1.In the Greek myths and stories of the classical era, humans are not individuals with individual egos. Rather subject to divine forces, they are marionettes whose motives for action are external to themselves later Socratic person are modern in the sense that they think about the relationship between self and the world and express their thoughts in rather than supernatural terms. (page 53)
Explain how people who lived in these two different historical periods would have interpreted a natural disaster? What frames of reference would they have employed to interpret whatever tragedy they had experienced?
2.Madness, in surrealist terms was a metaphor for absolute freedom. Its name was repeatedly invoked as a provocation for what they regarded as a banal and complacent dominant value system. If madness was rejected by absolutely by that culture, the surrealist espoused complete acceptance of insanity in order to wipe out that culture to which they felt they belonged, but subvert and awaken it. (84, 2nd paragraph)
a.Explain what you think the quote above seems to the arguing. Do you find the surrealists romanticization of the insane exploitative?
b.Who today is considered an outsider artist in sense that he or she is untouched by dominant value system? In other words, are there artist today we romanticize because their work is somehow pure or authentic because it remains categorically outside the mainstream? If not, why this romanticization is not possible?
3.From 1999 2012 the percentage of Americans on antidepressants increase from 6.8% to 13%, according to a report published this week by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) a meta-analysis of antidepressant trials compared to therapy, published in JAMA psychiatry in September, found no significant differences between antidepressant and CBT in response to treatment/remission in patients with severe depressionthe authors also fail to mention that this increase in prescription of antidepressant likely includes a large proportion of off-label prescription or orders given without indicated diagnosis. Studies have demonstrated that as many as two-thirds of all antidepressants are given to patients who have never met criteria for severe depression.
Based on what you have read and what we have discussed, would you argue that in the absence of a clear understanding of the cause of what we would today call mental illness, people are always susceptible to being manipulated by institutions such as the church in the past and big pharma today? Give examples.
4.In other words, we have to be sensitive to the reality in which people of the past lived and acted. What to us may seem utterly irrational, incomprehensible or erroneous may very well have been rational, understandable, and justifiable to the people who lived in a different age than our own. We dont need to back and condemn, say, sixteenth-century Strasbourgian dancing maniacs for being unlike us today, for acting in ways that we find puzzling or terrifying. It is much more advisable to seek to understand early modern Europeans as the may have understood themselves. Instead of assuming that the past is inferior to the present, the task of historians is to comprehend why epidemics of dancing mania occurred or why the majority of Europeans considered demonic possession a real threat.
Do you agree or disagree with the authors claim presented above? What other examples can you give?
5.If treatment of mental illness cam indeed hinders artistic innovation or output, then we have a lot to lose from overmedicating future Woolfs or Munchs. Even if legislation never comes to frustration, we must be aware that the pressures of our societya land of Prozac and Ritalin, where tortured artist ever more difficult to fulfill.
( http://web.stanford.edu/group/co-sign/Sussman.pdf )
a.Why do you think that we as a society have convinced ourselves that the causes of our psychological troubles reside primarily inside our bodies and have little to do with the influencers emanating from the environments we inhabit?
b.What advantages and disadvantages does this way of self-analysis provide?
c.Do you see this way thinking breaking its hold on people or do you see American society become more medicated with time? Give reasons.
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Added on 05.08.2016 21:38
Please use the sources from these 2 books.
1. Outsider Art: Spontaneous Alternatives by Colin Rhodes
2. Madness: A History by Petteri Pietikainen (https://books.google.com/books/about/Madness.html?id=ip1hCQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false)
and http://web.stanford.edu/group/co-sign/Sussman.pdf
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