On Mon, 21 Jul 2008 07:30:48 -0700, Michael Sylvester wrote: >Scizophrenic symptoms may emulate activities of modern inventions: >in the era of radio,the voices came from the radio,and when TV was >invented the voices came from the TV.
Uh, I'm no expert in the history of clinical psychology/psychiatry but "hearing voices" pre-dates the common use of radios. I'm sure that there are accounts that go back thousands of years (though these may have been interpreted as part of a religious experience) but one can look at the psychological and medical literature in the 19th century and early 20th (pre-radio) to find instances of "hearing voices" as a symptom of a psychological/psychiatric/medical disorder. For those with access to Jstor, the following article provides a case where a person suffering from dementia praecox who reported hearing voices: * The Dynamic Interpretation of Dementia Pr¨cox * Author(s): Adolf Meyer * Source: The American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Jul., 1910), pp. 385-403 * Publisher: University of Illinois Press * Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1413348 So, your statement that schizophrenic symptoms may emulate activities of modern inventions focuses on a coincidence. I would bet that at an earlier time in certain parts of the world some might have focused on how these symptoms reflected on other "contemporary" "inventions", such as getting instructions from God or Satan or some demon or some ancestor or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. >Is there evidence that with all the modern gadgets like cell >phones,ipods and so on that modern schizophrenic patients are >text messaging as a part of their psychiatric syndrome? First, although there are a number of people with schizophrenia who are able to function more or less normally (I have had a few students like this and I'm sure others have as well), it is unclear to me how many of them have cell phones, ipods, and "so on". Once one has identified this group, then one might be able to ask whether their text messaging is similar or different from those folks without schizophrenia. Second, there is the question of how people with schizophrenia would be able to afford these devices and services. I'd bet that those who could afford them probably different systematically from those who can't (who might be in the majority). >Send me something (no pun intended). You really should consider getting a subscription to PsycInfo. You'd be surprised at how reinforcing it can be to get answers on your own instead of asking others (comparable to teaching a hungry person how to fish instead of ...). Also, as shown in Louis Malle's film "Au Revoir Les Enfants" where a French boy gives German soldiers deliberately wrong directions to a location, relying upon what somewhat tells you without verification is likely to misdirect the person who asks. Not that I deliberately misdirect tourists in NYC or anything similar elsewhere... ;-) -Mike Palij New York University [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
