Robin Williams' suicide has genersted a lot of discussion about mental illness. As a result, an argument as old as mankind itself has surfaced: is mental illness about chemical imbalances or about wrestling with demons?
Both, I say. But it's the psychological aspect that gets dismissed or over-simplified. The same attitude that embraces the chemical explanation includes a kind of scientific arrogance that has short term answers often leading to long term disasters. We put in dams. Oops, a mistake, we blow them up.
Poets are less confident than scientists and more easily accept mystery. Poets ask for the reenchantment of the world. To say a sensitive artist like Williams did not wrestle with demons is to reveal an appalling insensitivity to the human condition.
Once we used to give poets shock therapy and labotomies, and congratulated ourselves for being progressive and humane. We are no wiser today, just use more advanced and more dangerous tools.
Norman O. Brown nails the conflict: the tradition of Protestant literalism v. poetic reality. Our culture dismisses the deep power of metaphor.
Both, I say. But it's the psychological aspect that gets dismissed or over-simplified. The same attitude that embraces the chemical explanation includes a kind of scientific arrogance that has short term answers often leading to long term disasters. We put in dams. Oops, a mistake, we blow them up.
Poets are less confident than scientists and more easily accept mystery. Poets ask for the reenchantment of the world. To say a sensitive artist like Williams did not wrestle with demons is to reveal an appalling insensitivity to the human condition.
Once we used to give poets shock therapy and labotomies, and congratulated ourselves for being progressive and humane. We are no wiser today, just use more advanced and more dangerous tools.
Norman O. Brown nails the conflict: the tradition of Protestant literalism v. poetic reality. Our culture dismisses the deep power of metaphor.
