I guess I should have read the full title of the book ... Madness in Civilization - A Cultural History of Insanity from the Bible to Freud, from the Madhouse to Modern Medicine.
Yes that describes the book. I was hoping (delude?) into thinking it would be more like my favorite one word history books, Salt, Cod, and would give more of a global, multinational national, or at least geographic summary of how various cultures regarded the "mad." The book is heavily Western Civilization focused and the cultural aspect deals with art and poetry, not a sociological, immediate and extended family analysis or summary.
I wanted a historical reprise showing how families, tribes and towns deal with the mad. At what point did abandonment or exile become succor and care? How does a community change its group response based on the mad individual's behaviors? Are the reclusive dealt with better than the accusatory?
Instead, I am left with an impression after 400 pages that the expedient response of hiding the mad away, whether to save a family's reputation or to protect a village from violence, was universally chosen.
Scull splits the mad early on into the melancholic and the maniac mad and one is left concluding that spectrum of behaviors may well be many more than one mental illness. His history of how the behavioral aspects of syphilis were long in being identified and helped institutions at least properly categorize if not treat their patients.
I (compulsively?) dog-eared too many pages to reprise Scull's observations or interpretations so I will go directly to the book's last paragraph:
"...much of Western medicine embraced ... that madness had its roots in thee body ... at least for the most severe forms of mental aberration .. biology will not prove to play an important role in their genesis. But will madness, that most solitary of afflictions and most social of maladies, be reducible at last to biology and nothing but biology? ... The social and cultural dimensions of mental disorders ... are unlikely ... to prove to be nothing more than epiphenomenal features of ... human experience"
There was a short article in the New York Times this past week about some research into the early onset or accelerated degeneration of the ends of chromosomes and a lack of adequate telomerase to repair them as a factor in mental illness. Like a discovery that proteins building up in the brain was a cause of Alzheimer's, where will this finding lead? Does it trigger Big Pharma to make synthetic telomerase or does it lead the medical community to a conclude it is a chronic disease that cannot be reversed or halted?
So I am questioning how best do humans care for someone they care for with "madness." I have resolved that madness or mental illness is used too broadly (Scull's chapters on the evolution of the diagnostic manuals surely emphasizes that the more "diseases" identified, the more cures doctors and druggists need to work on. Similarly, his perspective on the increased labeling of autism and attention deficit in children appalls me as a mother when there are centuries of parents who could modify family life and distract or engage a child who was a live wire or shrinking violet.
Finally, Scull does not discuss the most current sociological or at least common cultural pressures to accept behaviors that in days of old were considered "mad" or threatening to community morals. If we define mental illness as thought patterns that deviate substantially from the "accepted norm," isn't it a person's brain rather than their physical features and hormones that is telling them what gender they are and/or whom they should mate with? Are addictions and substance abuse in part a function of availability of misused chemicals? Scull discounts the theory of prior centuries which in essence deemed madness as a consequence on the child for the sins of the father ... why is there no discussion about latter centuries, the present, where society is attempting to abolish the recognition of dissimilar or in fact, unique physical attributes and traits to the demise of genealogical heritage, yet minutely striating mental expressed phenomena to a point where almost everyone can be labeled as deviating from the "norm." We will all be the same ... uniformly crazy.
Sunday, January 31, 2016
Thursday, January 28, 2016
The Burial at Thebes
Aah, a 79 page book that I could read while dinner was baking. Yesterday's New York Times reviewed a production of The Burial at Thebes. The critic panned the costume and scenery as chintzy and a distraction to the beautiful translation of the tale of Antigone by Seamus Heaney.
That was all I needed to read to jump on the library's web site, reserve it and pick it up on the way home from work (a transaction that was just as smooth and efficient as on-line orders of cases of wine at Empire).
It really was a nice intermezzo to all the political intrigue I have been plowing through in The Devil's Chessboard and then Interlock. Also a bit of a segue to Madness in Civilization which I hoped to have finished last night but didn't. Obviously, Antigone is the daughter of Oedipus so there's the interlock between books and her plight is a confrontation with absolute governmental authority versus human laws.
And of course, Seamus is magnificient. Greek drama in a brogue. The explicit conscientiousness of meter determined by character. This morning I just ordered this play The Cure at Troy (Sophocles Philoctetes). Plan also on looking online for copies to send to Houston for those lucky prep school scholars who my son treats to Greek after they finish Latin IV by midterm.
So a review as short and sweet as the playscript. All the world's a stage and the plot is always recurring.
That was all I needed to read to jump on the library's web site, reserve it and pick it up on the way home from work (a transaction that was just as smooth and efficient as on-line orders of cases of wine at Empire).
It really was a nice intermezzo to all the political intrigue I have been plowing through in The Devil's Chessboard and then Interlock. Also a bit of a segue to Madness in Civilization which I hoped to have finished last night but didn't. Obviously, Antigone is the daughter of Oedipus so there's the interlock between books and her plight is a confrontation with absolute governmental authority versus human laws.
And of course, Seamus is magnificient. Greek drama in a brogue. The explicit conscientiousness of meter determined by character. This morning I just ordered this play The Cure at Troy (Sophocles Philoctetes). Plan also on looking online for copies to send to Houston for those lucky prep school scholars who my son treats to Greek after they finish Latin IV by midterm.
So a review as short and sweet as the playscript. All the world's a stage and the plot is always recurring.
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
Interlock - Art, Conspiracy and the Shadow Worlds of Mark Lombardi
This was supposed to be my "L" biography, another artist, one famous as a conceptual artist. Like my reading of Cornell who only did his little boxes, both of them were unknown to me before I assembled my 2016 alphabetic list.
Mark Lombardi, a good Catholic boy from Syracuse (whose relative was Tarky Lombardi of nYS Legislature fame), eventually an SDSer, eventually a Houstonian, could not draw despite his masters from Syracuse. Yet he wanted to be a famous artist so his life's work was a series of interconnected webs, hubs of who's who of the political, banking and criminal worlds. He was an investigator with boxes full of index cards (much like Cornell's boxes of scraps of fabric and paper) but his became a volatile mine of trails of corruption. Sort of a Jack Anderson with a French curve.
I really can't say this is art. This is superb investigative reporting accomplished only with names and lines.
What engaged me most about this book is how close it followed The Devil's Chessboard in terms of conspiracies, movement of confiscated gold from WWII, spies, etc etc. There is not much humor in the book, save for the food fight at the Contemporary Art Museum of Houston in 1977 where the Kilgore Rangerettes entertained and Lombardi punched W.
The bushes, from Prescott to Jeb, are not depicted as good politicians, rather as money-grabbing oilmen, interlocked with too many other infamous people. But it is not just the Republicans who fare poorly from Lombardi's research, so do the popes.
What is unusual about the book is the analytical re-interpretation and verbal restructuring of all the intrigue Lombardi drew into a more classical chronology by the author, Patricia Goldstone, which is easily half of the book's length. Many she felt this was necessary as she was not granted permission to include any of Lombardi's drawings in the biography. In addition, most of fhis work is either under lock and key at MOMA or scurried away to private collections in Germany.
Lombardi was found dead in his NYC apartment under mysterious circumstances in 1999 shortly after a successful exhibit and major sales of his art. Goldstone questions whether it was suicide or murder, but lacks a "French curve" to tie motives and associations together.
It is a book to read during an election year. The candidates could all become a part of this international banking scandal if they are not profiting from it already. Advisers and federal agency heads whose names splatter the news are here in this book. Voting for someone outside this web is naive, dangerous and probably necessary, damn the monetary crisis and pending worldwide depressions.
Not an easy book to read.
Addendum: after writing this, Goldstone's digressions on history as a rhizome kept angling through my thoughts and decided to comment on that analogy. At book club Tuesday night discussing The Boy Kings of Texas, some members did not like the "bouncing around" of Domingo's memoir, looking for more chronology. Instead he writes about events in family members lives and their impacts on him as something happening reminds him of a predecessor like occurrence. Such is the way everyday people explain themselves to strangers ... "did I ever mention when such and such happened to me/my family." But the me and or my family is a node in an interlock. People are born, live and die so there is an imposed time dimension to humanity but it those associations and passing on of history, making connections for the future while drawing on a past that is the basis of a human history rhizome without easily perceived beginning or end. I would like to think it will be an iris rhizome, spreading beauty and pleasure; the Goldstone/Lombardi interlocking rhizome seems more like the underground colony that surfaces in puffball mushrooms.
Mark Lombardi, a good Catholic boy from Syracuse (whose relative was Tarky Lombardi of nYS Legislature fame), eventually an SDSer, eventually a Houstonian, could not draw despite his masters from Syracuse. Yet he wanted to be a famous artist so his life's work was a series of interconnected webs, hubs of who's who of the political, banking and criminal worlds. He was an investigator with boxes full of index cards (much like Cornell's boxes of scraps of fabric and paper) but his became a volatile mine of trails of corruption. Sort of a Jack Anderson with a French curve.
I really can't say this is art. This is superb investigative reporting accomplished only with names and lines.
What engaged me most about this book is how close it followed The Devil's Chessboard in terms of conspiracies, movement of confiscated gold from WWII, spies, etc etc. There is not much humor in the book, save for the food fight at the Contemporary Art Museum of Houston in 1977 where the Kilgore Rangerettes entertained and Lombardi punched W.
The bushes, from Prescott to Jeb, are not depicted as good politicians, rather as money-grabbing oilmen, interlocked with too many other infamous people. But it is not just the Republicans who fare poorly from Lombardi's research, so do the popes.
What is unusual about the book is the analytical re-interpretation and verbal restructuring of all the intrigue Lombardi drew into a more classical chronology by the author, Patricia Goldstone, which is easily half of the book's length. Many she felt this was necessary as she was not granted permission to include any of Lombardi's drawings in the biography. In addition, most of fhis work is either under lock and key at MOMA or scurried away to private collections in Germany.
Lombardi was found dead in his NYC apartment under mysterious circumstances in 1999 shortly after a successful exhibit and major sales of his art. Goldstone questions whether it was suicide or murder, but lacks a "French curve" to tie motives and associations together.
It is a book to read during an election year. The candidates could all become a part of this international banking scandal if they are not profiting from it already. Advisers and federal agency heads whose names splatter the news are here in this book. Voting for someone outside this web is naive, dangerous and probably necessary, damn the monetary crisis and pending worldwide depressions.
Not an easy book to read.
Addendum: after writing this, Goldstone's digressions on history as a rhizome kept angling through my thoughts and decided to comment on that analogy. At book club Tuesday night discussing The Boy Kings of Texas, some members did not like the "bouncing around" of Domingo's memoir, looking for more chronology. Instead he writes about events in family members lives and their impacts on him as something happening reminds him of a predecessor like occurrence. Such is the way everyday people explain themselves to strangers ... "did I ever mention when such and such happened to me/my family." But the me and or my family is a node in an interlock. People are born, live and die so there is an imposed time dimension to humanity but it those associations and passing on of history, making connections for the future while drawing on a past that is the basis of a human history rhizome without easily perceived beginning or end. I would like to think it will be an iris rhizome, spreading beauty and pleasure; the Goldstone/Lombardi interlocking rhizome seems more like the underground colony that surfaces in puffball mushrooms.
Monday, January 11, 2016
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
A more unusual type of biography to this year's efforts: Homage to Catalonia focuses on a brief period of time in 1937 when George Orwell went to Spain and fought in the Spanish Civil War. I guess I selected this book because I have a gaping whole in my knowledge of history; I never could figure out what they were fighting for nor who were the good and bad guys, except for wanting to get rid of Franco. And why was there such an allure and attraction?
Orwell's book is rather like a diary. He relates where he is, who he is with, and the boredom of war. They have no uniforms, few guns, miserable weather, and enemies who when the fighting stops meet you at the cafe back in the city. So I am even more baffled about the entire cataclysm.
I do on the other hand have a different perspective on Orwell. I hope my impression was not too colored by the introduction from Lionel Trilling (felt I was back in English Lit class) who describes Orwell as a virtuous man. His commentary often seems like a back-handed compliment: that his stylistic approach to the book is overly simple showing the mundane concerns of an average man with ideals that are personal not lofty.
Against the bombast and grandeur of Allen Dulles, George Orwell is a pleasant contrast, someone you might want to meet often at the above mentioned cafes. For a bit now, I will quote several sections that not only convey the ambiance of the shifting sides but more importantly are written with such clarity and humanity that elevate the man, if not the war itself.
" ... this was the kind of thing that happened every year in Barcelona ... an Italian journalist, a great friend of ours (Orwell's wife was in Spain with him), came in (see cafes above) with his trousers drenched in blood. He had gone out to see what was happening and had been binding up a wounded man on the pavement when someone playfully tossed a hand-grenade at him, fortunately not wounding him seriously. I remember his remarking that the Barcelona paving stones ought to be numbered; it would save such a lot of trouble in building and demolishing barricades. And I remember a couple of men from the International Column sitting in my room at the hotel when I came in tired, hungry, and dirty after a night on guard. Their attitude was completely neutral, If they had been good party-men they would, I suppose, have urged me to change sides, or even have pinioned me and taken away the bombs of which my pockets were full; instead they merely commiserated with me for having to spend my leave in doing guard duty ..."
After trying to get information about a jailed officer at a police station, Orwell writes: "He would only tell me that the proper inquiries would be made. There was no more to be said; it was time to part. Both of us bowed slightly. And then there happened a strange and moving thing. The little officer hesitated a moment, then stepped across and shook hands with me. I do not know if I can bring home to you how deeply that action touched me. It sounds like a small thing, but it was not. You have to got to realize what was the feeling of the time -- the horrible atmosphere of suspicion and hatred, the lies and rumours circulating everywhere, the posters screaming ... that I and everyone like me was a Fascist spy ... I record this, trivial though it may sound, because it is something typical of Spain -- of flashes of magnanimity that you got from Spaniards in the worst of circumstances ... They have, there is no doubt, a generosity, a species of nobility, that do not really belong to the twentieth century."
And as he wraps up his brief book: "When you have had a glimpse of such a disaster as this ... the result is not necessarily disillusionment and cynicism. Curiously enough the whole experience has left me with not less but more belief in the decency of human beings. And I hope the account I have given is not too misleading. I believe that on such an issue as this no one is or can be completely truthful. It is difficult to be certain about anything except what you have seen with your own eyes, and consciously or unconsciously everyone writes as a partisan."
Which brings me full circle to my unresolved matter of the partisanship woven into The Devil's Chessboard. I needed a simple book in a human voice after that intrigue.
Orwell's book is rather like a diary. He relates where he is, who he is with, and the boredom of war. They have no uniforms, few guns, miserable weather, and enemies who when the fighting stops meet you at the cafe back in the city. So I am even more baffled about the entire cataclysm.
I do on the other hand have a different perspective on Orwell. I hope my impression was not too colored by the introduction from Lionel Trilling (felt I was back in English Lit class) who describes Orwell as a virtuous man. His commentary often seems like a back-handed compliment: that his stylistic approach to the book is overly simple showing the mundane concerns of an average man with ideals that are personal not lofty.
Against the bombast and grandeur of Allen Dulles, George Orwell is a pleasant contrast, someone you might want to meet often at the above mentioned cafes. For a bit now, I will quote several sections that not only convey the ambiance of the shifting sides but more importantly are written with such clarity and humanity that elevate the man, if not the war itself.
" ... this was the kind of thing that happened every year in Barcelona ... an Italian journalist, a great friend of ours (Orwell's wife was in Spain with him), came in (see cafes above) with his trousers drenched in blood. He had gone out to see what was happening and had been binding up a wounded man on the pavement when someone playfully tossed a hand-grenade at him, fortunately not wounding him seriously. I remember his remarking that the Barcelona paving stones ought to be numbered; it would save such a lot of trouble in building and demolishing barricades. And I remember a couple of men from the International Column sitting in my room at the hotel when I came in tired, hungry, and dirty after a night on guard. Their attitude was completely neutral, If they had been good party-men they would, I suppose, have urged me to change sides, or even have pinioned me and taken away the bombs of which my pockets were full; instead they merely commiserated with me for having to spend my leave in doing guard duty ..."
After trying to get information about a jailed officer at a police station, Orwell writes: "He would only tell me that the proper inquiries would be made. There was no more to be said; it was time to part. Both of us bowed slightly. And then there happened a strange and moving thing. The little officer hesitated a moment, then stepped across and shook hands with me. I do not know if I can bring home to you how deeply that action touched me. It sounds like a small thing, but it was not. You have to got to realize what was the feeling of the time -- the horrible atmosphere of suspicion and hatred, the lies and rumours circulating everywhere, the posters screaming ... that I and everyone like me was a Fascist spy ... I record this, trivial though it may sound, because it is something typical of Spain -- of flashes of magnanimity that you got from Spaniards in the worst of circumstances ... They have, there is no doubt, a generosity, a species of nobility, that do not really belong to the twentieth century."
And as he wraps up his brief book: "When you have had a glimpse of such a disaster as this ... the result is not necessarily disillusionment and cynicism. Curiously enough the whole experience has left me with not less but more belief in the decency of human beings. And I hope the account I have given is not too misleading. I believe that on such an issue as this no one is or can be completely truthful. It is difficult to be certain about anything except what you have seen with your own eyes, and consciously or unconsciously everyone writes as a partisan."
Which brings me full circle to my unresolved matter of the partisanship woven into The Devil's Chessboard. I needed a simple book in a human voice after that intrigue.
Sunday, January 10, 2016
The Devil's Chessboard - Allen Dulles
Being nagged by the library to bring back this overdue book. Finished reading it days ago, but taking days as well to process it and figure out what I want to blog about it.
Let's go back to the mid-60s and career aptitude tests in high school. The counselor is shocked and unprepared because I am the only one whose suggested career comes out as "spy." This does not seem unusual to me; it seems natural and something I want to do and excel at, notwithstanding the first couple of 007 movies. I have an essence inside me that longs to serve my country, preserve it, defend it without being in the military. Naively, I assumed there would be borderline actions as I spy I would have to take, but the end goal seemed to justify them.
Of course, at that time Allen Dulles was securely ensconced in the CIA. Although the book details all the Skull and Bones Yalies who got almost automatically recruited, the book does not mention hiring female undercover agents.
I remember more news stories about his brother John Foster than anything untoward about Allen Dulles ... just goes to show you how perfect his reign and control were. The book traces his career from the inauguration of the CIA under Truman through LBJ's presidency. David Talbot goes back to the beginning and lays over 400 pages of foundation to lead up to the second half of the book which is another reprise of the JFK assassination. All that goes before does make a conspiracy seem more plausible than other attempts.
I am left with two problems I still cannot settle in my mind. Dulles comes off as worse than Machiavelli, worse than Rasputin, worse than Cardinal Richelieu, and one is left feeling that there are not enough circles in hell to place him. Yet where does patriotism and defense of country against nations determined to end democracy become evil. Dulles saw the danger of Communism but did not see its failures to keep an internal economy going. He seemed to fight institutions and theories with his powerful intellect and ability to align allies and pull together multiple self-serving motives. I cannot fathom how he could cope with the rise of religious fanaticism and lone assassins.
The second gnawing problem I have with the book is my well developed skepticism that all political writings advocate one extreme position or another. A quarter of a century working for the budget office ingrained in me a sense of "neutral competence" writing, one that articulates the pros and cons, makes a recommendation, but has sufficient thought behind it to comfortably entertain a change in policy. As a "historical" biography, I got skeptical about David Talbot's ultimate neutrality.
Here are several quotes from the Devil's Chessboard that struck me and made me rethink my spy above all else mindset:
From the prologue: "Our country's cheerleaders (don't like this word) are wedded to the notion of American exceptionalsim. But when it comes to the machinations of power, we are all too similar to other societies and ones that have come before us. There is an implacable brutality to power that is familiar throughout the world and throughout history. And no matter where power rules. there is the same determination by those in high places to keep their activities hidden."
Describing Dulles' relationship with his wife: "But many years later, Clover (his wife) would write a more honest assessment of her husband in a diary that she left for her children. By then, she felt no obligation to window-dress their marriage. 'My husband doesn't converse with me, not that he doesn't talk to me about his business, but that he doesn't talk about anything ... I took me along time to realize that when he talks it is only for the purpose of obtaining something ... He has either to be making someone admire him, or to be receiving some information worth his while; otherwise he gives one the impression that he doesn't talk because the parson isn't worth talking to."
"Dedicated to the dark necessities of expanding American power, the security complex began to take on a hidden life of its own, untethered from the checks and balances of democracy. Sometimes CIA officials kept the White House and Congress informed; often they did not. When ... NBC News asked Dulles if the CIA med its own policy, the spymaster insisted that during his tenure he had regularly briefed congressional committees about the agency's budget and operations. But, he added. Congress generally preferred to remain blissfully ignorant of the distasteful things down in the government's name."
This was a book to read before a presidential election ... who has the talents to hold our own, vis a vis the world and our citizens and governmental agents.
Let's go back to the mid-60s and career aptitude tests in high school. The counselor is shocked and unprepared because I am the only one whose suggested career comes out as "spy." This does not seem unusual to me; it seems natural and something I want to do and excel at, notwithstanding the first couple of 007 movies. I have an essence inside me that longs to serve my country, preserve it, defend it without being in the military. Naively, I assumed there would be borderline actions as I spy I would have to take, but the end goal seemed to justify them.
Of course, at that time Allen Dulles was securely ensconced in the CIA. Although the book details all the Skull and Bones Yalies who got almost automatically recruited, the book does not mention hiring female undercover agents.
I remember more news stories about his brother John Foster than anything untoward about Allen Dulles ... just goes to show you how perfect his reign and control were. The book traces his career from the inauguration of the CIA under Truman through LBJ's presidency. David Talbot goes back to the beginning and lays over 400 pages of foundation to lead up to the second half of the book which is another reprise of the JFK assassination. All that goes before does make a conspiracy seem more plausible than other attempts.
I am left with two problems I still cannot settle in my mind. Dulles comes off as worse than Machiavelli, worse than Rasputin, worse than Cardinal Richelieu, and one is left feeling that there are not enough circles in hell to place him. Yet where does patriotism and defense of country against nations determined to end democracy become evil. Dulles saw the danger of Communism but did not see its failures to keep an internal economy going. He seemed to fight institutions and theories with his powerful intellect and ability to align allies and pull together multiple self-serving motives. I cannot fathom how he could cope with the rise of religious fanaticism and lone assassins.
The second gnawing problem I have with the book is my well developed skepticism that all political writings advocate one extreme position or another. A quarter of a century working for the budget office ingrained in me a sense of "neutral competence" writing, one that articulates the pros and cons, makes a recommendation, but has sufficient thought behind it to comfortably entertain a change in policy. As a "historical" biography, I got skeptical about David Talbot's ultimate neutrality.
Here are several quotes from the Devil's Chessboard that struck me and made me rethink my spy above all else mindset:
From the prologue: "Our country's cheerleaders (don't like this word) are wedded to the notion of American exceptionalsim. But when it comes to the machinations of power, we are all too similar to other societies and ones that have come before us. There is an implacable brutality to power that is familiar throughout the world and throughout history. And no matter where power rules. there is the same determination by those in high places to keep their activities hidden."
Describing Dulles' relationship with his wife: "But many years later, Clover (his wife) would write a more honest assessment of her husband in a diary that she left for her children. By then, she felt no obligation to window-dress their marriage. 'My husband doesn't converse with me, not that he doesn't talk to me about his business, but that he doesn't talk about anything ... I took me along time to realize that when he talks it is only for the purpose of obtaining something ... He has either to be making someone admire him, or to be receiving some information worth his while; otherwise he gives one the impression that he doesn't talk because the parson isn't worth talking to."
"Dedicated to the dark necessities of expanding American power, the security complex began to take on a hidden life of its own, untethered from the checks and balances of democracy. Sometimes CIA officials kept the White House and Congress informed; often they did not. When ... NBC News asked Dulles if the CIA med its own policy, the spymaster insisted that during his tenure he had regularly briefed congressional committees about the agency's budget and operations. But, he added. Congress generally preferred to remain blissfully ignorant of the distasteful things down in the government's name."
This was a book to read before a presidential election ... who has the talents to hold our own, vis a vis the world and our citizens and governmental agents.
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