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PubMed1996

Mythos and logos in Hesiod's Theogony, circa 700 B.C.

Hesiod's Theogony, a completely preserved poem, is dated from about 700 B.C. It depicts partly a development, partly a situation that has arisen in the course of time in the world. It constitutes an attempt to understand the cosmos as the product of a genealogical evolution, which can be seen as a process of successive separation, differentiation, and hierarchization. In this attempted picture of the world myth and reality are inextricably interwoven. Observations of natural phenomena as far as of congenital malformations are accordingly exaggerated and undergone mythical transformation. Entities enumerated in this genealogical poem, no matter whether they stand for parts and concrete phenomena of the physical world or intellectual properties and abstract concepts, behave, think, and act, and are accordingly though of, in anthropomorphic terms. Monogamy, polygamy, endogamy, exogamy, asexual and sexual reproduction, multiple conceptions and births, dominantly and recessively inherited traits, normal and abnormal offspring, and perceptions and notions on cosmogony, isogamy, and teratogenesis could be observed in the writing of the Theogony and interpreted by rational modern concepts.

Genetics↗
PubMed1991

Poetic license: using the Exner system of Rorschach analysis to understand client writings.

Is it possible to generalize client responses to Rorschach stimuli to their responses to other stimuli in the life space? If so, can we interpret their responses without a formal administration? This paper explores the application of Exner-based Rorschach techniques to client verbalizations and writings. This exploration is conducted by taking "poetic license" with the Exner system and analyzing three pieces of literature: poems by Basho, Ezra Pound, and Siv Cedering Fox. It appears that there is some face validity to the notion that psychological processes can be inferred by interpreting language according to some Exner concepts and techniques.

Creativity↗
PubMed1983

Such nothing is terrestriall: philosophy of mind on Phineas Fletcher's Purple Island.

Phineas Fletcher's poeticized human anatomy is less understood today than in the seventeenth century partly because Fletcher's contemporaries made less rigorous distinctions than we do between science and art as conveyors of truth. The present study shows how the empiricist and materialist terms of the anatomical sections of The Purple Island operate as a foundation for Fletcher's system of human self-knowledge. By embracing the claims of physical science and carrying them to their limits, Fletcher exposes their insufficiency even as he lauds their validity within certain boundaries. His measurement of these boundaries constitutes a document usually overlooked in historical perspectives on the mind/body problem.

Anatomy↗
PubMed1995

"The tempest in my mind": cultural interfaces between psychiatry and literature, 1844-1900.

The professional literature of the first generation of American psychiatrists is replete with poetical passages drawn from the imaginative works of such English authors as Shakespeare, Byron, and Scott as well as the writings of residents of the asylums they tended. A close reading of such passages in the American Journal of Insanity (AJI), the central medium through which members of this nascent profession attempted to "popularize the study of insanity," suggests they were not simply textual ornaments or signs of the underdeveloped state of American psychiatry in the mid-nineteenth century. Indeed, literary manifestations of the imaginative minds of patients and renowned writers were scrutinized by psychiatrists seeking to advance their understanding of mental disease. Moreover, the English authors were often elevated to the status of medical experts and their poetry and prose were commended to fellow medical practitioners as sources of psychological insight. Toward the turn of the century psychiatrists' engagement with these literary forms was less pronounced in the AJI, due in large part to the impact of rising asylum populations and the coming of a culture of positivist medicine. Yet literary influences on psychiatric writing are still evident in this period, indicating the complexity of the cultural interfaces between psychiatry and literature and the importance of examining the historical processes that have served to define and distinguish the enterprise of the psychiatrist from that of the poet.

Culture↗
PubMed1979

Language: perspectives from another modality.

Human languages have been forged in auditory-vocal channels throughout evolution. This paper examines the formal properties of a communication system that has developed in the absence of speech: the sign language of the deaf. The objective is to investigate to what extent the overall form and organization of language is determined by the articulatory and perceptual modality in which it has developed (its transmission system) and to what extent its form and organization represent more fundamental aspects of the human mind (intellect). Experimental and linguistic evidence is brought to bear on the analysis of the sign: studies of coding and processing of signs in memory; of slips of the hand; of historical change in signs over time; the heightened use of language in poetry and wit. American Sign Language differs dramatically from English and other spoken languages in the mechanisms by which its lexical units are modified. For the form of its morphological processes, the mode in which the language develops appears to make a crucial difference. Finally, the issue of cerebral specialization with respect to a visual-manual language is addressed.

Dominance, Cerebral↗
PubMed2003

Neural correlates of segmental and tonal information in speech perception.

The Chinese language provides an optimal window for investigating both segmental and suprasegmental units. The aim of this cross-linguistic fMRI study is to elucidate neural mechanisms involved in extraction of Chinese consonants, rhymes, and tones from syllable pairs that are distinguished by only one phonetic feature (minimal) vs. those that are distinguished by two or more phonetic features (non-minimal). Triplets of Chinese monosyllables were constructed for three tasks comparing consonants, rhymes, and tones. Each triplet consisted of two target syllables with an intervening distracter. Ten Chinese and English subjects were asked to selectively attend to targeted sub-syllabic components and make same-different judgments. Direct between-group comparisons in both minimal and non-minimal pairs reveal increased activation for the Chinese group in predominantly left-sided frontal, parietal, and temporal regions. Within-group comparisons of non-minimal and minimal pairs show that frontal and parietal activity varies for each sub-syllabic component. In the frontal lobe, the Chinese group shows bilateral activation of the anterior middle frontal gyrus (MFG) for rhymes and tones only. Within-group comparisons of consonants, rhymes, and tones show that rhymes induce greater activation in the left posterior MFG for the Chinese group when compared to consonants and tones in non-minimal pairs. These findings collectively support the notion of a widely distributed cortical network underlying different aspects of phonological processing. This neural network is sensitive to the phonological structure of a listener's native language. Hum. Brain Mapping 20:185-200, 2003.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

Versemaking and lovemaking--W. B. Yeats' "strange second puberty": Norman Haire and the Steinach rejuvenation operation.

This article examines the Steinach rejuvenation operation (a vasectomy) which Norman Haire performed on W. B. Yeats in 1934: while this method is now discredited, many others are still used in similar attempts to "cure" old age and restore youthful vitality. The article deals substantially with ideas which were popular among well-read people and intellectuals in the 1920s and 1930s and discusses whether the poet's late-in-life burst of creativity was caused by a medical breakthrough, Haire's more general medical advice, the placebo effect, or by a combination of factors: questions which still have relevance to theories about age, sexuality, and mind-body relationships.

Aging↗
PubMed2001

Poetic talent unmasked by treatment of Parkinson's disease.

Parkinson's disease is typically characterised by loss of function and previous abilities, often accompanied by complications of treatment in later stages of the disease. We report on a patient who newly developed an artistic skill after starting treatment for Parkinson's disease. This case offers insight into the neurology of the artistic process as well as into the pathophysiology of psychiatric adverse reactions to the treatment of PD.

Antiparkinson Agents↗
PubMed1991

Poetic transformations of Yolmo 'sadness'.

One way in which Yolmo Sherpa of Helambu, Nepal, come to terms with loss is to sing of it. The paper seeks to show how one Yolmo 'song of sadness' works to express, evoke and assuage sentiments of funerary grief. Yet to best explore the transformative poetics of the song, we must trace its semantic links to other songs and situations, and so develop a contextual understanding of the experiential contours of Yolmo 'sadness,' the local ethos of emotional avoidance and restraint, and the sociopolitical nature of emotional distress in the Helambu valley. The findings of this analysis lead the author to argue, in contrast with recent ethnographies which treat discourses on emotions as rhetorical strategies rather than as reflections of personal or communal experience, that we need an integrative approach which focuses on the relationship between language and experience, politics and felt emotion.

Cultural Characteristics↗
PubMed1990

Eye references in the Homeric Epics.

After a short introduction to the Homeric Epics, the name of Homer and the time and place where the poems were written, the authors refer to the terms of the eyes and to the verses where they are found. Among these terms, the most important is the term omicron phi theta alpha lambda mu omicron sigma, the first term for the eye in ophthalmology, which has remained throughout the years unchanged. Finally, they refer to the injuries of the eyes, the participation of the two sons of Asclepios in the Trojan campaign and to the verses including the classical paragraph '... a doctor is more capable than the other men ...' Both Epics relating to the cardinal human values: prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice, contain the lofty ideal of human excellence, called by the Greeks alpha rho epsilon tau eta.

Eye↗
PubMed1995

The blindness of John Milton.

John Milton (1608-1674) often has been regarded as the greatest poet of his time, yet he did not compose his most famous work, Paradise Lost, until after he had become blind in both eyes. On the basis of clues in Milton's writings, several possible diagnoses have been advanced to explain his loss of vision. The evidence for and against each theory is presented.

Blindness↗