Life Experience Is Not a Disease or Why Medicalizing Madness Is Counterproductive to Recovery

Abstract

The author draws on her personal experience as the family member of an individual with mental illness, on her anthropological research and on that of others to argue that medicalizing madness can be counterproductive to recovery. The medical model is sometimes used in a way that strips away the meaning of the illness experience. Analogies drawn to diseases do not help the understanding of mental illness. Psychiatry is a social practice embedded in a social milieu and that renders it less than objective. It is useful to recognize that the experiences called symptoms have meaning and may have positive and pleasurable aspects.     

Why Freud and Jung Can’t Speak: A Neurological Proposal

This article provides a modern neurological explanation for the theoretical differences in psychoanalytic concepts and techniques between Freud and Jung. Specifically, the article contrasts their analytic skills as arising in the left and right brain, respectively. Modern neurological techniques reveal unique brain functions that explain many of the visionary and so-called mystic phenomena discussed by Jung. Many of his psychoanalytic concepts can be traced to right brain function. Modern research and philosophic analyses also provide light on Freud’s research method and its limitations.Barbara Stevens Barnum, RN, PhD, FAAN, former editor of Nursing Leadership Forum and Nursing & Health Care, is presently a writer/consultant. Before retiring, her positions at Columbia University included holding the directorship, Division of Health Services, Sciences and Education at Teachers College, where she also held the Stewart Chair in the Department of Nursing Education. Dr. Barnum has written in areas of nursing management, theory, education, and aspects of spirtuality/holistic nursing. Her books include: Nursing theory: Analysis, application, evaluation, Spirituality in nursing: From traditional to New Age, and The New Healers: Minds and Hands in Complementary Medicine.     

Projection of a binary criterion into a model of hierarchical classes

A formal analysis is made of how to project an attribute criterion into the hierarchical classes model for object by attribute data proposed by De Boeck and Rosenberg. The projection is conceptualized as the prediction of the attribute criterion by means of a logical rule defined on the basis of attribute combinations from the model. Eliminative and constructive strategies are proposed to find logical rules with maximal predictive power and minimal formula complexity. Logical analyses of a real data set are reported and compared with a logistic regression to demonstrate the usefulness of the logical strategies, and to show the complementarity of logical and probabilistic approaches.The first suthor is Senior Research Assistant of the National Fund for Scientific Research (Belgium). We would like to thank the Editor, the reviewers, Seymour Rosenberg, and Luc Delbeke for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.     

Choice and Logic

There is a little known paradox the solution to which is a guide to a much more thoroughgoing solution to a whole range of classic paradoxes. This is shown in this paper with respect to Berrys Paradox, Heterologicality, Russells Paradox, and the Paradox of Predication, also the Liar and the Strengthened Liar, using primarily the epsilon calculus. The solutions, however, show not only that the first-order predicate calculus derived from Frege is inadequate as a basis for a clear science, and should be replaced with Hilbert and Bernays conservative extension. Standard second-order logic, and quantified propositional logic also must be substantially modified, to incorporate, in the first place, nominalizations of predicates, and whole sentences. And further modifications must be made, so as to insist that predicates are parts of sentences rather than forms of them, and that truth is a property of propositions rather than their sentential expressions. In all, a thorough reworking of what has been called logic in recent years must be undertaken, to make it more fit for use.Portions of this paper have previously been published in Logical Studies, vol. 9, http://www.logic.ru/LogStud/09/No9-06.html, and the Australasian Journal of Logic, vol. 2, http://www.philosophy.unimelb.edu.au/ajl/2004/2004_4.pdf.