Arm-chair Quarterbacking Tourette’s Syndrome
loyyxa - who has a fixation on curious spellings (the blog is feesksxhzhk.blogspot.com) - is a relatively new and prolific blogger. (I’ll leave the odd auto insurance links alone because they’re either a ruse or some bizarre effort at a new kind of SPAM.) If you click through some of the other postings you’ll find that they, too, are provocative, thoughtful, and probably stolen from someone else.
Nevertheless, the posting is worth a read if for no other reason than to ponder these comments:
- My definition of thinking is: The ability to predict the future from past experience in intellectualized terms.
- It is my belief that TS should be classified as an emotional disorder within the OCD grouping of disorders
- It is my theory that the root cause of all emotional disorders within OC pathologies is what I term to be “acute self-awareness.”
This all seems to centered around Donald Schneider’s “Pride’s Prison” but even that is misleading.
As for the writer’s definition of thinking/sentience, I can’t help but recommend Julian Jayne’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.
Thinking of Tourette’s Syndrome as “emotional” is interesting in its manifestations but ultimately bullshit.
And while I agree that OCD, ADD, ADHD and Tourette’s Syndrome are characterized by acute self-awareness, that’s not the cause but the effect.
All in all I love efforts at deep thinking. This one missed its mark, but it’s a welcome read.
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Mr. Winburn:
After reading your post, I feel compelled to comment by way of dispelling an apparent misconception you are under in regard to the relevant blog post upon which you are commenting. The blogger on whose website you apparently first encountered this article did not write the article, nor did he or she have anything whatsoever to do with it beyond copying it off of *Ezine Articles*, a large online publication on which writers may have their nonfiction articles published if accepted. The blogger in question did not steal my article or ideas. It is a condition of *Ezine Articles* that contributors give permission for anyone to copy the article and post it on their own sites as long as it is duly credited, as he or she did at the end of the article.
I must confess that I am somewhat less than enamored at seeing advertising links inserted within the text of my article. However, I have no control over who copies and pastes my articles. On my personal website (to which you kindly link), where this and the other two essays I have written regarding Tourette’s Syndrome are also posted, there are no advertisements of any kind, nor is there a PayPal account pitch for donations.
I am most impressed with your obvious intelligence and erudition as exhibited by the quality of your writing at your blog, notwithstanding your rather colorful metaphorical characterization—a rather unflattering comparison to excrement of the masculine bovine variety—of my characterization of TS as an emotional disorder; an editorial lapse on your part which belies your otherwise exhibited intellectual prowess. I am gratified to note that you seem to serve to validate my contention that those suffering from our mutual affliction tend to be bright as noted within my article.
From reading through some of your previous posts, it seems obvious that you have—perhaps uncritically—bought hook, line and sinker into the prevailing paradigm that TS is a “neurological disorder,” as first formulated by Dr. Arthur K. Shapiro in the late sixties. Therefore, if you found my first essay on TS to be provocative, I believe I can safely assert that if you would care to read my next two such a contention will seem like an understatement to you.
Dr. Shapiro’s theory that TS was the result of organic brain abnormalities, as opposed to psychological maladjustments, was verified, in his opinion, when a patient he treated with haloperidol exhibited marked improvement in regard to tics. His reasoning seems to have been that since the physical intervention of a medication improves the condition, it is therefore obvious that the condition itself must have an organic basis. His school of thought eventually became canon within the psychiatric and medical communities, notwithstanding seemingly common sense indications to the contrary. Thus, we have had a forty-year search for the elusive underlying physical cause of the affliction.
In regard to the basic argument as recounted above, an injection of Novocain will alleviate the symptoms of a severe toothache. However, as anyone in that situation would attest to, if the drug’s palliative effects begin to wane before the dentist can properly attend to the matter, it becomes obvious that the drug did absolutely nothing to address the underlying condition. This is the thrust of my next two articles on the subject. In a nutshell, I contend that is not me who confuses cause with effect.
If you are so inclined to read my aforementioned other two articles on the subject and would care to write an attempted rebuttal to them, then I shall be glad to post it on my website; or, if you prefer to post it on your own website, I shall be equally willing to link to it provided it is worthwhile. By being worthwhile, I do not contend that your views must coincide with my own. Rather, I simply insist that you attempt to refute my arguments in a thoughtful and reasoned manner rather than attack my personality for holding the dissenting views that I do. If you are willing and able to do so, then I am educable and shall carefully consider your contrary viewpoint.
On the other hand, if you are willing to read the articles with any semblance of an open mind, then I hold to some small hope that they might actually convince you to reevaluate your current opinions concerning the condition. Judging by your offered photograph at your site, you seem to be a significantly younger man than am I. Therefore, you will likely have far more time than me to attempt to right the prevailing paradigm within the TS “community” for the benefit of future people so afflicted. What works to help such people is all that matters.
Would I personally rather think that I suffer from a physical as opposed to a mental illness? To me, that consideration is a moot point as truth is all that matters. Nevertheless, to answer the question, I would rather suffer from a condition in which there is realistic hope for a complete (or close) remission of symptoms—if not a cure per se—than a physical disease in which a cure always seems to be just over the metaphorical horizon but, not unlike tomorrow, never seems to arrive.
In regard to your citation of Jaynes’s book, I read it years ago. By a rather bizarre coincidence, I had begun reading it for a second time just prior to discovering your mention of my article. It was too long ago that I read it to now intelligently argue the validity of his central thesis. However, as I recall I found his contention (as I recall) that the ancient Greek civilianization, for example, was built by human “autonotoms” suffering from hallucinations (divine voices) to be a bit farfetched, by way of understatement.
Strike a match and hold it to your finger for a few seconds. The result is what I hold to be consciousness. Your doubtless reluctance to repeat the experiment in the future is what I hold to be thinking.
Finally, thank you for mentioning my short story “Pride’s Prison,” upon which my website is centered. I do hope that your experiences as a youngster had been kinder than my own.
Best regards,
Don Schneider