RE: pscychological anxiety

by anti-ist-itis-eatis

Posted to Poetry and Politics on 2003-01-31 10:28:00

my mom is schizophrenic, levi, (or was at least diagnosed as one) and i have bullshited a therapist or two in my day, when my parents were “worried” about me, mainly because my mom was up in arms that some of the poetry that i showed her said, “soft signs” to her, besides having had to deal with some delayed development as far as, not when is started speaking, but the pretty severe speech disability or “communicative disorder” or whatever i had when i was very, very young.

my mom mostly dealt with it during her first few years of college, and is extremely lucky in that most of her symptoms have receded, and never bugged her again for over 25 years, and she was able to go on and be a fairly successful mother and have a fulfilling career. but she is more the exception, because i think only about 10-13% of schizophrenics are ever able to go and have a full time job.

as far as psychology / psychoanalyists go that i’ve read:

carl jung
r.d. laing
rollo may
erich fromm
jaques lacan
sigmund freud
e fuller torrey

at least i read alot of that stuff when i was a teenager, or in my eary 20s. i think that petered off when i hit 22 and became disillusioned with the whole affair. i think the song “i’ve seen both sides now” sums up how i was left feeling about exploring my own “interiority”. in some respects, i remain interested-psychology is one of the building stones of philosophy-and it certainly hasn’t ended. but regard the whole affair with a grain, if not a ton of salt. i think it can be a rather tautological affair as far as what is considered “normal” and what is considered “weird”.

“i think they’re weird.
they think i’m weird.
we’re both right on target”

charles bukowski

that is, roughly, how i frame the whole question of psychology / psychoanalysis. in some ways, i think people who obsess about it too much are obsessing over nothing.

of course psychology can have some sociological concerns, but also understand that the solution that most mentally ill people are presented with is drugs, which may be worse than the actual original disease itself, and begavioral therapy, which amounts to showing the mentally ill how to balace their checkbook. holism is NOT the catchword in mainstream psychology / psychoanlysis. the structure of the mental health industry has a great deal to do with it being lorded over by insurance companies, who may (if you’re lucky) cover the cost of prescriptions, but little else. mentally ill people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds can only wish they had someone to bitch about their mothers too…although usually, things like abuse, alcholism, etc, only exacerbate the original organic illness that was already there, and can’t be pointed to as being the overiding cause.

but one thing you should realize about the mentally ill is that usually, they’re alot less inclined to hurt other people and more inclined to hurt themselves. it’s part of the stigma against them to imagine they’re a bunch of crazed people who go shooting up people. that definitely is not the case.

the plight of the mentally ill are not something to be romanticized. i’m not saying that you are, just that alot of people do.

in the end game, people who are “mentally ill” are still people, and maybe just have a different way of functioning that isn’t socially efficient.

i also think it is possible to turn what was a “disability” into a an ability. at least that is what i think my mom was able to do.


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