Date: 13 Dec 96 03:01:17 EST
From: Chris Burford <100423.2040-AT-compuserve.com>
Subject: M-PSY: Evolutionary psychiatry: a new beginning


There was a lot packed into Anthony Storr's review of the book. In overview
I read Matt as asking a lot of penetrating questions really from the viewpoint
that medicine is still going to have to get involved in mental illness, however
intelligently, and David attempting to bridge some of the gap. It would be surprising
if Anthony Storr fully subscribed to a socio-biological intepretation at its most
reductionist. I very much enjoyed reading his book on Solitude earlier this year,
which draws on a wide reading of classical literature but/and_therefore 
places the individual dilemma about separateness and dependency in a wider social
context not incompatible with a marxist approach IMO. (True he doesn't exactly over
emphasise the class struggle)

But some of Robert's remarks are particularly challenging:

 Psychoanalytically, ownership of own
schizophrenia is the process whereby schizophrenia is not dumped on the
"other".  Jung saw the age as schizophrenic, and his conclusion has
received vindication in the discourses of postmodernity.
<<<

We can try to befriend the other without saying their situation is identical. 
Some of the decisions I have to take as a psychiatrist in an inner city area are
so worrying  and vivid that I feel I cannot share them with this list because it 
could be argued that the patient's confidentiality could be abused by doing so. 
I think I can just for example say this much: yesterday I was told in a corridor
that someone has just been released from police custody whom the family believe
is very threatening to them. The last time I interviewed this person they did
not seem to me to have definite evidence of psychotic illness but there was 
enough evidence that there had been a psychotic episode earlier this year. Perhaps
it was just drug induced. Perhaps it was the first evidence of schizophrenia.
What the hell do I do now? If something goes wrong there will be an enquiry and 
newspapers are highly likely to carry the story prominently perhaps even on 
the front page. I do not have enough information and asked my informant to 
stop telling me any more details as I could not take them on board safely at that 
moment. I went home late from worklate trying to bring more routine things under 
control, as well as sort out disagreements about service developments, 
and slept fitfully. 


How does Robert's advice about us all getting in touch with our schizophrenia
help this? And what does that mean?

What does Jung actually say about schizophrenia? What does it mean to say that
this age is schizophrenic? If Jung has any validity, is it from a postmodernist or
>from a marxist point of view, or is it suggested that the two viewpoints 
are compatible?



Chris Burford
London



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