Every time Veterans Day rolls around, I feel emotional. My brother Mike was born on Veterans Day. Today he is 70 years of age. I haven’t seen Mike in quite a while. My thinking about him has changed over the years. As a child, I tried to make contact with him. Mike is severely autistic, […]
My older brother Mike, autistic, low functioning and nonverbal, lived at home until I was 10 years old. I posted a picture taken from that period yesterday and painted a reference portrait. My mother looked everywhere for a place that would take care of Michael. Nobody knew what was wrong with him back in the […]
As I read Steven Heim’s book* I keep finding more and more interesting information. The concept of communication was an important component of cybernetics. In fact Norbert Wiener’s seminal work Cybernetics was subtitled, Control and Communication in the Animal and Machine. The emergence of the field of cybernetics was the result of more than a decade of informal talks […]
[Note: As I mentioned yesterday, I couldn’t resist saving this article from one the unread books in my collection.] What an intriguing prospect. My attraction to this topic stems from my deep desire since I was a child in the 1950s, to communicate with my low functioning, nonverbal, autistic older brother, Michael. Granted, the title […]
It is so very sad that Robin Williams found no way to alleviate his suffering. I’ve read many of the tweets from people who treasured his genius and whose lives had been touched by his wonderful gift. There are a smattering of tweets who call attention to the serious problem of depression and suicide, but […]
Foucaultian Slip? We were visiting one of the relatives who is gravely ill today. Since she sleeps nearly all the time now, I brought my books along to to some reading and writing. I have been reading Foucault’s book, Madness, The Invention of an Idea, and posting my thoughts on this subject, which is very […]
Organic pathology Physical ailments are much easier to recognize than mental disorders. For example, a person with the flu has a fever, aches and pains, and other recognizable signs; there are laboratory tests that can determine whether a person with a sore throat and a fever has an infection. A doctor can successfully treat the […]
The family’s gone. So I thought I’d pick up some light reading. I frequently gravitate toward the philosophy section of the bookstore, and it was there I came upon the book Madness, The Invention of an Idea by Michel Foucault (Foulcault, M. translation: Sheridan, A. Madness, The Invention of an Idea. New York: Harper Perennial Modern […]
Artistry of the Mentally Ill I checked out Artistry of the Mentally Ill, by Hans Prinzhorn from the library a couple of weeks ago. I just started reading it. It promises to be a storehouse of information relevant to understanding human creativity. Prinzhorn (1) was an art historian as well as a psychiatrist and expanded […]
I already did my end-of-year review, but that was on December 30, 2013. I normally write posts toward the end of the day and set them to post automatically at midnight. Usually this wouldn’t be a problem, but in the case of date-sensitive, journal-like posts, it can get confusing. So this is my last post written […]
