@2:20, 10/01/10

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  StreamingGourmet posted to Twitter an article:

  Jan 11, 2010
  

  The Americanization of Mental Illness

  “Ethan Watters new book is called Crazy Like Us. See NYTimes magazine article: The Americanization of Mental Illness - http://nyti.ms/5p29ud” 

  
  

  I have read this article with interest and some understanding.  I differ with it in detail.  I wonder if the neutral conclusion is deserved.  As I read it the logic is something like this:

  The worlds' cultures have suffered psychological upsets of individuals from their beginning. These have proven surprisingly temporary in many cases.

  The model used to treat these upsets has been spiritual/cultural.

    

  In recent decades American culture has developed a set of psycho-pharmaceuticals that directly impact these upsets. The expressing behaviour changes to near normal.  When the drug is removed the behaviour returns to what it was in many cases

  The writer implies but does not conclude in this excerpt that the upsets exist and persist in the mind, a construct or concepts and models that guides and controls behaviour.  The chemistry that American medicine treats is psychosomatic and real.  The proper treatment of the objectionable behaviour is through the mind. When the mind is  ordered the behaviour and its drivers will end.

  
  

  I find I have no objection to this model.  I do think that disordered minds should be nowhere near the seats of power.

  
  

  I am no longer sure how much of my psychological history after the seventies I mentioned.  I was under a great deal of stress in the early eighties  Underpaid and feeling abandoned.  My brother Jim had a breakdown that sensitized  my family to such troubles and I landed in the local psych ward for a couple weeks.  Insurance paid for it.  The Psychiatrist found nothing treatable.  I was released.  I signed on for some talking cure.  It began with a check of the records. He quickly concluded that 1969 was a misdiagnosis.  Just extreme stress and the mad times. we went on to what the immediate problem was.  More of the same. The recommended treatment was a better job.  I did not want to go into my love life or lack of it.  Most of my problems there were still pretty well suppressed. I said goodbye to him and found the tech job at SUNY Stony Brook. Still bad but three times the money.  It looked OK at the time.

  
  

  You should know from this that a licensed man thought that I was thoroughly sane.  The situation has, if anything, improved.

  
  

  Homosexuality seems to be much in the news. I am not one of them.

  I do not approve of hounding them.  It appears to be genetic and thus not truly under voluntary control or subject to external guidance.  They do pair bond just as firmly as heterosexual couples.  Denying those pairings recognition in all ways  equal to heterosexual pairings is deeply unfair and should be unlawful.

  I remain fully committed to the project.