471E4--Week 8 Questions/Comments--Thursday

When reading Szasz's piece, at first, I was shocked to read that someone did not believe there was such a thing as mental illness. I disagreed with his belief, and still do. However, as I kept reading I found that many of his reasoning for not believing in mental illness were accurate. At the beginning of this course we discussed and continued to try and define mental illness. Szasz does make the point of mental illness being undefinable and is correct. -Courtney Collier In Freud's lecture I noticed the use of hypnotism to cure cases of hysteria. Like mental illness itself, hysteria was also undefinable and had many different symptoms. Why was hypnotism seen as a treatment for hysterical patients? Was it seen as a treatment or just a controlling experimentation device for doctors? -Courtney Collier Szasz had a particularly interesting viewpoint on what "mental illness" actually is. Unlike most people who call it a disease of the brain, he referred to it as a "deformity of the personality." Being mentally ill is part of one's personality, and not a problem hindering it. ~ Emily Barry When discussing Dr. Breuer, Freud says that once hypnosis connected the patient to the traumatic experience(s) the hysteria is cured. I'm not sure if I skipped over it or not, but how successful was this? Why was it that people were so keen on this new development rather than what had been the norm for so long? I think it's probably because of the negative stigma asylums received over time... -Carly W. As Courtney and Emily noted above, I think Szasz is a good connection to what we discussed at the beginning of the semester of what is mental illness. While I do not agree with him saying that mental illness does not exist, I do believe that his piece is important in understanding why there are so many different opinions and ideas as to what it truly is. I think he makes a point here differentiating mental illness from being a physical problem to an actual (for lack of a better word) mental problem. --Carly W. People have noted comments about Ssasz and his discussion of mental illness which like many others have noted is something that we struggled to define within our class. For me, reading this gave me the notion that this has been a slippery slope since the early discussions of "mental illness" and a discussion that will continue long into the future. - Maggie Nunn I had a hard time agreeing with Freud's arguments. While I thought his take on hysteria was interesting, I feel like it clashes with other readings and I was left questioning his approach. I did support the idea of allowing patients to relive and experience their traumatic experiences over again to be cured which seems like a parallel to modern day therapy where you connect with traumatic experiences to overcome them. I wonder how many asylums and doctors acknowledged Freud's commentary as useful to their respective asylums. -Maggie Nunn Grob points to the mental hygiene movement as a movement toward scientific psychiatry in that mental hygiene related to the heredity transmission of mental disease. I was wonder how much of the mental hygiene movement was out of fear of mental illness and, how, much was straight racism? Obviously, this is where the Eugenics, sterilization, and marriage laws beginning to come in play. –Kasey Moore Grob: I think it is interesting that despite the budgetary cuts of the Great Depression, the asylum were able to continue providing the necessity (by cutting back on the entertainment, etc). Part of me feel that if the government could take care of the insane, why couldn’t they take care of the poor…of course, this goes back to the fear of creating a depended populous. – Kasey Moore

Grob: I think it is fascinated that although there was a push for scientific treatment of mental illness, shock therapy was not scientifically founded. Instead, shock therapy seems to be more in line with old way of treating patients based on trial-and-error. – Kasey Moore I found it hard not to become angered reading about psychosurgery and shock therapies. I had to keep reminding myself that this was a different time and just hope that lobotomies were preformed because surgeons really believed in the treatment. – Katie Tryon

Shock therapy, or electro convulsive therapy, is still around. It is used much less frequently, but yes, we still do that. Lobotomies and sterilization still happened as late as the 1970s. -- Stef L.

In Grob, page 151, Southard’s quote, “essential function of caring for the non-insane is not understood,” really resonated with me. A lot of the patients we’ve read about in the previous centuries may have been institutionalized as an insane person but may have had conditions that could be treated differently. Southard hits the nail on the head with this statement. – Katie Tryon Was it necessary in Chapter 8 for Grob to include minute facts about GUP? I didn’t really see the need to include “Psychiatric Observations on the Passengers in Noah’s Ark” unless for entertainment. – Katie Tryon I never really understood what hysteria was and I still may not be correct but it seems to be that a person who suffers from it has had something painful happen to them in the past that still effects them in the present and manifests itself as some sort of tick in the person or it causes them pain and discomfort doing certain things or effects part of their bodies? - Morgan H.  I’m not sure if I understand what Szasz is arguing. In the second part of his argument he is saying that a person’s “mental illness” is based upon the judgment of the people observing them, that mental illness is a social construct. While this does make some sense, that we view people based on what is perceived to be normal, how is it a social construct to know that a person is not Napoleon, even though he claims to be? There isn't anything social about it really, just knowing who a historical figure is. Morgan H.

Freud says that hypnosis and the "talking cure" are effective at treating patients, but then that they are also incapable of processing what they are thinking and feeling. Is the interpretation of the patient's condition and emotions therefore entirely dependent on the doctor? -Joanna Jourdan

Do you think the majority of treatments and procedures during this time frame were just a continuation of the trial and error period of treating the mentally ill, but with advancements in technology? In what ways were Freud’s work considered revolutionary? I find it hard to take that some do not believe in mental illness. Though mental illness maybe hard to define that does not simply mean it does not exist. It may just be that mental illness is a diverse understanding with multiple meanings. That is like trying to define what being human is because we are all so different how could there be one answer. Just because you cannot give a straight answer simply does not mean being human does not exist. –Jack Hylan

I am glad that Grob included a piece about the effect of the Great Depression on institutions. I guess it was not such a shock because these were a group of already-unemployed people, and they were a known quantity?--Stef L.

In chapter six Grob goes into depth about the mental hygiene movement. It is regarded as a broad endeavor meant to understand, if not correct the perceived degeneracy within society. I know that social norms were changing, (especially with things like female sexuality), but think the efforts by the NCMH to “help” society probably had a positive outcome when considering their scope of work, like with adolescent delinquents. –Scott Campbell

It is disheartening how the field of psychiatry implemented the shock/surgery therapies with little real evidence of curability. At this time the psychiatrists modeled themselves after physicians, even creating strict credential standards to distance themselves from their past of restraint treatment, but when using shock/surgery treatment they liberally applied the latest fad on their chronically ill reasoning that any chance at curability was worth the attempt. As if their patients couldn’t get any lower they were now lab-rats harkening back to the earliest days of alienism and the heroic treatment. When the amusement system is viewed in this light perhaps the superintendents had it right…–Scott Campbell

Grob’s small section on Charles Guiteau drew my attention because of a previous book I read about him (and because I’m considering doing my 485 on Guiteau). I thought the definition of insanity as involving a change in behavior was interesting, and also that he was defined as not insane. Candice Millard, in Destiny of the Republic does not discuss Guiteau’s trial in detail, but she does state that his family had tried to place in an asylum, only for him to disappear before they were successful. I would also argue that a man who had never fired a gun before, buying one for the purpose of shooting the president represents a change in behavior. In the past, we discussed how a family’s assertion that a person was insane was evidence that they in fact were. However, this seems to be an exception. -Joanna Jourdan