Thomas Kuhn (1970) arrived at his concept of the paradigm from his interest in the history of science. Because science is so well documented in objective form, it provides the ideal resource for study of the way a group advances...
The brain conserves its resources by consigning the great bulk of its routine operations to automatic processing beyond conscious awareness. The automatic use of preset responses makes the brain action relatively effortless. The brain reserves most of its neuronal activity for...
The vagaries of demand, particularly the amount of effort needed for self-initiated thought, explain the human weaknesses that Hitler mocked and exploited (see Self-awareness). Daniel Kahnemann (2011) in his book “Thinking, Fast and Slow” analyses the dualistic processing he terms...
The ready availability of automatic brain action explains the blindness and stupidity of the masses that Hitler exploited (see self-awareness). Most daily brain action proceeds automatically to foregone conclusions. All animals manage the massive sensory input economically with automatic integration...
By declaring that I think, therefore I am, Descartes recognised a key element of human brain action, its remarkable capacity for self-awareness, a subtle component of human consciousness that received little attention until recently. Zoltan Torey (2009) argues that it accompanied...
A form of dualism, the bipolar opposites of consciously directable mental function versus the brain’s unconscious automatic operations, governs brain action (see Descartes). ‘I think, therefore I am” gives consciously directed thought deserved preeminence. The many different ways that brains bring to...
In this blog the Resource entitled Simulation of Illness addresses the most common hazard to diagnosis, the faking of complaint. In hysteria and malingering the simulation of complaints give the false impression of illness. A succesful fake brings gain. The malingerer fakes...
Long after Ivan Illich (1977) denounced professional expansionism it continues unchecked. Governments struggle to contain the prohibitive cost of health services, but do nothing about its most blatant waste, the recurrent epidemics of pseudo-illness. Illich invented the term iatrogenesis, doctor-generated complaint....
I learned psychiatry in a mental hospital, which had its spectacular moments of irrational chaos, but the loony bin I analyse in my book, “Welcome”, is this world that contains us all. As a psychiatrist I had no difficulty recognising the insanity...