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December 2019 Viewpointe, Page 7
Book Review
Can The Mind Be Fixed? the trauma of treatment for breast argued for the connection between
cancer and accompanying pain the normal to the abnormal behavior
Anne Harrington. Mind Fixers: Psychiatry’s Troubled Search from surgery and prescriptions for separated by razor edge distinction,
for the Biology of Mental Illness. New York: W.W. Norton, opioids which overcame her. and the Oedipus complex which
2019. Professor Anne Harrington, explained the role of family in
“Throw physick to the dogs!” drawing upon her Harvard lectures, forming character and inducing
“Canst thou minister to a mind diseased?” offers an account of the evolution neurosis and psychosis.
“Though it be madness, yet there is method in’t”. of mind fixing until our time. The In 1909, Sigmund Freud, along
Shakespeare medieval bias that mental illness with Carl Jung, was invited to present
was influenced by possession of his ideas at Clark University, his sole
By Dr. Ronald J. Meyers dark forces; religious exorcism was visit to our country. His approach
employed and violence inflicted was embraced in America, and the
I doubt that there are upon the sufferer to make the Psychoanalytical Association took
few among us who are not possessing spirit as uncomfortable off here as it would in Europe.
familiar with the sting of as possible, and to be expelled Writers in particular embraced the
mental illness, seemingly from the container of the body. Up new psychology, Henry James, D.H
endemic in our society. In until the middle of the nineteenth Lawrence, Eugene O’Neill, James
my own instance, my father century, such individuals were Joyce, Virginia Woolf brought
and brother were both confined to lunatic asylums, not Freudianism into literature.
diagnosed with degrees much different from prisons, to live I became familiar with Freudian
of Manic Depression, and with like kind. approach as a Graduate Student of
both underwent shock Toward the end of the nineteenth Literature in the Reading Room of
treatments, ECT, according to the conventional approach century, Professor Harrington shows, attitudes changed. the New York Public Library where the texts of Freud
of the time. After her bout with cancer, my late wife The impetus to better understand mental illness occurred were popular and very well thumbed. My study of
was also diagnosed and treated for mental illness, with within the context of progress in social welfare, from the Shakespeare reinforced my respect for Freud’s analysis,
all the conventional remedies from Freudian analysis Union movement to protect workers, to Prohibition to with its rendering of the Unconscious, so notable in the
to acupuncture but principally opioids and other drugs. protect society from the scourge of alcoholism, the fight soliloquies, the id and the ego as forces of unrestricted
I would have to say that the treatments all varied from for the vote for women, and social welfare identified in desire and suppression, the role of the sexual impulse in
ineffective to very harmful. One died in suicide and the the laws undertaken during the presidency of FDR. our behavior, and finally the role of the family in fostering
other to a most undesirable end-of-life. I was supposed Was a bacterial infection, or a virus, a source of the healthy and unhealthy responses.
to be comforted with the rationalization that one could scourge? The study of those who died from syphilis Throughout this time, the efforts of the Pharmaceutical
not decisively argue that any of them would have been did show deterioration of the brain. In one of Sigmund companies (Big Pharma) offered an alternative science
better off without the conventional medical treatment of Freud’s first papers, he sought to distinguish the peculiar to ease the pain and suffering of the mentally distressed.
the time. behaviors of individuals who had suffered from stroke or Starting with the discovery of tranquilizing drugs,
I myself have been spared e.g. loving marital accident to those who were suffering from neurasthenia, like Chlorpromazine, to mitigate violent tendencies,
support, moderate- work related stress, education and bad nerves. Freud was influenced by the work of the which allowed the freeing the sufferers from prisons of
religious faith. It was clear to me that, for my father French physician Charcot and others who had suggested incarceration. The biological track which hoped to find
and brother, their condition was brought about by the that trauma could be related to emotional upset. At first, a cure for mental illness the way that a cure had been
environmental circumstances deriving from deep stress Freud utilized hypnosis to communicate with his patients; found for tuberculosis or polio, deriving from research
in family relationships, as well as the harsh friction in but then discovered a method of free association to allow
the workplace. My wife’s condition developed from his patients to reveal their deviant symptoms. He also Book Review on page 8
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