History of Madness – Track 15

Professor Keirsey's Blog

Audio Track 15:  Labeling of “the patient” and criteria of “madness”.

Professor Keirsey had his lecture course on Madness taped on cassettes in 1982.  They were rediscovered after his death by chance and some sections of the tapes were partly recovered. This post is the fifteenth audio track (there was nothing recoverable on the 13th ,14th).  More audio tracks will follow.

Track 1:  The beginning of History of Madness lecture course

He surveys the idea of madness “as far back as we can go”.  At the end of the course, he talks a little about his theory of madness: which he called at the time, “Wholistic Theory of Madness”  based social field theory and Temperament.

Once asked what was the most important thing he wanted people to get from his work, he said:

“I want people to understand that there is no such thing as madness.”

Dr. David West Keirsey

Track…

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Disable Madman: Part II

Professor Keirsey's Blog

Disable Madman
Part II

The European Reform

In 1793 Philippe Pinel took charge of the Salpetriere and Becetre asylums in Paris, the turning point of method in the management of inmates. Pinel found that if inmates were not neglected and brutalized they behaved normally. Pinel discovered “that insanity was curable in many instances, by mildness of treatment and attention to the state of the mind exclusively…”  Thus Pinel resorted to “the management of the mind” by talking to his patients and listening to their complaints. He got to know them and appreciate them, saying “I have never met, except in romances, with fonder husbands, more affectionate parents, more impassioned lovers, more pure and exalted patriots, than in the lunatic asylum, during their intervals of calmness and reason.”

In his 1801 book, Traite Medico-Philosophic sur l’alienation mentale, Pinel envisioned building a helpful asylum for the mad, serviced by medics schooled in…

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History of Madness — Track 12

Track 12: The Use and Abuse of Words

The Fallacy of Objectification: reification.
The English language’s base is Germanic. Greek and Latin are Foreign.

You cannot say the meaning of a word.
The MEANING OF A WORD IS ITS USAGE.

Professor Keirsey's Blog

Audio Track 12: The Use and Abuse of Words

Professor Keirsey had his lecture course on Madness taped on cassettes in 1982.  They were rediscovered after his death by chance and some sections of the tapes were partly recovered. This post is the twelfth audio track (there was nothing recoverable on the 13th, 14th tracks).  More audio tracks will follow.

Track 1:  The beginning of History of Madness lecture course

He surveys the idea of madness “as far back as we can go”.  At the end of the course, he talks a little about his theory of madness: which he called at the time, “Wholistic Theory of Madness”  based social field theory and Temperament.

Once asked what was the most important thing he wanted people to get from his work, he said:

“I want people to understand that there is no such thing as madness.”

Dr. David West Keirsey

Track 12:…

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Disable Madman: Part I

Professor Keirsey's Blog

DISABLE MADMEN
Part I

It is not easy to act-as-if-mad because such action requires ability. The more complicated the action, the more ability required. What medicine men discovered long ago was that by disabling inmates of asylums inmates were not able to continue acting-as-if-mad. Medicine men devised all manner of disabling methods—for three centuries—finally discovering drugs as an easy and efficient means of achieving disability. Thus medical men, having taken charge of those acting-as-if-mad four centuries ago, discovered that they could make the inmates of their madhouse stop acting-as-if-mad by disabling them. Not that inmates, having been disabled, were then able to act effectively, since having been disabled their possible actions were radically reduced. Indeed, all they could do was obey simple commands out of fear of torture.

18^th Century Disabling

Medics began disabling the inmates of asylums in the late 17^th century in order to force…

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Distracting Rituals

Professor Keirsey's Blog

DISTRACTING RITUALS

Anthropologist James Frazer claimed that myth emerges out of ritual during the evolution of religions. In his twelve volumes of The Golden Bough Frazer argues that man progresses from the rituals based on magic, through belief in deities, to science. Believing natural law, man guesses he can influence nature by correctly applying this law: “In magic man depends on his own strength to meet the difficulties and dangers that beset him on every side. He believes in a certain established order of nature on which he can surely count, and which he can manipulate for his own ends.”

However, the natural law man imagines—magic—does not work. When he sees that his pretended natural law is false, man gives up the idea of a knowable natural law and “throws himself humbly on the mercy of certain great invisible beings behind the veil of nature, to whom he now ascribes…

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Productive and Defensive Interaction and Ability

Professor Keirsey's Blog

Productive and Defensive
Interaction and Ability
Some are more able to comply with norms than adapt to circumstances, others more able to adapt to circumstances than comply with norms. Some are more able to interact proactively with others, others more able to interact responsively with others. Proactive compliance differs extremely from responsive adaptation, just as responsive compliance differs extremely from proactive adaptation. Finally, proactive preempting differs from proactive contending, and responsive collaborating differs from responsive accommodating, just as diplomatic ability differs from logistical ability and tactical ability differs from strategic ability.

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Pillars of Madness: Part IV, Disarming Confessions

Professor Keirsey's Blog

THE PILLARS OF MADNESS
Part IV

There are four extraordinarily useful ideas amid the massive tangle of publications on madness, these contributed by four men of genius in the practice of studying and changing seemingly irrational human actions—

[1] The Temperament Base of Madness (Ernst Kretschmer)
[2] Distracting Automatisms (Pierre Janet)
[3] Role Casting Control (Jay Haley)
[4] Disarming Confessions (Alfred Adler)

[4] Disarming Confessions

The fourth idea was long in coming, appearing shortly after the turn of the 20th century. Alfred Adler, an Austrian medic, said that our absurd ritual, whatever its form, is unwittingly designed to conceal from us and our companions that we have a deep-seated and abiding sense of unworthiness. Madness, then, has a job to do, that is, to conceal our dark secret, so that we have an excuse for failing to live up to our expectations and for setting aside one or more of…

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Pillars of Madness: Part III, Role Casting Control

Professor Keirsey's Blog

THE PILLARS OF MADNESS
Part III

There are four extraordinarily useful ideas amid the massive tangle of publications on madness, these contributed by four men of genius in the practice of studying and changing seemingly irrational human actions—

[1] The Temperament Base of Madness (Ernst Kretschmer)
[2] Distracting Automatisms (Pierre Janet)
[3] Role Casting Control (Jay Haley)
[4] Disarming Confessions (Alfred Adler)

[3] Role Casting Control

In the wake of Adler’s magnificent elaboration of Schopenhauer’s rule, Jay Haley, an American word analyst turned counselor, told us at mid-century that self-defense entails a peculiar kind of communication that occurs in those families in which low self-esteem abounds and high self-esteem does not, communication in which family members are exchanging irrational messages while involuntarily and inadvertently denying that they are doing so. Thus he defined defensive behavior as “self-disqualified relationship-defining tactics”, or as “paradoxical role-casting communication”, all family members continuously trying to…

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In My Skin: Moving Past Sexual Abuse

THE 50 MILLION MISSING CAMPAIGN BLOG ON INDIA'S FEMALE GENDERCIDE

One of the issues effecting children in India, that is rarely addressed, is child sexual abuse.  In a 2007 survey conducted by the Government of  India,  53.22% of children in India said they had experienced some form of sexual abuse, and 22% of them extreme forms of sexual abuse or violence.  However, as horrifying as these statistics are, even this is still assumed to be a conservative estimate.  In 1997, in a research survey of adults across 5 major cities in India, 76% of adult women respondents said that they had been sexually abused as children.  India’s conservative stance on sex and sex-related issues not only creates a permissive environment for child sexual abuse, but it also makes it extremely hard  for survivors to overcome the trauma of their abuse even as adults.

So one can well imagine the courage it took for one Indian woman to share her story…

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The Payoff for Acting Crazy

Professor Keirsey's Blog

THE PAYOFF

Some of us use words and tools in such a way that appears to others that we cannot control our use of words and tools. We do this when under threat of being exposed as unworthy. Being found out as unworthy of the concern of our companions is something very few can stand. Whenever the threat arises, something must be done to ward off this dread discovery. This book is about what we do when so threatened.

Though what we do under threat doesn’t seem to make sense, it really does make sense. There’s a payoff. Shakespeare told us this a long time ago. It was said of Hamlet’s bizarre antics: “though this is madness, yet there’s method in it.” However hidden from our inquiry, nonsensical habits always have a reason, a purpose, an aim, an end, an objective, such that they, given the circumstances, make sense. In…

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