A Day in the Life

For those of you who are wondering, a palinode is a poem in which a poet retracts what he said in a previous poem. OK , so this isn ’t a poem, but it is a blog in which I would like to retract something which I said previously and, I think, unfairly, about the film “The Soloist”, starring Robert Downey Jnr . and Jamie Foxx . The blog was entitled “Mediocrities of the World, I Absolve You”, and was an attempt to explain, in response to one journalist’s claims, why so-called positive images of mental ill health in the movies are sometimes just as irksome as their negative counterparts. In particular, I focused on the “tortured genius” stereotype, which Foxx ’s portrayal of a cello-playing homeless man, possibly experiencing the symptoms of schizophrenia, seemed to embody. However, having now seen the film in its entirety (I had only previously seen the trailer), I now find that I liked the film immensely and found it really to be a sensitive and respectful portrayal of both homelessnes...

I am writing this post because I recently borrowed a book from a friend entitled, "Ask and it is Given. Learning to Manifest Your Desires. The Teachings of Abraham" by Esther and Jerry Hicks. My friend had been so taken with the book that she felt that I should read it. Indeed, she wants to give a talk on its "teachings" at the Pathways Group (the group run by my local mental health residential unit for the long-term mentally ill) as she feels that what is contained therein has genuinely changed her life. Indeed, she recently claimed, "no one need ever suffer from depression or psychosis ever again", because of what she had found in the book. However, I have reservations about this for a number of reasons. It is not that I have anything against helping yourself, but I have long held an aversion towards the so-called "self-help" industry. And it would seem that it is, indeed, some sort of industry, producing books which sell in to the millions. My...

The above title is taken from a quote by William Goldman, the Hollywood screenwriter whose credits include the brilliant "Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid", and it refers to his belief that prior to a movie's release, nobody in Hollywood has any real idea how well a film will do. No matter how well you think you know the public mind, you never really do. And, I believe, one could use Goldman's quote in a similar way to describe psychiatry. For, the more research I do on the subject, it seems that for every theory about psychiatric illness that is espoused, there is always someone else out there who thinks differently, or has done research to prove otherwise. This seems particularly true of schizophrenia. Is it an illness, or is it, as some would argue, a "state of being", for example? Is it caused by a mere imbalance of chemicals in the brain (the medical, dopamine model) or is it more to do with some emotional trauma and is really a form of post-trauma...

I am writing this blog because my very dear American blogging friend, dcrelief , recently wrote, (after I had made a comment on her blog saying that I was pleased that Canada had won the men's hockey final against the USA in the Winter Olympics) that her country "must have the worst reputation in the world". "I am so very, very sorry", she wrote. Well, for a start, I don't think there's any need for dc to be sorry. The responsibility for the reputation of America in the world hardly lies at her door, or, for that matter, to my mind, at that of the larger American public. That is not to say, however, that the reputation of America has not taken a few knocks in the recent past, and America-bashing seems to have become something of a cultural phenomenon, not only where you would expect it (i.e in parts of the fundamentalist Islamic world where America is regarded as "the Great Satan"), but also in the western world and my own country, whose bond w...