[Vwoolf] thoughts on Virginia Woolf's 'suicide'

Tue Jun 19 10:59:33 EDT 2012

A relevant,  balanced, and narrative-focused discussion of mental illness can be found in Prof Gail Hornstein's book, Agnes's Jacket:  A Psychologist's Search for the Meanings of Madness.  

I have followed this thread with interest as well.  Thanks, everyone. 

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-----Original Message-----
From: vwoolf-bounces+carole.desanti=us.penguingroup.com at lists.service.ohio-state.edu on behalf of stephanpickering at cs.com
Sent: Mon 6/18/2012 5:02 PM
To: vwoolf at lists.service.ohio-state.edu
Subject: [Vwoolf] thoughts on Virginia Woolf's 'suicide'

	Shalom & Boker tov...I have followed the discussion with keen interest, confluent with disappointment. Pharmacracy has, since the 1930s, invented 'diagnoses' to 'fit' perceived 'illness', then in turn using pseudoscientific quackery in the form of 'medications' to enforce societal judgements. 'Psychiatric' and 'psychology' are sexist, racialist paradigms -- 'mental illness' (as the work of Thomas Szasz explicates) is a myth, as is 'professional help'. The romanticizing of Virginia Woolf's struggles with her selves (I mean this literally) is, often, caught up in the embrace of quackery by Woolfians who should know better.  

	cf. Marcia Angell, 2004. The truth about drug companies: how they deceive us & what to do about it(Random House), 305pp

	Marcia Angell, 2011. The epidemic of mental illness. Why? The New York Review of Books 58(11)

	Marcia Angell, 2011. The illusions of psychiatry. The New York Review of Books 58(12)

	'Depression', and the array of behaviour associated with it, is caused, in the main, by dying nerve cells in the hippocampus. The hippocampus is a major component in our incarnate brain, consolidating memory information and spatial interpretation. In a brain with functioning neuronal cells, there are signals to the subcallosal cingulate, a small bundle of nerve cells at the base of the hippocampus, and 'moods' are created. 'Depression' is a word I do not use as a noun in my book-in-progress on clairvoyance in Jewish history (where I review most of the major literature). 'Depression' is a process, complex and riddled with theoretical contradictions. But 'depression' is not caused by a lack of seratnin or seratonin metabolites, because 'depressed' individuals often have elevated seratonin. In fact, the brain does produce new cells in the olfactory bulb (the 'smell' detector), and the hippocampus. Increased neuron production in the hippocampus decreases 'depression', viz. one is 'undepressed', so that 'depression' is a degenerative process, a malfunctioning of brain tissue in the hippocampus. The organizational structure of brain tissue cells in the hippocampus, and the subcallosal cingulate, is far more complex than some realise. I refer one to the research of, e.g., Helen Mayberg, David Healy, and many others. Choices one makes should be grounded not in drugs invented to fit 'diagnoses', but what is viable for one's well being. Woolfians should never turn to the quackery of Freud, whose research has been exposed as plagiarizing fraud by Fred Crews et al.

	I believe Virginia Woolf was murdered, on multiple levels, by those around her, the antisemitic maelstroms, Leonard Woolf's own self-hatreds (he was a Jewish non-Jew, as it were) and ignorance...

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