2018-12-08, 01:17 AM
A Mental Disease by Any Other Name
"For Frank Russell, reinterpreting his schizophrenia as shamanism helped his symptoms."
"For Frank Russell, reinterpreting his schizophrenia as shamanism helped his symptoms."
Quote:Dick and his son tried a variety of treatments over 15 years, some more effective than others. Then, unexpectedly, the pair turned in a very different direction, beginning a journey that Dick now likens to a “torch-lit passageway through a long dark tunnel.” By sharing his story, he hopes to help others find this passageway—but he’s aware some of it sounds crazy. For instance: He now believes Frank might be a shaman.
Quote:Certain structures and regions in the brain are thought to be particularly important in constructing our sense of self. One is the meeting place between the two middle lobes of the brain: the temporal lobe, which translates sight and hearing into language, emotion, and memory, and the parietal lobe, which integrates all five senses to locate the body in space. This region, called the temporoparietal junction, or TPJ, assembles information from these and other lobes into a mental representation of one’s physical body, and its place in space and time. It also plays a role in what’s called theory of mind, the ability to recognize your thoughts and desires as your own and to understand that other people have mental states that are separate from yours.