[lit-ideas] Re: Mop Rumpchuck

Another angle here may be the ability or lack thereof to shape symptoms in
meaningful ways. In his study of religion and ritual in a Chinese village in
Taiwan, David Jordan observes that, confronted with individuals exhibiting
spastic movements, the villagers considered four possible explanations:
possession by a ghost (requiring exorcism); possession by a god
(demonstrated by convincing performance of the role of spirit medium);
faking (being accepted as a spirit medium could be lucrative); or simply
insane (the behavior didn't settle into the routines indicative of
possession). In the case of Pat Barker's account to which David directs our
attention, the smaller symptoms of the officers were, I suspect, being read
against a background of assumed greater self-control on the part of the
officer class. Similar twitching in an enlisted guy could be read instead as
the kind of primitive behavior expected of the lower classes, so grosser
malfunction was required to demonstrate that something was "really" wrong.
John

On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 6:47 PM, John Wager <john.wager1@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Sartre (In "Existentialism and Human Emotions" I think) makes the larger
> point that mental patients exhibit more symptoms in the presence of
> doctors than when doctors are not present. I think one can take this to
> mean symptoms are partly contextual without saying that they are freely
> chosen, but the general point remains: Symptoms of severe disturbance
> don't always show up in expected ways, and may look like constructions
> rather than genuine medical conditions.
>


-- 
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
http://www.wordworks.jp/

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