JamesLawley
18-02-2004, 04:19 PM
I was asked:
"Is schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, bulimia, and all the other major mental illnesses, spiritual & emotional illness, or brain chemical phooey! I have a strong feeling even though symptoms can be different so can patients and medicines own double bind of numbing a brain wave has caused them to look in the wrong direction for there outcomes. What are your thoughts?"
I tend to be guided by Ken Wilber's 'Four Quadrants' model when considering such matters. Wilber says that any "condition" has 4 correlates (or viewpoints) each of which describes a partial truth:
Interior Individual - The 'I' subjectively experiencing the condition. i.e. from inside the mind and spirit of the person.
External Individual - The 'It' that embodies the I's experience. i.e. the brain and body that can be observed by doctors, scientists and therapists.
Interior Collective - The 'We' of the groups that the 'I' is a part of. i.e. the cultural values and beliefs, the shared worldview of the communities that 'I' belongs to.
External Collective - The 'Its', the material social systems and institutional forms (buildings, size of group, technology, etc.) of which the 'it' is a part.
Thus the conditions you mention have subjective, objective, cultural and social aspects which together specify how an individual and the collective define the condition, and determine what to do about it. The trick is to not privilege any one quadrant over the other — and that's just what many of those in the medical profession find so hard to do.
If you haven't come across Wilber's work before, A Brief History of Everything is a good introduction to his thoughts.
James Lawley
"Is schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, bulimia, and all the other major mental illnesses, spiritual & emotional illness, or brain chemical phooey! I have a strong feeling even though symptoms can be different so can patients and medicines own double bind of numbing a brain wave has caused them to look in the wrong direction for there outcomes. What are your thoughts?"
I tend to be guided by Ken Wilber's 'Four Quadrants' model when considering such matters. Wilber says that any "condition" has 4 correlates (or viewpoints) each of which describes a partial truth:
Interior Individual - The 'I' subjectively experiencing the condition. i.e. from inside the mind and spirit of the person.
External Individual - The 'It' that embodies the I's experience. i.e. the brain and body that can be observed by doctors, scientists and therapists.
Interior Collective - The 'We' of the groups that the 'I' is a part of. i.e. the cultural values and beliefs, the shared worldview of the communities that 'I' belongs to.
External Collective - The 'Its', the material social systems and institutional forms (buildings, size of group, technology, etc.) of which the 'it' is a part.
Thus the conditions you mention have subjective, objective, cultural and social aspects which together specify how an individual and the collective define the condition, and determine what to do about it. The trick is to not privilege any one quadrant over the other — and that's just what many of those in the medical profession find so hard to do.
If you haven't come across Wilber's work before, A Brief History of Everything is a good introduction to his thoughts.
James Lawley