Posted by: Faechild @ 7:43 PM

Friday, September 03, 2004  

The origin of maddness....



This is my second attempt at this entry. Originally I opened it with a paragraph that argued that the emotional plight suffered by my generation and the one before us was spoon fed to us by our parents. After reading it I realized that my initial view on the topic was shortsighted,so I scrapped it and now I am starting it again.


Initially what led me to this subject was the topic of american pop culture and it's effect on the status quo. Take the 1950's series "Lassie". Lassie provides us with a family model that helped to shape and mold what we as a culture deem as the wholesom american family. Sure some of the content itself is dated but the sentiment behind the series still remains as one of the key ingredients of the normal american family.

Now if you where to move the Miller's into this millennium would their morals be enough to make them the happy and loving family that they where then portrayed as. I would have to answer with a resounding no. I find it hard to believe that they would have even been happy in the 1950's. What 1950's television taught us was to repress our emotions,and to blindly cling to the notion that good ol fashion family values would get us through all of life's trials. This,I think, is the key to emotional instability in modern america.

We strive so hard to attain what we have been bred to believe is stability. this leaves us frusterated and unsatisfied. How many people do YOU know that are what popular american ideals would consider happy? Me? I don't know one. I see a font of mental illness all around me.
I can't name one person that I know that doesn't have at least one major behavioral issue (myself included).

I do not believe it was any one generation that caused the epidemic of mental illness in america (or the human race for that matter). If you look at literature and art, you will find that pavlonian behavior is timeless. Look at the works of Sylvia Plath. The same model that portrayed the Millers as a happy and well adjusted family proved to be a prison and a noose to Plath.

I have to start with a little psychoanalytical theory to adequately explain my personal views on mental illness. Let's start with the structure of personality. Freud devided the personality into three portions: the Id,the Ego,and the Super Ego.

Initially Freud defined the Id as sexual instinct or "pleasure principle",after WWI he revised the theory to include the instinctual violent urges of mankind or "Thanatos"(death instinct).

Next we have the Ego or the "reality principle". This is the portion of the personality developed over time and expierences (nurture). It is the portion that we consiously show to the world around us.

Finally, the Super Ego,wich a a dual force (conscience /ego-ideal). The conscience is self explanitory. It's personal knowledge of right and wrong. The super-ego is an idealized view of oneself. Both sides of the super-ego are developed through social interaction.

Now to throw in a seemingly unrelated theory. Evolution, no I am not talking about missing links and physical adaptation. I am reffering to evolution as the development of a biological group.

I believe that social evolution has as big of a role on a species developement as physical evolution.

How does this all relate to mental illness? It's simple.

Each year we are faced with new questions that challenge our moral code. Things like cloaning, Stemcell research,population issues, enviornmental issues,sexuality, ect ect... We cling desprately to that standards that our forefathers set for us and as a result the three tiers of personality are constantly in conflict with one another. The inner conflict may be manifesting itself as a variety of psychosis'.

This is not to say that there are no biological explanations for mental illness,there are many.
This thesis is focused solely on the social implecations of mental illness.

It's as if we are encased in an eggshell wich we are constanly beating our heads against. The eggshell is starting to crack.