doing much better. Nearly 40% of the off-med group were “in recovery” and more than 60% were working, whereas only 6% of the medicated patients were “in recovery” and few were working. This divergence in outcomes remained throughout the next ten years, such that at the 15-year follow-up, 40% of those off drugs were in recovery, versus 5% of the medicated group.

Whitaker also found studies that compared cultures, like our own, that employed the pathologizing model with cultures that framed exceptional experiences as potentially beneficial.  Countries infected with the pathologizing approach had outcomes significantly poorer.

These findings lead me to conclude that it is time to have a reasonable discussion about embracing other models of care.

——————————-

Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional and social intelligence.

source https://drjeffreyrubin.wordpress.com

Unemployment changes your core personality

The psychological damage caused by unemployment is greater than previously thought, according to a study led by researchers at the University of Stirling.
It’s well known that being unemployed for a significant amount of time can have a negative effect on your physical and emotional wellbeing. It’s likely to raise your risk of depression and suicide. But according to a new study, being unemployed can actually alter your personality too, making you less agreeable and influencing your levels of conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, and openness.
"Personality is typically considered stable across time but the researchers found that the experience of unemployment led to reduced levels of conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness; signifying that individuals lose motivation, become less considerate and sympathetic, and less curious about the world around them. These changes were greater the longer an individual spent unemployed."
Source: Boyce C, Wood A, Daly M, Sedikides C. Personality Change Following Unemployment. Journal of Applied Psychology. 2015.

False memory syndrome

False memory syndrome is a condition in which a person's identity and interpersonal relationships center around a memory of a traumatic experience that is objectively false but that the person strongly believes. Note that the syndrome is not characterized by false memories as such. We all have inaccurate memories. Rather, the syndrome is diagnosed when the memory is so deeply ingrained that it orients the individual's entire personality and lifestyle—disrupting other adaptive behavior. False memory syndrome is destructive because the person assiduously avoids confronting evidence that challenges the memory. Thus it takes on a life of its own; the memory becomes encapsulated and resistant to correction. Subjects may focus so strongly on the memory that it effectively distracts them from coping with real problems in their life. The term is not recognized as a mental disorder in any of the medical manuals, such as the ICD-10 or the DSM-5; however, the principle that memories can be altered by outside influences is overwhelmingly accepted by scientists 

False Memory Syndrome And The Brain

Kathleen Flannery

In the mid-nineties, a sniper's hammering shots echoed through an American playground. Several children were killed and many injured. A 1998 study of the 133 children who attended the school by psychologists Dr. Robert Pynoos and Dr. Karim Nader, experts on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder among children, yielded a very bizarre discovery. Some of the children who were not on the schools grounds that day obstinately swore they had very vivid personal recollections of the attack happening (1). The children were not exaggerating, or playing make-believe. They were adamant about the fact that they were indeed there, and that they saw the attack as it was occuring. Why would these children remember something so harrowing if they didn't actually experience it? What kind of trick was their brain playing on them? Why did it happen?
False Memory Syndrome (FMS) is a condition in which a person's identity and interpersonal relationships are centered on a memory of traumatic experience which is actually false, but in which the person is strongly convinced (2). When considering FMS, it's best to remember that all individuals are prone to creating false memories. A common experiment in Introduction to Psychology courses include a test similar to this one:
Look at this list of words and try to memorize them:
sharp thread sting eye pinch sew thin mend
After a few seconds, the students will be asked to recall these words, and are asked the following questions: Was the word "needle" on the list? Was it near the top? The majority of the class will vehemently agree that needle was, in fact, on the list. And not only that, it was actually quite close to being the first word. Some will attest to having vivid recollections of seeing the word "needle" on the page. These students have created a false memory. Due to the exposure of words similar to or related to the word "needle", they have very genuine memories of actually seeing the word on the list. Like the children who were absent from school on the day of the sniper attack, the false memories were stimulated by exposure to similar words (or in the sniper case, stories). In the school children's case, the false memories were created by the exposure to the stories of those who actually underwent the trauma. Our brain uses three diverse procedures to receive information, store information, and access it. These processes are: Sensory information storage, which acts like a very small holding tank, briefly storing information upon impact. Short term memory, in which the brain accounts for what has just happened, also based mainly on the senses. This has a bit more durability than sensory information storage because the brain can interpret the information it's receiving more so than in sensory information storage. Finally, there is Long term memory, the procedure in which the brain stores away significant or enduring information for retrieval at a later date (3).
So where exactly is this false memory of the sniper attack being stored? Because the brains of young children are not as fully developed as the brains of adults, it's interesting to consider that Jean Piaget, the well-known child psychologist, asserted that his earliest memory was of a botched kidnapping at the age of 2. He distinctly remembered details of watching his nurse try to fend off the kidnapper as he sat in his stroller, and the policeman's uniform as he chased the kidnapper away. Thirteen years after the alleged attack, the nurse admitted to Piaget's parents that she had fabricated the story. However, the story, told repeatedly by the nurse, crept into Piaget's psyche and expanded until it took on a life of its own. Piaget later wrote: "I therefore must have heard, as a child, the account of this story...and projected it into the past in the form of a visual memory, which was a memory of a memory, but false" (4).
Due to the way our brains work, remembering a kidnapping incident at the age of 2 could be nothing other than a false memory. The left inferior prefrontal lobe is not yet developed in infants (4). It is this lobe that is necessary for long-term memory. The complicated and sophisticated encoding necessary for remembering such an event could not occur in the infant's brain. However, the adult brain works in a far different way. Valerie Jenks, a woman living in Idaho, was raped at the age of 14. After a few seemingly trauma-free years, she began to become depressed shortly after her marriage and the birth of her first child. In therapy, Dr. Mark Stephenson convinced her to try hypnotherapy, and after her very first session, Jenks came to believe that she'd been sexually abused by her family and friends (5). In Freud's theory of "repression", the mind involuntarily expels traumatic events from memory to avoid overpowering anxiety and trauma (6). Aided by the memory of her rape at age 14, Jenks created a false memory - an elaborately fabricated memory of rape and molestation by her father and other family members. These memories were "repressed memories", said Stephenson. Further, Stephenson said she answered "yes" to many of his questions, not verbally, but by tapping the index finger of her left hand. These tappings were "body memories", claimed Stephenson. According to him, some patients have tried to explain their physical distress as coming from repressed "body memories" of incest. Therapists have told patients that "the body remembers what the mind forgets," and that many of the physical sensations they are experiencing during therapy (like Jenks' finger tapping) are symptoms of forgotten childhood sexual mistreatment. These memories, said Stephenson, are documented in cellular DNA. (7).) However, absolutely no scientific proof supports this notion of a "body memory". Memories are encoded and stored in the three processes of the brain discussed earlier. A psychical pain or sensation is not evidence that abuse occurred (5). Jenks no longer sees Dr. Stephenson and is seeking compensation for the horrific trauma she endured because of his treatment.
With organizations such as the False Memory Syndrome Foundation popping up around the globe, the awareness of FMS is spreading. False memories, in their most fundamental condition, are very real and existent in our world, as shown in the aforementioned psychology experiment. However, it is only when therapists, armed with the notion of Freudian "repressed-memories" and bizarre concepts like "body memories", implant unhealthy and false ideas into the brains of their patients that havoc ensues.

References

1)Recovered Memory Therapy and False Memory Syndrome, Recent Legal and Investigative Trends by Dr. John Hochman, M.D.
2) Memory and Reality: Website of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation
3) BodytalkMagazine.com How Memory Works
4) The Skeptic's Dictionary False Memory
5) Salon.com Health and Body - The Story of Valerie Jenks
6) How Memory Really Works Freud's Notion of Repressed Memory