Psychiatry And Winter Ruminations

Cold Thinking
The cold spell shows no sign of easing in the near future ; it is apparently the coldest continuous spell since 1985 so at least we shouldn't have to put up with it too often. Below is a picture of the fountain in the old railway station square, which gives an idea of what is happening.



Despite the weather I decided to venture out from the cocoon my house has become to the English Library in Beaumont, to hear a talk by one of the members on a book he has written and which has just been published. Albert Rothenburg is a professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School and his book, called Madness And Glory, is a novel based around the actions of man named Pinel during the French revolution. Albert claims Pinel was the first ever psychiatrist. At the time, those deemed insane for whatever behavioural, social or political reason were normally locked up, chained and left to rot, perhaps occasionally being brought out for public entertainment. Pinel apparently changed all that (or started the change). I learned some useful nuggets both about psychiatry and the French revolution and so was pleased that I went.

After the talk I asked Albert for a definition of sanity. He replied that a psychiatrist would never use the word. There was an official definition but it was a legal one. So what happens when a court seeks expert advice as to whether a defendant could be considered insane? Albert said it was a matter of the defendant's grasp of reality. And the definition of reality....? Albert dodged again by saying that definition was legal too. I wanted to pursue the point further but wanted also to let others ask their questions so I let the matter drop for the time being. I do think concept definition must be a problem in psychiatry, particularly where there are no clinical indicators, but have little idea how psychiatrists go about resolving it.

On the drive to Beaumont I started to ruminate on what I think of as “triggers” in nature; conditions that make things happen or start to happen. I might not have gone to the talk had the day been warm and sunny; as it was, the weather provided an incentive, a trigger, to escape from the house.

But what was exercising my mind was the type and reason for such triggers in nature. Temperature is obviously one trigger. The warm autumn started my bulbs growing and the recent cold has totally stopped them. Hibernating animals, for instance, also respond to temperature to determine when they will arouse from hibernation and temperature rather than time seems to govern bird migrations. Water can be another trigger; most deserts have a form of spring season that occurs after rainfall and there are sticks of apparently dead wood that you can buy in garden centres that sprout when put in water. Animals too can use water as a trigger, as with fish eggs in deserts. Time, in some sense, is yet another, although I can think of few examples. Animals have a normal gestation period (an example of elapsed time) and some also have a more or less fixed spawning time (point in time). Crabs and turtles come ashore on some tropical islands to spawn, mate or whatever at known times of the year. Then there is fire as a a trigger for some seeds, global catastrophe for spurts in variety of species and, finally, the only other trigger I could think of, light also can play the same rôle. For bats, for instance, and some flowers open only when the sun is on them, closing if a passing cloud throws a shadow.

This is all probably elementary for a biologist but it caused me to wonder how these triggers came to evolve over what must gave been many millennia of widely varied climatic conditions. Only time as a trigger, and then only where the climate is even over a year, could have been constantly appropriate and yet time seems to play a minor role. And there are still some examples I find difficult to explain: the flowers that open only when the sun is on them, for example. The purpose of the flower is to attract insects and I know of no insect that buzzes around only when the sun is on it. Solar panels for insects haven't evolved yet, as far as I know. That could be my lack of biological knowledge or it could be an error in evolution, evolution being a fairly hit or miss affair. A problem with trying to puzzle out this kind of thing is that I seldom know which plants or animals have become extinct, perhaps because conditions changed and a vital trigger became inappropriate. Ah well, it's strange what thoughts a winter afternoon and an idle mind can evoke. Maybe I should stop musing on subjects I don't know enough about.

The trouble is I got used to playing the role of intelligent idiot early in my IT career. People who knew a lot more about IT than I did at the time used me to think of possibilities that they could not or would not or start a new train of thought because their experience constrained their thinking. It's a role you can play for only a short time in any one sphere of activity because you gain experience and thus you too become similarly constrained.

Footnote
After proposing to take my idea of a filmed portrait of the village to the mayor and getting the whole village involved, friend Daniel has backed out altogether. He thinks the idea is too ambitious and doesn't want to pursue it. I think something new and ambitious is just what we both need. Anyway, I shall continue; it will at least make me learn to use my camcorder more effectively and I'll do what I can with the editing software I have.