Review of the Year 2014

Posted on December 22, 2014 by

For anyone who didn’t keep up with all our posts on the Queen Mary History of Emotions Blog this year, Thomas Dixon has made a selection of highlights from 2014 – a year of friendship and smiles, as well as tears and SAD-ness…

Thomas DixonFRIENDSHIP

Much of my own energy in the first part of the year was devoted to writing and presenting a fifteen-part series for BBC Radio 4 – ‘Five Hundred Years of Friendship’ – tracing the changing meaning and experience of friendship across the centuries, from the world of ‘gossips’ and ‘goodfellows’ in the early modern period to the recent arrival of Facebook and online ‘friends’. The whole series is still available to listen to or download. Perhaps the most poignant and memorable episode, for me, in this centenary year of the outbreak for the First World War, was ‘A Battalion of Pals’ (Episode 10), in which I explored the wartime comradeship of ‘pals’ regiments alongside the meaning of friendship for E. M. Forster and other pacifist Bloomsbury writers. The emotional impact of World War One was again the subject of discussion when Professor Michael Roper gave our annual lecture, in November this year.

Golden friendshipsAlongside the BBC radio programmes on friendship, I commissioned a series of about 30 blog posts, designed to give interested listeners access to some of the best current scholarly work on the subject, which I had found out about in researching the series. I was fascinated to learn, for instance, about Naomi Pullin’s research on the extraordinary friendship of the Quaker women Katharine Evans and Sarah Cheevers who were imprisoned together in Malta, and about Michael Kay’s investigations into the early social history of the telephone, including its medical uses. Another notable contribution, on the subject of working-class friendship and ‘improvement’, came from Dr Helen Rogers and her undergraduate students working on the Writing Lives project at Liverpool John Moores University. In fact, I could write at length about what I learned from every single one of the blog posts, but I will resist that temptation and leave you to read the originals for yourself!

VISITING ARTISTS AND SCHOLARS

We have hosted several dynamic and energetic visitors to the Centre this year, including both artists and scholars.

Clare Whistler and Lloyd Newson were both Leverhulme Artists in Residence during the academic year 2013-2014. As part of his residency, Lloyd led two extremely well attended and successful events at QMUL, in collaboration with Dr Rhodri Hayward and others: one on the relationship between movement, music and text, and the other on verbatim theatre.

Unguentaria

Clare Whistler’s residency, which was a collaboration linked to my own work on the history of weeping, investigated the emotional history of water – ‘Weather, Tears, and Waterways’. The residency is documented in a series of blog posts explaining the thinking and outcomes leading up to the ‘Vessels of Tears’ event in May 2014, including a post by PhD candidate Hetta Howes writing about the emotional meanings of water for women in the middle ages. We also worked with audio producer Natalie Steed to make three podcasts recording various aspects of the project, including an original composition by Kerry Andrew.

Dr Carolyn Pedwell was a AHRC visiting fellow at the QMUL Centre for the History of the Emotions during 2013-14 and organised a very successful (and over-subscribed) international symposium on ‘Transnational Affects’. Carolyn also gave a lunchtime seminar on her own work, a version of which was published on the blog: ‘Circuits of Feeling in the Age of Empathy‘.

GUEST POSTS

We publish discussions of the emotions and their history by colleagues beyond the core staff of the Queen Mary Centre – from other disciplines and other institutions. This year’s highlights included:

NEW GENERATION THINKERS

We are proud that two members of our Steering Committee – Jules Evans and Tiffany Watt-Smith – have been chosen in the last two years to be BBC-AHRC New Generation Thinkers. Jules is the current co-editor of this blog, and Tiffany was the blog’s founding co-editor and is now a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of English and Drama.

During 2014, as part of the New Generation Thinkers scheme, Jules made a short film about his work as a ‘roving philosopher’, using philosophy classes and ancient Stoic insights to promote wellbeing in the twenty-first century.

Aristotle, left, and Saracens’ Owen Farrell Photo: Alamy

Jules wrote a report for the blog about his AHRC-funded work on the benefits of practical philosophy, and an article for the Telegraph about his work at Saracens Rugby Club. He continues to contribute to this blog on a wide and fascinating range of subjects. His contributions this year included a commentary on a music video by Blondie as a commentary on Western ideas of rapture; an interview with Professor Jeff Kripal on the ‘mystical humanities’; and an essay on the shortcomings of neo-Stoic philosophies of emotion.

3.5-month-old_baby_laughingTIffany Watt-Smith wrote for the blog this year about giggling babies and the new science of laughter. In July, Tiffany presented an essay on BBC Radio 3 reassessing the symptoms and meaning of war neuroses and shell shock after World War One, in the light of her research. In November, she delivered a ‘Free Thinking Essay’ for the BBC Free Thinking Festival at Gateshead, which was also broadcast on BBC Radio 3: ‘The Human Copying Machine‘. Tiffany also contributed to two BBC radio programmes about the history and meaning of ‘boredom’ – The Why Factor, and Something Understood.

LOST EMOTIONS…. and BEYOND

Carnival banner

The Centre’s PhDs and early career scholars continued their work spreading the word about the history of emotions. The ‘Lost Emotions Machine’ had several more outings, including an appearance at the Natural History Museum in June, which Eleanor Betts wrote about for the blog.

Chris Millard, one of the pioneers of the ‘Lost Emotions’ project, spent three months on secondment at the Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology, where he researched and wrote about the issues of ‘parity of esteem’. His work resulted in him co-authoring an editorial for the British Medical Journal, as well as writing a post for the history of emotions blog reflecting on the experience.

A woman suffering from melancholia

Jane Mackelworth, who is in the final stages of a PhD project on sapphic love in Britain in the twentieth century, recently wrote for us about the highly innovative community project she helped to run at the Bromley By Bow Centre – entitled ‘Love in Objects’ – which won Queen Mary’s Richard Garriott Prize for the best public engagement activitiy of the year.

Richard Firth-Godbehere reported on what he had learned about Begriffschichte and emotions at the 2014 Summer School run by our colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, while Åsa Jansson offered her reflections on the transcultrual history of melancholy, arising from a conference she attended on the subject in Heidelberg.

SAD at 30

HHapplecrosstree400res (2)As the nights drew in, during November, we continued our more melancholy train of thought with a podcast produced by Natalie Steed to mark the 30th anniversary of ‘Seasonal Affective Disorder’. This podcast was a collaboration with our QMUL colleagues in the History of Modern Biomedicine Research group, headed by Professor Tilli Tansey, and arose from a joint witness seminar.

Earlier in the year Jules Evans had interviewed Norman E. Rosenthal, who wrote the first paper naming ‘SAD’ in 1984, for this blog. The transcript of the SAD Witness Seminar is now published and available to read in full.

FLINCHING, SMILING, TRANSFORMING THE PSCYHE

The Smile Revolution book coverAmong the highlights of 2014 for many of us were three brilliant new publications by members of our Centre.

In January, Rhodri Hayward’s book, The Transformation of the Psyche in British Primary Care, 1880-1970 came out, followed in May by Tiffany Watt-Smith’s On Flinching: Theatricality and Scientific Looking from Darwin to Shell Shock.

Colin Jones’s new book was publshed in September – The Smile Revolution in Eighteenth-Century Paris – and we carried a blog post by Colin to mark the occasion.

All three books would make ideal Christmas presents and, at the time of writing this, there may still be time to get your hands on a copy of one or all of them as last-minute gifts ….!

IN MEMORIAM

Professor Philippa Maddern

For all of us working on the history of emotions, around the world, the achievements of 2014 were tinged with sadness after the death, in June, of Professor Philippa Maddern, the founding director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions. Many friends and colleagues were moved to record their thoughts and recollections of Philippa in an online book of condolences.

One of the numerous ways in which Philippa’s contributions to the field will continue to be felt is through the work of a new journal – Ceræ: An Australasian Journal Of Medieval And Early Modern Studies – which was launched in 2014 with an inaugural volume on ‘Emotions in History’. The editorial committee of Cerae published their own collective tribute to Philippa, recalling the time and energy she devoted to supporting and mentoring them in their new initiative.

Parity of Esteem Between Mental and Physical Health

Posted on December 20, 2014 by

Dr Chris MillardDr Chris Millard is a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the QMUL Centre for the History of the Emotions. His PhD explored the history of attempted suicide as a cry for help, and he is now researching the history of Munchausen syndromes. In this post he writes about his three-month secondment to the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology in 2014.

For three months during the summer of 2014, I left my research post at The Centre for the History of Emotions to do something a little different. The Wellcome Trust have an arrangement with the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST), a body that produces non-partisan briefings on scientific issues for MPs and Peers.  The Trust (among other funding bodies) sends people for a three-month period to research and write a ‘scientific’ briefing of interest to Parliamentarians.

I proposed – and was assigned – a briefing on ‘parity of esteem’ between mental and physical health. In other words, I was to summarise expert opinion (from psychiatrists, physicians, social workers, sociologists, nurses, service users, survivors and others) and lay out the ‘state of the art’ on attempts to get mental health problems treated with the same esteem as physical ones.

This issue has been in the news on and off since 2011, when amendments were proposed to the Health and Social Care Bill (now Act) (2012), to explicitly mention the NHS’s commitment to mental, as well as physical health. Recently its profile has risen further: Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats are making ‘Parity of Esteem’ one of their key General Election campaign issues. In addition, maximum waiting times for mental health therapies (a key issue for parity) have just been introduced, largely as a result of tireless work by activists and campaigners.

A great advantage of working for Parliament is that important people are much more likely to speak to you. Instead of saying ‘I’m a junior academic, would you mind talking to me…’ you can say: ‘I’m producing a briefing for the UK Parliament: which issues do you think should be included?’ People tend to get back to you after that voicemail! I was also able to walk to work through the Palace of Westminster, and to invite guests to some of the many pubs and bars within. ‘House of Lords Gin’ is truly delicious. Small perks perhaps, but enjoyable nonetheless.

On a more serious note, people were incredibly passionate about parity of esteem. People would rail against the injustice of people with mental health diagnoses having a life expectancy 10-20 years lower than the general population – people dying of preventable physical illnesses, some of which are related to the medication they are prescribed. There was dismay that some cuts to health services fall disproportionately upon mental health (one of which has since been discontinued), or that complicated changes to the way general practice is organized might jeopardize care for those diagnosed with severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. It was a little daunting to have to summarize all these concerns into a four-page briefing (which will be published shortly).

Perhaps the most rewarding thing about the fellowship at POST was being able to make contacts with people who continue to campaign for parity. The people at Rethink Mental Illness were especially helpful, and I was also able to attend the launch of a major new report on Understanding Psychosis (free full text) by the British Psychological Society which has led to more connections, contacts and useful references.

The most high-profile result of my time at POST was being invited (somewhat out of the blue) to co-write an Editorial for the British Medical Journal on the issue of parity of esteem, by the current President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Professor Simon Wessely. This piece has stimulated passionate debate, to which we have responded.

It feels strange, invigorating and not a little terrifying to be involved in such a public debate. However it has only strengthened my conviction that the arts and humanities can bring much to the table in political debates. The practice of psychiatry is bound up with the history of psychiatry, and parity of esteem has been an issue for much of the 20th century. The persistence of stigma, inequality and fear are problems that can be opened up by historians, and presented to a broad audience.

One of the greatest challenges in mental health is to get over the sectarian and fractious nature of the debates between disciplines, professions and professionals. ‘Parity of esteem’ is not a perfect formulation of the myriad problems that beset mental healthcare. For one thing, it can sometimes reinforce the separation of mental and physical problems, when they are often so interrelated as to be indistinguishable. However, parity is flexible, inclusive, and entails no commitment about what mental illness is, merely that we should respond with compassion, improved provision, and more integrated problem-solving (‘joined-up care’ is the currently favoured phrase).

At a time when the state is being rolled back (with disastrous consequences), we are seeing an increased politicization of mental health concerns. Parity of esteem can be a part of that effort, to show how mental health is an issue of fairness, of ethics, of funding, but above all, of the tireless work and compassion of all who work towards ending inequality in all its forms.

Love in Objects

Posted on December 12, 2014 by

Jane Mackelworth is a PhD candidate at the Centre for the History of the Emotions at Queen Mary University of London, working on ‘Writing Sapphic Love and Desire in Britain, 1900-1950.’ She also is a co-convenor for the IHR History of Sexuality seminar series. She is currently co-editing a special edition of the Women’s History Review on ‘Love, Desire and Melancholy; Inspired by the Writing of Constance Maynard.’ In this blog post she writes about a project which won the Richard Garriott Prize for Best Public Engagement Activity at Queen Mary in 2014. You can follow Jane on Twitter: @Jane__Victoria.

P1 Love in Objects brand for top of blogpost

During the summer of 2014 a group of elders living in and around Bromley by Bow, in east London, shared stories about the precious objects in their lives to create a unique and moving exhibition: Love in Objects.

P2 Member with Box showing slippers LIO

I didn’t know what to expect when we first started, I was a bit nervous….I needed a bit of help to start but I was so pleased with what I made. Filling our boxes with everything we loved the best…we all had different themes…I learnt so much.

Project member

 The complex relation between people and objects continues to be an important theme in the history of the emotions. No longer are objects seen as passive. Instead they are seen as active agents that can produce emotions, create powerful bonds between people and shape connections between people and place.

It was with this in mind that we created the Love in Objects project; a partnership between the Centre for the History of the Emotions and local charity, the Bromley by Bow Centre, which has a thirty-year history of working in the local community. Its experience, its unique entrepreneurial approach and its belief in the capacity of everyone to achieve amazing things are what make the centre one of the leading regeneration charities in Britain today.

Over three months, thirteen elders, aged up to 85, came together at the Bromley by Bow Centre each week to share their objects and stories of love. Each member brought along one or more objects from their home which spoke to them of love and then crafted a themed box to house their object. Project members worked with professional stone carver and sculptor, Paula Haughney, who has many years experience in working in community projects, and volunteers John Lynch, who specializes in local history, and Jane Mackelworth, who specializes in the history of love and is based in the Centre for the History of the Emotions which funded the project. The project was overseen and managed by Lucy Wells, artist and Inclusive Arts Project Manager  at the Bromley by Bow Centre.

P2A Making the boxes LIOProject members decorated their boxes using marbling, an artistic technique blending coloured inks to create patterns, and then chose personal images, photographs and words to represent the object in their box, and associated memories in their lives.

For example, images of Frank Sinatra were chosen by one member as a reminder of times he had spent dancing with his late wife, and an image of ‘two redcoats’ at Butlins was chosen by one member, reminding him of his time as a catering assistant at a Butlins holiday park in his youth. Another member decorated her box almost entirely in green with prints of trees, and butterflies to remind her of happy times with her children at the park at weekends many years ago; ‘Happiness. Nice weather. Sunshine…I miss my children.’ Another box is decorated with the word ‘LOVE’ and decorated in tiny Chinese lettering to represent a member’s 52-year marriage to her husband who she met in Chinatown.

P3 Member with Box LOVE lettering LIO

Letters and notes accompanied the objects and images in each  box, and members also gave personal interviews to share the meaning behind the objects they had chosen. Some key themes emerged in the objects, and representations, which people chose for their boxes.

P4 Box LIO

Gifts were an important theme. Anthropologists, and increasingly historians, have recognized the way that gifts create ties between people. Gifts not only symbolize a relationship but can actually transform it. Mauss was one of the first to theorize gift giving suggesting that in giving a gift one is giving a part of the self; ‘Even when [the gift] has been abandoned by the giver, it still possess something of him’.[1] Therefore, ‘to make a gift of something is to make a present of some part of oneself.’[2] And so exchanging objects, which are a part of the self, causes selves to be joined or welded together, both with one another and with the objects concerned:

Souls are mixed with things; things with souls. Lives are mingled together and that is how, among persons and things so intermingled, each emerges from their own sphere and mixes together.[3]

This explains the value of gifts. Lewis Hyde argues for the transformational power of gifts suggesting that a gift brings with it not only the gift itself but the promise (or the fact) of transformation, friendship, and love.’ [4]

One woman selected gifts of jewellery as her objects of love explaining that they had been given to her by her three daughters over the years at birthdays and as Mother’s Day presents. Another box contained a cake decoration from a birthday cake given to the project member on her 50th birthday, twenty years ago. The decoration, made of red and white flowers and a brass embossed ‘50’ is usually displayed in her cabinet at home along with china plates. She chose it for the box because it ‘makes me feel nice’ and ‘reminds me of my birthday.’ But it also, she explained, signifies for her ‘the love of my husband and the love of my children.

Another woman also chose cake decorations as one of her objects of love. These were from her grandson’s wedding cake and she had kept them after the wedding which was ‘lovely.’  For her, the object acted as a memento of the wedding. Other members also chose specific objects which acted as a reminder of a time they had enjoyed. For example, one man chose a small ornament of Salisbury Cathedral which he had bought as a souvenir when visiting the cathedral with his brother ‘so I could remember the day.’ When he looks at the object now ‘it reminds me of going there.’

P5 Salisbury Cathedral LIO

For some, the box was used to represent childhood memories, in part inspired by a talk given by John Lynch about local east London history. One woman chose a photo of hop pickers because as a schoolchild she used to go hop picking each year ‘for the whole season… September I think it was.’ She remembers the lorry collecting them to drive them down to Kent and describes lighting the fire to cook outside. Her box also contains notes of childhood memories including sleeping in the air raid shelter at night during the Second World War.

P6 Hop picking photo LIO

Handmade objects were also another popular choice for an objects of love. In his nineteenth century essay on gifts, Ralph Waldo Emerson, prized most highly those gifts that were handmade or hand produced:

The only gift is a portion of thyself…therefore the poet brings his poem; the shepherd, his lamb…the miner, a gem; the sailor, coral and shells; the painter his picture; the girl a handkerchief of her own sewing…But it is a cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy me something.[5]

The value of handmade gifts, and handmade objects in general, was described by members who chose such objects for their boxes. One woman’s box contained pairs of little slippers that she knits herself. She knits these for her grandchildren but also for other friends and family. She spoke too of making many clothes over the years for her family, speaking of one occasion when she transformed one of her own dresses ‘outside was faded…inside perfectly nice’ into clothes for her children to wear to a party;’ I made my little son beautiful brown trousers and waistcoat.’ It is not only the finished product that it is important for her, it is the time spent doing it. It is a link back to her mother who ‘taught me when I was a child, 8 years old, cutting, sewing.’ Sewing has helped her in difficult times because it ‘makes your brain clear…I love it.’

P7 Box with slippers LIO

Another member chose objects for her box which she had made during another project at the Bromley by Bow Centre. These were decorations for the jubilee celebrations, one of many that she made for others to enjoy. She describes the process using ‘thousands of pins and sequins’, explaining that ‘once you start doing it you can’t stop.’ For her, ‘A lot of love went into these things…I put love into it when I was making it.’


 Once all the boxes had been made, interviews recorded, and objects and ephemera put into the boxes, they were displayed at the Bromley by Bow Centre for three months. Visitors to the exhibition reported that they found the exhibition, ‘moving’, ‘inspiring’ and ‘beautiful to look at.’ For those who took part in the project, many of whom are isolated in their day to day life, it was a chance to reflect on the importance of love in their own life:

I don’t really have anyone much to be able to talk about my husband any more. It brings back all those good times, and the sad ones mind, looking at these pictures.

Project member

I think that this group and the boxes of love we made, well it was personal and I liked that; I felt that I could connect to myself. But…at the same time it is a topic that we can all relate to isn’t it? A universal theme is good!

Project member

And the project also gave members a chance to learn new skills and to enjoy seeing their work exhibited at the Bromley by Bow Centre:

…it is great to see our work up – looks fantastic and…I’m not the only one who thinks so!

Project member

The Love in Objects project won the Queen Mary University of London Richard Garriott award for the University’s best public engagement project. The project’s success is attributable not only to the dedication and hard work of the thirteen project members but also to the partnership nature of the project.  The partnership with an existing community project meant that the project was able to work with those members of the community who are often the hardest to reach in public engagement work.

The Bromley by Bow Centre’s trusted relationship with isolated community members, often with additional care needs and long term physical health problems, its longstanding partnership with professional artists with many years experience of community work, and its setting in beautiful and inspiring surroundings, helped ensure the project’s success. However, ultimately the success of the project was down to the members who shared intimate, touching and inspiring stories about the enduring role of love in their lives. Through the objects they shared these stories and memories were brought to life in beautiful, imaginative and unexpected ways.

[1] Marcel Mauss, The Gift, trans. by W.D. Halls, foreword by Mary Douglas, London: Routledge, [1925 in French] [1954 in English translation], 1990, p.15.

[2] Mauss, The Gift, 1990, p.16.

[3] Mauss, The Gift, 1990, p.26.

[4] Lewis Hyde, The Gift; Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, London: Vintage, 1999, p.68.

[5] Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘The Gift’, 1844.

VIDEO: The Story of a Tear

Posted on December 12, 2014 by

As part of her work on the history and meaning of tears and water at the Centre for the History of the Emotions in 2013-14, Leverhulme Artist in Residence Clare Whistler worked with film-maker David Wright to create this film, ‘The Story of a Tear’, in response to the Jewish Cemetery at the heart of Queen Mary’s Mile End Campus. The film features a new composition by Kerry Andrew, which sets to music words from the poetry of George Herbert. 

The Story of a Tear – from Footage on Vimeo.

 

Read more about ‘Weather, tears, and waterways’.

Read about and listen to all of the related podcasts.

Not Tonight: Migraine and the Politics of Gender and Health

Posted on December 11, 2014 by

This is a guest-post by Joanna Kempner, assistant professor of sociology at Rutgers University and the author of Not Tonight: Migraine and the Politics of Gender and Health.

kempner-cover_revised-2Are people with migraine more emotionally vulnerable? They are if we believe the stereotype: a woman, hand-pressed hard against her head, whose neurotic and possibly malingering personality makes her incapable of handling even the most basic stressors. This is the migraine sufferer encoded in dozens of misogynist jokes, each of which implies that women with migraine are either lying to avoid sex or are so weak that they succumb when faced with the prospect of working.

Even neurologists, the specialty designated with the treatment of migraine, report that they think of migraine patients as having more emotional problems than other patients. As Joan Didion famously wrote: “All of us who have migraine suffer not only from the attacks themselves but from this common conviction that we are perversely refusing to cure ourselves by taking a couple of aspirin, that we are making ourselves sick, that we “bring it on ourselves.””

All of which is why headache advocates are fighting hard to convince doctors, policy makers, and the public that migraine is a neurobiological disease and not a problem of outsized emotions. But, as I describe in my new book, Not Tonight: Migraine and the Politics of Gender and Health, the trouble is that this strategy isn’t working.

Counterintuitive as it may seem, brain-based explanations haven’t been able to undo the immense stigma attached to migraine, in large part, because this stigma is deeply embedded in a medical history that has conflated migraine with emotional instabilities.

‘Nervous temperaments’

For example, in the 19th century, the migraine patient had a “nervous temperament” and was described as irritable, nervous, susceptible, and/or hysterical. Victorian doctors made few distinctions between mind and body, so the problem was located in their nervous systems– as one influential lecturer, PW Latham, put it, they have “brains [that] are very excitable, their senses acute, and their imaginations free.” Women were more likely to have these weaker, finer, more delicate nerves. Hence, we get the Victorian woman reclining on a chaise longue with her hand pressed against her forehead.

In the mid-20th century, Harold G. Wolff, a neurologist who is now considered the “father of modern headache medicine,” changed this paradigm when he argued that migraine was the model psychosomatic disease. He began by cleverly demonstrating that the pain of migraine was rooted in the body — specifically the vasodilation of cranial nerves. But he also argued that the body responded to emotions and personality—“Loves Hates Fears,” he argued “are as real as management of lump [sic] in the chest or pus in the pericardium.”

When describing a male patient, Wolff described the migraine personality as an ambitious, successful, and efficient perfectionist who would get migraines as he grew increasingly weary, resentful, and anxious. However, Wolf described his female patients differently. Her frustrations came from sexual dissatisfaction and an unwillingness to accept maternal duties. Wolff’s contemporaries took this characterization even further. Walter C. Alvarez, for example, described his female migraine patients as “overworking or worrying or fretting, or otherwise using her brain wrongly.” Again, images of the chaise longue are conjured.

One can see, then, why contemporary headache doctors are so keen to move away from this model of headache medicine and towards a neurobiological paradigm. Unfortunately, if you look closely at the language that headache doctors use to describe the “migraine brain” you can see why their strategy is failing. The language of emotions and patient-blaming remains. And perhaps more importantly, the language of femininity remains as well.

Take, for example, this excerpt from the self-help book The Migraine Brain by headache specialist Carolyn Bernstein and Elaine McArdle:

Like a thoroughbred racehorse or diva, [the migraine brain is] hypersensitive, demanding, and overly excitable. It usually insists that everything in its environment remain stable and even-keeled. It can respond angrily to anything it isn’t accustomed to or doesn’t like.

Bernstein and McArdle’s move is to destigmatize migraine by displacing personal responsibility for the sensitivity that comes along with migraine. But Bernstein and McArdle make a tactical error: the migraine brain, here, has become a neurobiological explanation for many of the same personality quirks that have always been ascribed to those with migraine—a tendency to demand that environments change to the migraine patient’s desires, rather than a stoic ability to adjust to the changing world. Moreover, brain-based explanations remain feminized – the brain is a diva that is hypersensitive, and demanding. Just like a woman, she is. A woman giving orders from a chaise longue.

Beyond gendered diagnoses

The truth is that the relationship between mind and body in migraine is complex. Migraine symptoms can include emotional volatility and emotional swings can trigger migraine. Efforts to separate the physical from the psychological are doomed to fail. In fact, I think Latham did a better job describing this relationship in the 19th century than contemporary physicians are doing now.

What I’d like to see is more effort put into changing the public face of migraine – let’s see less gendered (and, let’s face it, sexist) representations of migraine and more emphasis put on the real pain and suffering that migraine causes.

Follow Joanna Kempner on Twitter @joannakempner

References

Alvarez, Walter C. “The Migrainous Woman and All Her Troubles.” Alexander Blain Hospital Bulletin 4 (1945): 4-5.

Bernstein, Carolyn, and Elaine McArdle. The Migraine Brain: Your Breakthrough Guide to Fewer Headaches, Better Health. New York: Free Press, 2008: 40.

Didion, Joan. “In Bed.” In The White Album, 168–72. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979.

Latham, Peter W. On Nervous or Sick-Headache: Its Varieties and Treatment. Cambridge: Deighton, Bell, 1873: 15.

Wolff, Harold G. papers. “Lecture notes.” New York Weill Cornell Medical Center Archives, “Box 15, Folder 2.” New York, NY.

What the Neo-Stoic theory of emotions misses out

Posted on December 4, 2014 by

socrates dionysusAt the end of Philosophy for Life, I asked what the Socratic-Stoic tradition of philosophy misses out, and suggested there is an alternate approach to life and to emotional healing, which I called the Dionysiac tradition:

The virtues of the Socratic tradition are self-control, rationality, self-consciousness and measure. The Socratic tradition typically puts forward a hierarchy of the psyche, in whcih the conscious, reasoning parts of the psyche are highest, and the intuitive, emotional and appetitive parts of the psyche are lowest. The Dionysiac tradition celebrates a very different way of life. Where Socrates preaches self-control, Dionysus urges us to lose ourselves in sex, music, dancing and ecstasy.

The Socratic approach uses conscious reasoning as the means to emotional healing and virtue. Our emotions are caused by – or in some sense are – our beliefs and judgements. Sometimes our beliefs are unwise or wrong, which causes us suffering. But we can use our reason to re-appraise, to think differently, believe and behave differently, and this will bring us healing and wisdom.

This is the idea at the heart of Socratic philosophy, and the Neo-Stoic or cognitive theory of the emotions which is found in cognitive psychology, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, and in the philosophy of Martha Nussbaum and many other virtue ethicists.

It’s true to an extent, and it can bring people a lot of healing. But it’s not the whole story. It is a partial account of the truth. It misses stuff out. If that’s all you know about the psyche, your philosophy of life will be over-rationalistic, and less effective than it could be in helping people heal and flourish.

Emotions and the Autonomic Nervous System

What I call the Dionysiac approach has a different theory of the emotions. It suggests that some forms of emotion – we might prefer to call them moods or feelings – are not primarily forms of cognitive appraisal. Instead, they are non-cognitive and physiological.

The Autonomic Nervous System

The Autonomic Nervous System

Our body, our Autonomic Nervous System, our limbic system, reacts automatically to a stimulus with powerful physical reactions (gut feelings, skin tingling, heart palpitations, heavy or shallow breathing, involuntary limb movements and so on), which our neo-cortex may then appraise and turn into an emotion.

William James, the most famous defender of this theory, described it thus. We see a bear. Our heart starts pounding, our hair stands on end, our body is flooded with adrenaline, we jump out of our skin and start running away, and as we’re running, we think to ourselves ‘this is fear, I’m afraid of that bear’. The bodily reaction comes first, and then the mind recognizes the body’s reaction and categorizes it as an emotion. The emotion, James suggests, is the physiological response.

This more non-cognitive account of the emotions focuses particularly on the Autonomic Nervous System, also known as the visceral or involuntary nervous system, regulated by the hypothalamus and running through the ganglia to our pupils, hair, skin, heart, lungs, stomach, groin and limbs.

The ANS also seems to be involved in trance states or altered states of consciousness. Music, poetry or cinema, for example, appears to have the power to send us into trance states by operating directly on our ANS rather than through our conscious rational reasoning – we feel it in our gut, it makes our skin tingle, our pupils dilate, our heart pound, and before we know it we are crying or euphorically dancing, almost involuntarily (see particularly Judith Becker’s Deep Listeners: Music, Emotion and Trancing). Our cognitive rationality is suspended, we go into a trance state, and are absorbed in the moment and the feeling.

The Stoics were aware of involuntary physiological reactions to shocks – they called them ‘first movements’. For example, a Stoic philosopher might be on a ship in a storm, and might turn pale and start shivering from fear. However, the Stoics insist it’s only an emotion if the philosopher gives their conscious assent to their physical reactions and thinks ‘this really is a scary and terrible situation’.

Seneca writes:

Emotion does not consist in being moved by the impressions that are presented to the mind, but in surrendering to these and following up such a chance movement. For if anyone supposes that pallor, falling tears, sexual excitement or a deep sigh, a sudden brightening of the eyes, and the like, are evidence of an emotion and a manifestation of the mind, he is mistaken, and fails to understand that these are just disturbances of the body.

So according to the Stoics, our ANS system may react powerfully to things – our toe may start tapping, our teeth may chatter, our heart may pound, our skin may tingle, we may even go into some kind of trance state or dissociative fit. The Stoic may feel all these things, but as long as the neo-cortex does not give its assent to these physical disturbances, it’s not an emotion, it’s ‘just disturbances of the body’. It’s a strange dualist separation of mind and body for a supposedly materialist philosophy.

On the one side, then, are the Stoics and Neo-Stoics like Martha Nussbaum, who defend a rationalist and cognitive theory of the emotions, in which any emotion must involve an evaluation or judgement of value. On the other side – the side which Nussbaum calls ‘the Adversary’ – are James, Damasio, Joseph LeDoux, Jonathan Haidt, Pascal and other ‘intuitionists’, who challenge the cognitive theory of the emotions and insist that sometimes our moods, feelings and emotions don’t involve conscious rationality primarily or indeed at all. The ANS has its reasons of which the neo-cortex knows nothing, as Pascal almost put it.

Primary and secondary emotions

It’s a fault line that runs right through modern thinking about the emotions and the best way to heal them. Which is true?

It seems to me that both accounts are true, both capture something important about the emotions. Perhaps, as Antonio Damasio argues, there are two different ways we can feel emotions – primary and secondary. Primary emotions are mainly autonomic and physiological. These occur in all animals, and perhaps to some extent in plants too. Secondary emotions, by contrast, involve some cognitive evaluations or re-evaluations, both of our physical response and of the stimulus that prompted it. Secondary emotions involve the neo-cortex, the most recently evolved part of our brain.

The Stoic or Neo-Stoic account tends to focus entirely on secondary emotions. As a result, Stoic therapy, or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, tends to focus mainly on cognitive re-appraisal and re-thinking as the best method for emotional regulation and healing.

But that is not enough. It does not give an adequate account of our powerful emotional and visceral responses to, say, the arts, or sex, or nature, or drugs, or some forms of meditation or ecstatic religious experience. It gives an account of rational consciousness (probably involving the neo-cortex), but not of other states of consciousness which are more hypnagogic or trance.

Stoics and Neo-Stoics are suspicious of these sorts of visceral emotional states because they are so powerful, and because they seem to by-pass or over-throw our rationality (which they insist is the sovereign or divine part of us). That’s why Plato is so suspicious of poetry – it creates a form of ecstasy in which we are no longer master of our self, and Plato’s philosophy is all about becoming master of your self.

Dilated pupils: one of the classic responses of the ANS

But here’s the key point. Our Autonomic Nervous System is not entirely Autonomic. We can consciously engage in practices which operate through the route of ‘primary emotions’, that’s to say, directly into our ANS. This can be very healing, helping us to alter the ‘milieu’ or baseline of our daily moods in a way that the cognitive appraisal of CBT does not always do.

And such ANS-targeted practices transform our consciousness, giving us different ways of being and knowing beyond rationality. These different ways of being and knowing can sometimes give us the sense of connecting with the sacred or the divine. So they’re not necessarily ‘lower’ or more ‘bestial’ than conscious rationality, as philosophers have sometimes insisted. They are important parts of our psyche, which philosophy often leaves out.

ANS-targeted practices

What sorts of practices work directly on our ANS system?

Certain forms of meditation, like Transcendental Meditation or mindfulness, work not with our conscious rationality or logic, but instead work on our ANS to alter our consciousness and our emotions. That can be tremendously healing, as the evidence from 40 years of research into meditation shows. The repeated practice of meditation alters our baseline emotional state and our automatic reaction to potentially stressful stimuli. It alters our heart rate, our immune system, our breathing – and that all feeds into our thinking style, making us less likely to make anxious or depressed appraisals of events.

Likewise, we can consciously engage with the arts as a form of healing and emotional release. That’s precisely why dance is so important to human beings – it gives us a form of emotional catharsis that is more direct, more primary and non-cognitive than conscious rational deliberation. Philosophers (not traditionally the greatest dancers) have singularly failed to appreciate the power of dance to heal us, beyond a few brief statements in Plato or Rousseau.

J.M.W. TurnerThe emotional impact of the beauty of nature and art cannot be adequately explained by the Stoic or Socratic account of the emotions – this is why Nussbaum’s attempts at aesthetics are so tepid. As Burke understood, the sublime and the beautiful operate not on our reason, but on our nerves, our stomach, our guts. Burke wrote: ‘In every one of its modifications the sense of the sublime has its nervous basis, due to changes which are in some degree painful, and an analogous nervous basis may be discovered for the sense of the beautiful.’We don’t calmly and rationally process sublime scenes. On the contrary, we’re astonished by them – they overwhelm us, defy our ability to process them.

DH Lawrence and other Dionysiacs would also say, quite rightly, that sex is a powerful form of emotional catharsis, one unfairly denigrated by Stoics as ‘a rubbing together of bellies’ in Marcus Aurelius’ unhappy phrase. Erotic love gives us a form of knowing deeper and more visceral than conscious rationality. Our bodies, our ANS systems, intertwine. That can also be very healing.

And collective religious experiences are also a way of consciously manipulating and altering the Autonomic Nervous System. The music, the incense, the dancing, the singing, the prayer, the wine, the invocation of a Higher Power – all this by-passes our rationality and works directly on our primary emotions. And that can be tremendously healing and transformative.

Of all philosophers, William James understood best how healing the altered states of consciousness attained through stimulation of the ANS could be. His classic book, The Varieties of Religious Experience, challenges the Stoic idea that healing only comes about through conscious reasoning. Sometimes people are healed and released from their old emotional habits through profound visceral or trance experiences.

Of course, we may get a temporary healing or release through a night of passion, or dancing, or religious ecstasy, or ayahuasca. Still, I think the Stoics were right that if this temporary release is going to become permanent transformation, it also needs to involve our conscious rationality. A spiritual life that is all about feelings and not at all about rational beliefs will not have very deep roots. Nor would a spiritual life that is all based on rational beliefs and not at all on bodily feelings.

It would be unfair to say Stoic therapy is entirely rational and that it misses out completely the non-cognitive and the non-rational aspects of emotions. A defender of Stoicism would point to the role of visualization meditations in their therapy, and their sense of awe in nature – both of which are rational but also non-rational / visceral. Certainly Pythagoras and his follower Plato understood the power of music, dance, poetry and incantation to transform and heal our emotions.

sacred_heart_byzantineBut in general, Greek philosophy is rather suspicious of non-rational or Dionysiac approaches to the emotions. I think Christianity has a greater sense of the healing and transformative power of music, architecture, poetry, liturgy, dance and trance states (although of course it steered well clear of any drugs besides incense and wine). Judeo-Christianity speaks not just of reason or logic, but of knowing God through the heart or even the bowels – we are often told in the New Testament that Jesus reacts to suffering in his splagchnon, his bowels – how different to a Stoic, who would dismiss such visceral reactions as ‘just disturbances of the body’.

At its best, I think, Christianity can sometimes combine the rational ethical wisdom of Stoicism with the more non-rational, sublime or Numinous emotional experiences we have discussed. Though, I’m sure like a lot of you, I find my reason and my heart aren’t always in agreement.

Seizures: disorders of the mind, body, or both?

Posted on December 2, 2014 by

“The spirit is willing, but the body is weak”. Matthew 26.41.

V0016630 An epileptic or sick person having a fit on a stretcher, twoThe eyes begin to flicker, the face contorts into a hideous countenance, the toes feel stiff then numb. There is a metallic taste in the mouth, sounds are amplified into the ears, and the arm begins to jerk. A rushing sensation irritates the blood, the lungs suddenly gasp for air, the head vigorously shakes and the lips shout ‘Oh God!’.

I ask, “what is wrong with me?”

The neurologist books me in for an EEG scan to test for epilepsy.

1924 was one of the most significant years in the history of modern neurology. German psychiatrist, Hans Berger, created the Electroencephalogram (EEG), which could detect neurological activity; without intrusive brain surgery. In 1935, Gibbs and colleagues plugged a patient into this machine. The patient had an absence seizure and the first evidence that abnormal neurological activity was the possible cause of seizures was recorded. Repeated studies confirmed such results. Enthused by these findings, clinical EEG laboratories for epilepsy were founded in continental Europe, Great Britain and the United States.

It is 2008. I am hooked up to this machine. Lights flicker. I fall away.

I wake up, I feel drugged, I softly snore whilst making tea. I forget that I am making tea. I sit down. I remember that I am making tea. I stir the tea. The tea is being swished about in a funny jagged motion. I sit down. I raise the cup to my lips. The cup is moved to my cheek. I raise the cup to my lips. The cup is placed on the floor. I go back to bed.

arch_back_smlSuch bizarre symptoms were described as long ago as 2000 BC. Accounts written in Akkadian, in ancient Mesopotamia, talk of antasubba or miqtu, noting the sporadic, ”jerky movements” and ”muscle rigidity” observed in people who were thought to have epilepsy. In the Ancient Hindu Medical text of the Sushruta samhita (600BC), written in Sanskrit, symptoms of “numbness (paralysis), convulsive contortions of the limbs (Akshepa), anaesthesia, and various kinds of pain (Sula)” are described. In Ancient Greece, symptoms such as ‘teeth gnashing’, ‘convulsions’, and ‘screaming like a horse, was, when appropriate, given the Greek verb epilambanein (the term from which epilepsy is derived), meaning “to seize, possess, or afflict.”

Today, epilepsy is defined as,

A disease of the brain defined by any of the following conditions,

1. At least two unprovoked (or reflex) seizures occurring 24 hours apart,
2. One unprovoked (or reflex) seizure and
3. a probability of further seizures similar to the general recurrence risk (at least 60%) after two unprovoked seizures, occurring over the next 10 years.

What is interesting about this ‘disease’ is the aspect which has not been explicitly expressed, the unusual involuntary aspect that defines these abnormal behaviours; abnormal because they are not contextually explicable in any everyday sense. For instance, one’s teeth may gnash due to cold weather. But if this were the case it would not be a seizure. Nor does one feel like they are voluntarily gnashing their teeth, as if this were the case, such behaviours would be explicable without invoking pathology. Basically, teeth gnashing is not a sign of disease if it’s cold, or if you are choosing to gnash your teeth.

I ask, “What are the EEG Results?”

The neurologist looks at me with suspicion and replies, “Your results are normal Ms. Elliott.”

Normal EEG results do not necessarily entail the person does not have epilepsy, as people with epilepsy do not always show abnormal EEG recordings, yet they may typify the same clinical symptoms.

PNES relies heavily on EEG scans for its diagnosis

PNES relies heavily on EEG scans for its diagnosis

As S. J. M. Smith notes: “It is crucial to recognise that a normal EEG does not exclude epilepsy, as around 10% of patients with epilepsy never show epileptiform discharges.”

However, there are other causes of seizures; for example, spinal-cord abnormalities.

I ask again, “what is wrong with me?”

The neurologist replies, ”You are mentally ill”.

A black hole opens up, and I fall down it.

Does the body rule the mind, or does the mind rule the body?

I am paralysed now, hearing the world go by without me, hearing the world trap me in my body; frozen stiff, for a moment, and then another. My eyes glaze over. The left eye slightly contracts and blurs the world into a grey sky. Someone is shouting at me. Someone is being aggressive towards me. I can’t defend myself. I try. I fail. I stop. I try. I fail. I try. My arms shake under the vacillation of power split and opposed in a fractured world, until they are either brought under the rule of the will, or brought under paralysis by the body. Gradually, I feel like I can exert increasing control over my arms. They feel heavy. I pull myself up using the handle on the oven. Now, my legs.

The idea that mental Illness can cause seizures stems from Sigmund Freud. These bizarre symptoms, according to Freud, were caused by emotions and the unconscious mind (repressed energies and drives), and not organic brain abnormalities. They were called hysterical seizures. They were a way of managing pain, by repressing horrible (often sexual) experiences, and somehow converting those experiences into neurological symptoms. But despite the physicality of the symptoms, they were , nonetheless, caused by psychological phenomena.

I ask, “What is my diagnosis?”

The neurologist replies, “Psychogenic non-epileptic seizures. Formerly known as, pseudo-seizures.”

No further tests are done.

I’m given a leaflet. I am told that I will receive notification of an appointment to see a psychiatrist. I leave the neurologists office. I lock myself in the toilet. I cry alone. Tears fall onto the leaflet. I don’t see the neurologist again. It is 2009. I start a degree in Philosophy at the University of Greenwich.

Selim R. Benbadis, M.D., Director of Comprehensive Epilepsy Program and professor at University of South Florida and Tampa General Hospital, is a leading pioneer in the study of PNES. Benbadis claims that physicians have the ability to diagnose PNES with near certainty by using EEG-video monitoring. He describes PNES as attacks that look like epileptic seizures, but are not caused by abnormal neurological activity. They are manifestations of psychological distress and not manifestations of any abnormalities of the body.

Here, what we have, is a dualistic approach to health. The mind and body are separated. The brain is normal and the mind is abnormal. The mind is abnormal so the body is abnormal.

Needless to say, this diagnoses seemed somewhat premature. Despite the remarkable powers of the EEG machine, an EEG recording does not give a comprehensive detailed illustration of what is happening in the brain. What the diagnoses was based on was the absence of abnormal neurological results, and a picture of the kind of seizures I was having, and their frequency, which differed to the type and frequency of epileptic seizures. But this is a heuristic medical judgement that lacks accuracy. And this judgement also led the neurologist into the realm of the unknown, into the realm of an unconscious, ethereal, neurologically independent mind.

It is 2010. I see a psychiatrist.

Dr. Mellers ask, “Has anything bad or traumatic happened in my life?”

I reply, “Yes”.

Dr. Mellers asks, “Could you tell me what happened?”

Dr. Mellers found that higher rates of abuse were reported in patients with dissociative seizures, in comparison with epileptic controls and unselected psychiatric patients in a number of large studies.

Such events which precipitate dissociative experiences do not exclude traumatic abusive experience in adulthood. So the inference goes, people have neurological symptoms, because they were abused. I was told, this is why I am ill.

blogger-julesI am in an ordinary chair. A CBT officer is talking to me. The world appears uncanny in its new two-dimensional reality. It is hollow inside this body. Only the broken skeletons of logic manifest in conversation. The eyes are glazed over. I am gone. I realise I am gone. I come back. I am gone again. A rushing sensation irritates the blood, the lungs suddenly gasp for air, the head jolts to the side, the lips mutter, “I won’t come.” I come back. I apologise. The eyes glaze over. I am gone again. Halfway between ‘reality’ and a ‘dream’, the smoke thickens.

I sit in that ordinary chair, for over a period of 2 years.

Researching the history and philosophy of PNES

At that time, I was subject to the many conceptual issues that I could not articulate, or were articulated onto ears deafened by their doctrine and prejudice. The beliefs of the medical establishment created an atmosphere around me that painted a picture of madness without form; of an unhinged, detached mind that was unknown to the subject, but known to the other. However, over time, my academic training was refined.

Ellese Elliott

Ellese Elliott

In 2012, I begin an MSc in the Philosophy of Mental Disorder at King’s College London. I study at the place where the idea of PNES is practiced; where I am treated. Many fascinating ideas are learned and produced. However, it is 2014. I still have symptoms.

I ask ‘Why do my symptoms persist?’

Dr. Mellers replies ‘You need to completely accept that this disorder is purely psychological. There is nothing wrong with your brain.’

A lengthy discussion occurs.

I say “I need help.”

Dr Mellers replies, “You are a smart girl. I am sure you will work it out.”

Was my philosophical scepticism really holding me back? Does the cure really lie in dogmatism? I wasn’t about to find out. If my philosophy is preventing me from being cured, so be it. I am not willing to be evangelised by the church of psychiatry just yet.

It is July, and I am told that I can no longer do my dissertation on those occupy London protesters who had been sectioned. I hastily commence an in depth philosophical analysis of seizures, and PNES, under the instruction of Professor Derek Bolton.

There are two main arguments that were employed against PNES within my dissertation, that will now be briefly put forward.

Argument 1.

Imagine the EEG was never invented and that there is no evidence that neurological abnormalities underpin epilepsy. Yet, a fantastic machine has been built, the Elliottanatomater, which detects epigenetic coding malformations in patients with seizures, effecting their nervous-system to contract in certain events and prevents electrical signals from being sent to the right places.

However, there is a problem, not with the machine, but with the person in it. He doesn’t show as being epigenetically malformed. There must be something going on psychologically, away from the world of epigenetics and the organic world generally. He has epilepsy. The psychologists are called and they ask him a number of questions. The psychologists find that these seizures come on when he is stressed (which is known to be a cause of epileptic seizures). Also they find that one third of people with epilepsy are seizure free for at least two years with hypnosis and aromatherapy (smelly oils being rubbed into the skin). We also give him a bit of LCT (life coaching therapy), which has a similar success rate. This must prove that epilepsy is psychological and not physiological, right?

Wrong. This inference is based on the state of technological advancement (the EEG might not be a reliable guide), and doesn’t necessarily mean that the seizures are psychological, not physiological. It also draws upon the seeming positive correlation between certain events and certain symptoms, leaving something important out – the body. This leads us on to the second issue.

Argument 2.

The concept of PNES relies on the untenable notion of substance dualism, where the mind is independent of brain function, and they are considered two separate substances. But who today, in the face of much scientific evidence that consciousness is brain-based, and where there is no evidence or logical proof that the mind is independent, subscribes to this view?

Well, apparently, platoons of psychopathology specialists base their profession on it, and the state spends millions of pounds to such platoons to deal with these abused minds which swim around, unknown to their subject, creating all kinds of havoc.

In a paper entitled, ‘The false organic–psychogenic distinction and related problems in the classification of erectile dysfunction’, Benjamin D. Sachs makes a number of points that can be used against the diagnosis of conversion disorder (according to which physical or neurological symptoms are caused by mental or emotional distress):

Sach’s states that this severance

is based on an obsolete view of mind–body distinctions, does not take into account knowledge of the neurobiology of ‘psychological’ disorders, disregards the fundamental meaning of ‘psychosomatic’, is too often diagnosed by exclusion, and may imply to the patient that his ED (or for our purposes PNES) is ‘all in the mind.’

So there are two schools of thought. The first, held by pathologists, asserts that the mind is only the brain at work, and all mental processes can be explained in terms of brain processes. The other school of thought, held by psychopathologists, holds that there are emergent processes of mind that cannot be altogether explained by brain function.

However, as Sachs’ points out, they both hold that the mind is not something entirely other than brain function. Both seemingly reject dualism.

Experimental psychologists, linguists, anthropologists, and other behavioural scientists all methodologically analyze mental processes, but fail to consider brain function, although they would all be likely to agree that all psychological processes are regulated (at least in part) by brain functions. Therefore, they cannot hold that there can be psychogenic dysfunction without the brain.

There is no PNES. It is simply untenable. And I refuse to give over my reason to such nonsense, in the hope of a cure. Seizures can only occur through the mediation of organic processes.

I am in my house. My friend Eliza is here. We are laughing. I start to feel happiness linger into my heart. She is funny. She is smiling. I laugh harder. A pain creeps into the back of my head. The feeling of happiness intensifies. The pain intensifies. I stop laughing.

There will be better days to come. However, I do not base these days on myths. I base them on philosophy and science. And those days will come soon, when the advancement of technology reveals evidence of micro-neurological abnormalities in patients with so called psychological non epileptic disorder, and psychologists incorporate these findings into their discipline for a more holistic view of what it is to suffer from seizures.

*****

Ellese Elliott has a first-class philosophy degree from Greenwich and an MSc in the philosophy of mental disorder from KCL. She is organizing an event to explore how society makes us sick, on Thursday December 4, in London. Details here.

For a more detailed philosophical investigation on the subject of seizures, click here.

Reference List

Glasser, Gilbert.”Reflections of a Previous Editor of Epilepsia.” Epilepsia 50 (2009):349-350. Accessed August 19, 2014. doi: 10.1111/j.1528-1167.2009.02028.x.

Vannemreddy, P., Stone, J., Vannemreddy, S., Slavin, K. “Psychomotor seizures, Penfield, Gibbs, Bailey and the development of anterior temporal lobectomy: a historical vignette.” NCBI. (2010) : 103-107. Accessed November 09, 2014. doi: 10.4103/0972-2327.64630.

Wilson. J. V., and Reynolds, E. H.. “Texts and documents. Translation and analysis of a cuneiform text forming part of a Babylonian treatise on epilepsy,” Medical history 34 (1990): 185. Accessed August 2, 2014.

Bhishagratna, K. “AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE SUSHRUTA SAMHITA WITH A FULL AND COMPREHENSIVE INTRODUCTION, ADDITIONAL TEXTS, DIFFERENT READINGS, NOTES, COMPARATIVE VIEWS,
INDEX, GLOSSARY AND PLATES,” Internet Archive(2008). Accessed Novemeber 07, 2014.https://archive.org/stream/englishtranslati00susruoft/englishtranslati00susruoft_djvu.txt

Magiorkinis, Emmanouil., Sidiropoulou, Kalliopi., Diamantis, Aristidis. “Hallmarks in the history of epilepsy: Epilepsy in antiquity,” Epilepsy and Behaviour 17 (2010) 103. Accessed August 9, 2014. DOI: 10.1016/j.yebeh.2009.10.023.

Fisher, Robert S., Acevedo, Carlos., Arzimanoglou, Alexis., Bogacz, Alicia., Cross, Helen., Elger, Christian E., Engel, Jerome Jr., Forsgren, Lars., French, Jacqueline A., Glynn, Mike.,Hersdorffer, Dale C., Lee, B I., Mathern, Gary W., Moshe, Solomon L., Perucca, Emilio., Scheffer, Ingrid., Tomson, Torbjon., Watanabe, Masako., and Weibe, Samuel. “A Practical Clinical Definition of Epilepsy” Epilepsia 55 (2014) 477. Accessed August 12, 2014. doi: 10.1111/epi.12550.

Meythaler, J M., Tuel S M. , and Cross L L., “Spinal Cord Seizures: A Possible Cause of Isolated Myoclonic Activity in Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury,” Spinal Cord 29 (1991): 557. Accessed August 12, 2014. doi:10.1038/sc.1991.81.

Kaplan, Peter and Fischer, Robert. Imitators of Epilepsy. New York: Demos Medical Publishing Inc., 2005. Accessed August 20, 2014. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zg5T1CsIj7UC&pg=PT338&lpg=PT338&dq=ancient+greece+epilepsy+and+hysteria&source=bl&ots=6DVPrG9uJQ&sig=m3pVEjO73d2kbN624QTcfNs4KLY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=oIIHVLf1JOSN7AbItIGYCQ&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=ancient%20greece%20epilepsy%20and%20hysteria&f=true.

Betts, Tim. “Use of aromatherapy (with or without hypnosis) in the treatment of intractable epilepsy—a two-year follow-up study.” Seizure 12 (2003):534-538. Accessed September 8, 2014. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1059-1311(03)00161-4

The Truth about Psychogenic Non-epileptic Seizures.” Accessed August 12, 2014. http://www.epilepsy.com/article/2014/3/truth-about-psychogenic-nonepileptic-seizures
“Nonepileptic Seizures.” Accessed August 16, 2014.

Selim R Benbadis Leanne Heriaud . “Psychogenic (Non-Epileptic)Seizures, A Guide for Families & Patients.” http://hsc.usf.edu/COM/epilepsy/PNESbrochure.pdf.

Mellars, John D.C..”The approach to patients with “non-epileptic seizures,” Postgrad Med J. 81 (2005): 498–504. Accessed August 17, 2014. doi:10.1136/pgmj.2004.029785. (My Neuro-psychiatrist).

Sachs, Benjamin D. “The false organic–psychogenic distinction and related problems in
the classification of erectile dysfunction” International Journal of Impotence Research 15 (2003): 72-74. Accessed September 12, 2014. doi:10.1038/sj.ijir.3900952.

SAD at Thirty

Posted on November 21, 2014 by
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 SAD at Thirty

Produced by Natalie Steed for QMUL

Winter Light by Helen Hanson

‘Winter Light’ by Helen Hanson

There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons –
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes –

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us –
We can find no scar,
But internal difference –
Where the Meanings, are –

None may teach it – Any –
‘Tis the seal Despair –
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air –

When it comes, the Landscape listens –
Shadows – hold their breath –
When it goes, ’tis like the Distance
On the look of Death –

Emily Dickinson

Natalie Steed writes….

This podcast was commissioned by Tilli Tansey, Professor of the History of Modern Medical Sciences at QMUL, and Thomas Dixon, Director of the QMUL Centre for the History of Emotions. The piece responds to the Witness Seminar, organised by Tilli Tansey, to mark the 30th anniversary of the first publication about Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) in 1984.

I interviewed Norman Rosenthal, the researcher who first wrote about the disorder as well as Jennifer Eastwood and Helen Hanson who are both sufferers of the disorder and who are involved in SADA (Seasonal Affective Disorder Association).

Thomas Dixon and Tilli Tansey discuss their collaboration on this Witness Seminar and reflect on some of the ideas it provoked.In this podcast I wanted to reflect the story of Seasonal Affective Disorder as told in the Witness Seminar but also to try and communicate something of what it might be like to experience the disorder.

Helen Hanson, the current Chair of SADA, describes how she feels her experience of SAD has influenced her work as an artist and conjures an extraordinary image of experiencing the dwindling of light on winter afternoons as as “the hour of the wolf”.

Natalie Steed

 Download and read a full transcript of the SAD Witness Seminar

Watch video clips of Norman Rosenthal talking about SAD

Read an interview with Norman Rosenthal by Jules Evans

Illustrations by Helen Hanson BA SBA – Artist Printmaker (Society of Botanical Artists)

Victorian Tips for Surviving a PhD

Posted on November 20, 2014 by

Eleanor Betts  is a PhD candidate in the School of History at Queen Mary, University of London, researching Victorian representations of children who killed.

Eleanor also writes a National Trust blog about the lives of servants in Ickworth House in 1935. You can follow her on Twitter @BettsEleanor

Not so long ago I was trawling through the dusty pages of a mountainous pile of books in the British Library and I came across this little gem. Printed in a compilation of nineteenth-century periodicals was an article headed, ‘Don’t You Do It, Boys’, from an 1855 edition of the Boy’s Own Magazine. It warned youthful readers against falling to common mistakes made in the process of academic advancement. With dark circles forming themselves as a not-so-attractive feature under very dry, tired eyes, and a back that yearned for freedom from hunching over my key-worn laptop the words of this article struck a chord. Looking beyond the heavy moralistic tone – this only to be expected in Victorian advice manuals written for children – I discovered some tips that I could apply in my every-day life. Now, of course I have not stuck to every one of these nuggets of advice like glue – I am only human after all – but I found them useful in developing a healthier way to approach my thesis. The circles under my eyes have dulled to an acceptable grey and my back no longer grumbles and complains as it once did. I feel happier – free from what I assumed were the trials and tribulations suffered by academics. Here are some points mentioned in the article – enjoy…

Image from Wikimedia Commons

BURNING THE MIDNIGHT OIL:

Don’t believe in the midnight lamp and all that. It is a mistake of the over-eager student to do so. You will suffer for it, if you repeat this blunder. The organic laws are of God’s making, and will not be trifled with. Rather rise early than sit up late.

MAKING THE BEST USE OF TIME:

Don’t waste fragments of time, or neglect them. This is an old exhortation, but it must ring in all our ears till we are the better for it.

ORGANISATION IS KEY:

Don’t allow your books and papers, few or many, to get into confusion. The great mischief of doing this is, that if you happen to be a little indisposed for intellectual exertion when you sit down to your table, if you can’t find readily what you want to begin with, you are apt to make it an excuse for shirking the duty of the house. And dilatory tricks have a knack of self-repetition.

ACHIEVING A WORK-LIFE BALANCE:

Don’t allow your devotion to books to interfere with family and social duties, to shut you out of such good company as is desirable for your age and position. Make it a sacred duty not to neglect old friends, not to “closet” yourself, not to cramp your affections by any conceitedness or recluseness in your habits. Partial culture is a bad thing. Give your nature a wide sweep of operations. Your character will suffer injury if you turn yourself into a bookworm, just as it demands expansion and lots of fresh air. Take plenty of the “milk of human kindness,” as it is offered to you; and you will be a better and wiser man for it hereafter.

AVOIDING THE THEORY TRAP:

Don’t be seduced by the suggestiveness of what you read into forming hasty opinions on philosophical, social, or political questions. Treasure up such observations as you may make in your reading, but avoid yielding to temptations to rash theorising, such as will beset you, for instance, in studying history and biography. You have plenty of time before you; and as to “making foolish haste to be wise,” don’t you do it, boys!

Histories and Theories of the Unconscious. 22 November 2014

Posted on November 3, 2014 by

Histories and Theories of the Unconscious

 Saturday, November 22nd 2014, 10am – 5pm

A day conference on the unconscious mind from its early-modern philosophical origins to its diverse articulations in literature, art and social policy, and its controversial history within the psychoanalytic tradition.

Speakers:

Angus Nicholls (Queen Mary UL), Alexandra Bacopoulos-Viau (New York University), Matt Ffytche (University of Essex), Andreas Mayer (Centre A. Koyré, CNRS/EHESS Paris), Madeleine Wood (Queen Mary UL), Sonu Shamdasani (University College London), John Fletcher (University of Warwick),Elsa Richardson (Queen Mary UL), Emma Sutton (Queen Mary UL), Rhodri Hayward (Queen Mary UL), Arthur Eaton (University College London).

Venue:

Queen Mary University of London. Mile End Road, London E1 4NS
Arts 2 Building, Lecture Theatre.

A sandwich lunch will be provided.

Ticket price: £15 (to cover catering costs).

A book of abstracts is available here as a PDF.

For further information and to book a place, please visit the QMUL e-shop here

Any queries? Please email e.richardson@qmul.ac.uk