Mind, Modernity, Madness Press Release
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Francesco Duina on Mind, Modernity, Madness
“I like to call this a ‘fundamental’ book: a work that is grounded in a particular and comprehensive theory of modernity, according to which much of what happens in our societies can be understood in reference to a few key premises and principles. We live, as Greenfeld says, in the reality of nationalism. And nationalism is the cradle in which much of what we know – the sciences, the universe, our bodies, our economic system, our passions and pleasures, and ultimately ourselves – is produced. Therein lies the key to the emergence of madness. Nationalism implies equality, and this generates enormous pressures for self-definition for every one of us. The pressures can be intolerable, and millions of us experience madness as a result.
Though it took me a while to really understand the argument – specifically, to appreciate the nature of nationalism as Greenfeld describes it – over time I have come to appreciate it a great deal. It has informed my teaching as a sociology professor, and it has enabled me to put other theories of nationalism, modernity, and madness in perspective. Ultimately, I inevitably turn again and again to Greenfeld’s arguments, and find them the most compelling and complete. Greenfeld has therefore written, in my mind, a classic. It is as much a work of sociology as it is of political theory or anthropology or psychology or biology. It crosses, forcefully, disciplinary boundaries. It is ambitious and inspiring. In short, it is an indispensable work that is bound to keep people talking for a very long time.”
Francesco Duina is Professor of Sociology at Bates College.
Shakespeare and Mental Illness
Alan A. Stone, Touroff-Glueck Professor of Law and Psychiatry in the faculty of law and the faculty of medicine at Harvard University, in Psychiatric Times, March 12, 2013:
The ancient Greek dramas of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides gave Western civilization its foundational myths: Prometheus, Oedipus, Antigone, and the Oresteia. Two thousand years passed until Shakespeare arrived and, according to literary critics, achieved something perhaps more important: he “invented the human!”1 I think of this invention as the secular conception of the human condition. Yes secular! it is a vision of the moral adventure of life constrained by no religious orthodoxy.
Scholars debate whether Shakespeare was Catholic or Protestant. He often draws on both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, but God is missing from his greatest plays. Nonetheless, to paraphrase Simon Russell Beale, the great British actor, to perform in those plays is to experience “redemption and transcendence.” Shakespeare’s understanding of the human condition miraculously transcends his culture, time, and place… Continue reading
Schizophrenia and Manic-Depressive Illness: What do We Know about Biological Causes?
By David Phillipi
While the technological advancements of recent decades allow us to map the human genome and look at the brain on the molecular level, the enormous amount of data that has been amassed is virtually useless for psychiatrists trying to diagnose their sick patients because the assumed biological causes of schizophrenia and manic-depressive illness have not been found. No brain abnormalities that are specific to either illness or present in all cases have been identified. Nevertheless, the experts who study and treat schizophrenia and manic-depressive illness (MDI) keep the faith (quite literally) that a breakthrough is just around the corner.
For years, genetic research has appeared to be the most promising of the recently opened avenues, but the excitement seems unwarranted by the findings. The relatively large number of chromosomal regions which may be implicated in susceptibility for bipolar disorder means that hope of finding a specific bipolar gene or even a small number of genes must be given up. Some researchers think the way to go is to narrow the search by looking for genes associated with specific aspects of the disease. Of course, this further refinement is only possible because of the huge variation in symptoms and experiences of those who fall under the MDI/bipolar umbrella, and we are once again reminded of the difficulty of defining what this illness or group of illnesses even is. Furthermore, even the distinction between schizophrenia and MDI seems to collapse in light of the genetic linkage data. In Manic-Depressive Illness: Bipolar Disorders and Recurrent Depression (2nd Edition), Drs. Frederick Goodwin and Kay Redfield Jamison write:
While the search for predisposing genes had traditionally tended to proceed under the assumption that schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are separate disease entities with different underlying etiologies, emerging findings from many fields of psychiatric research do not fit well with this model. Most notably, the pattern of findings emerging from genetic studies shows increasing evidence for an overlap in genetic susceptibility across the traditional classification categories. (49)
Genetic studies in the schizophrenia research community lead to pretty much the same hypothesis as with bipolar: genetic susceptibility is most likely polygenic, meaning dependent on the total number of certain genes which may contribute to vulnerability. It must be noted that genetic vulnerability is a condition, not a cause of schizophrenia and bipolar – something else must be acting on this vulnerability. In one way or another, this fact is usually noted in the literature that deals with genetic data, but it is often obscured by a tone of confidence which suggests the information may be more meaningful and explanatory than it truly is.
Even when a specific gene has been well studied across illnesses, its usefulness in understanding genetic susceptibility may be extremely limited. Some studies in both schizophrenia and MDI have found an increased risk of illness for those who possess the short form of the serotonin transporter promoter gene 5-HTT. The thing is, each of us has two copies of this gene, and over two-thirds of us have one long and one short form, meaning that having the normal variant of the gene is the risk factor! If most of us possess a gene which puts us at risk for an illness which only a small minority of people have, then this particular trait is obviously not much of a causal explanation.
Psychiatric Disorders Linked Genetically
By Gil Press
In the Wall Street Journal today, Shirley S. Wang reports on a new study published today in The Lancet, which “provides early evidence that several disorders thought to be distinct appear to have some genetic overlap, and it may help in one day diagnosing mental illness based on faulty biological processes, and not just on behavioral symptoms.”
The study compared the genes of some 33,000 people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression, autism or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and also compared them with a group of nearly 28,000 controls. It “identified several regions of the genome that were associated with all five diseases.”
In Mind, Modernity, Madness, Liah Greenfeld came to a similar conclusion that viewing manic-depressive illness and schizophrenia as distinct illnesses, each with its own biological causes, is wrong. Instead, she argues that they should be placed on a continuum of the complexity of the will-impairment caused by the anomie inherent in modern culture. This argument, linking mental illness to individuals’ (varied) response to the pressures of modern society, could also explain why “the findings don’t mean that an individual with one or more of these gene variants has or will develop the condition,” as the Wall Street Journal article–and the authors of the study–conclude.
The Cradle of Madness
By David Phillippi
In the same 16th century England which brought the world ambition and love (see Madness: A Modern Phenomenon), a new form of mental disease—madness—appeared. While previously known forms of mental illness were temporary, related perhaps to an infection, an accident damaging the brain, a pregnancy, a bodily illness like “pox” (syphilis), or old age, madness was chronic—usually appearing at a fairly young age (without evidence of an organic cause) and lasting till death. Another of its names, lunacy, reflected the suspicion of a physical cause—specifically implicating the waxing and waning of the moon in the periodic alterations in the character and symptoms of the sufferers. The word insanity entered English at that time too, apparently referring to the same phenomenon as madness and lunacy.
The chronic nature of madness made it a legal issue from the very beginning; the first provision in English law for mentally disturbed individuals—referred to, specifically, as “madmen and lunatics”— dates back only to 1541. Also in the middle of the 16th century, Bethlehem Hospital—more commonly known as Bedlam, the world’s first mental asylum—became a public institution, transferred to the city of London in 1547. While there was probably little to be praised in terms of humane treatment and comfortable accommodations, Bedlam continued to expand into the 17th century to meet what seemed to be a growing need to house the severely mentally ill.
Physicians of the day sought to describe and understand this new phenomenon, but their methods, sources, and interpretations were thoroughly mixed. Their reliance on classical Greek and Latin terms of mental disturbance resulted in a liberal blend of (their interpretation of) the old ideas with the new reality, and though they attempted to draw distinctions between conditions, they were far from clear. The cause was usually assumed to be organic. The common attribution of madness to an imbalance of the four humors shows the strong influence of the classical medical understanding. (The use of the term melancholy as a name for mental illness in general or a particular variety of it is a prime example). Insanity might also be explained by the stars under which one was born. Some authors distinguished between organic madness and spiritual madness caused by demonic influence. Still others focused on mental states that could in turn affect the body.
Social Neuroscience
By Mark Simes
In the October 12, 2009, online issue of the New York Times, Op-Ed Columnist David Brooks published a brief article titled “The Young and the Neuro,” recounting his visit to the 3rd Annual Social and Affective Neuroscience Society’s conference. This article, following the trend of most New York Times articles whose subject purports to address the nexus of neuroscience and human behavior, shot to the top of the “Most Popular- E-Mailed” list and landed in my personal inbox from different senders no less than 8 times. Since the focus of my research pertains specifically to the relationship between the social environment and the human brain, receiving this once or twice from colleagues or close friends would not have been extraordinary, however, the sheer popularity of the article and a glaring omission that directly concerns the goals of Liah Greenfeld’s overall project – and my work within this science – makes Brooks’ article worthy of comment here.
It is true that the trend for combining the social and behavioral sciences with neuroscience has recently gained momentum. Brooks points out in his article that, “In 2001, an Internet search of the phrase “social cognitive neuroscience” yielded 53 hits. Now you get more than a million on Google.” It is no secret that such a sub-discipline of neuroscience has been introduced in an effort to bridge the manifest gap between the knowledge ascertained about the human brain and any explanatory relationship to human mental experience; these dual aspects of brain and mind refuse to be happily married in either sickness or health. Thus, some incorporation of the social sciences into neuroscience was inevitable.
Madness: A Modern Phenomenon
By David Phillippi
For most of human history, in most societies, identity was not something one had to go searching for – it was given at birth. For most individuals, the socio-cultural space relevant to their lives was easy to map out, and directions for proper navigation were well understood from a young age. Life may have been extremely difficult in the physical sense, but at least it was not confusing – people knew their proper place.
As Greenfeld has demonstrated in her first major work, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, this changed in 16th century England following the War of Roses, which wrecked the nobility and left the rigidly stratified society of orders in disarray. In its place, a new consciousness emerged–nationalism–the modern consciousness, which redefined the possibilities for life in England and in the other societies to which it soon spread. We call this new consciousness nationalism simply because “nation” was the name given to the society in which it emerged by those 16th century Englishmen who first experienced its dignifying effects.
Nationalism is a fundamentally secular and humanistic consciousness based on the principles of popular sovereignty and egalitarianism. (Three distinctive features which most often take shape along with this consciousness are an open class structure, the state form of government, and an economy oriented towards sustained growth). At the beginning of the 16th century, someone among the newly elevated English aristocracy began equating the word “nation,” which had formerly referred to as a political and cultural elite, with the word “people,” which referred originally to the lower classes. This equation of “nation” and “people” both reflected and reinforced the new reality of English society, where the principles of popular sovereignty and egalitarianism made the nation and all its members an elite. No longer confined to a particular station in life by a closed societal structure ordained by Divine Providence, man became his own ruler, the maker of his own destiny. This elevation in dignity for every member of the nation meant that life in the here and now gained much greater importance–eternity was no longer the realm of the meaningful. This is the source of the secularism of modern society–God was not consciously abolished, but was essentially replaced by man.
Greenfeld Talks to WERS about Gun Violence
Liah Greenfeld interviewed by WERS for a program on gun violence; her segment starts at 4:12
Greenfeld to Speak at HPAIR 2013
Liah Greenfeld will be on a panel discussing “Rule of Law/Government” at the Harvard Project for Asian and International Relations 2013 conference, on Sunday, February 17, 11:30am.
Liah Greenfeld 