Child sex abuse can scar the psyche of the victim and its repercussions can last well into adult life. A combination of factors keeps the victim from not seeking immediate help. These include unwarranted guilt, shame, and fear of retribution by the perpetrator, etc. Moreover, the emotional impact of the trauma is so severe that…
Category: Psychology
Hysterical Men by Mark Micale
1. What is the most remarkable feature of Mark Micale’s work that makes it a valuable supplementation to existing literature on the subject? The most notable feature of the book is its thesis, namely, an affirmation of the concept of Male Hysteria. The short and provocative title of the book is a grand statement in…
Rewriting the Soul by Ian Hacking
1. In which way is memory related to the formation of Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)? According to author Ian Hacking, memory plays a pivotal role in the creation of our personality or our idea of ‘self’. We are just the compounding of our ‘collected describable memories’. The word ‘describable’ is the key here, for it…
Madness: A Brief History by Roy Porter
1. What are some of the author’s charges against diagnostic models of mental illnesses? Through the course of recorded history no other domain of illness has underwent such frequent theoretical upheavals and revisions as had mental illness. This is best borne by the fact that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association…
Enlightenment attitude toward science and its influence on psychology
The Enlightenment is a historically important event for scientific progress. It was ushered in by the collective transformative forces of path-breaking scientific discoveries in the preceding century. Most of these scientific discoveries dispelled long-held religious views of the world. This proved controversial at the time and provoked sharp censure from religious authorities. Yet the force…
Clinical methods for studying the brain by Phineas Gage and Tan.
In the case of Tan, while physicians were aware of a prior brain injury causing speech impairment for the patient, they were unable to localize it within the topology of the brain. Moreover, since all other cognitive functions of the patient remained unaffected after the injury, the task of drawing up the diagnosis and prognosis…
Shutter Island (2009): Relevance to Nursing
The film Shutter Islands holds value for students of psychology, psychiatry and nursing for its portrayal of complex mental illness. The film should be evaluated separately on two counts – first, its entertainment value and second, its relevance to the medical profession. Obviously, the parameters used for the respective evaluations are different. In my view,…
Daniel Dennett’s and John Perry’s contrasting views on the nature of individual identity
Being the same person from one day to the next means to carry forward a whole complex of characteristics across time. This essay will argue that self-identity is constituted of three key components, namely, mind, brain and body. Based on the essays by John Perry and Daniel Dennett, it can loosely be stated that individual…
Where Am I? by Daniel Dennett
Daniel Dennett’s essay is about the roles of brain, body and mind in self-identification. Dennett takes the reader through a list of dizzying circumstances in which the brain is separated from the body and yet the two are in communication through sophisticated technology. The central question in a situation like this is the location of…
C. A. Campbell’s Has The Self ‘Free Will’?
Rubric: What two conditions must be satisfied, according to Campbell, in order for a choice to be an exercise of free will (in the morally significant sense)? How do these two conditions relate to determinism? Also provide a reasoned evaluation of Campbell’s defense of free will. At the outset, there is no consensus among philosophers…