Beyond Rivalry

Reading lots, between my inter-library loaned crime novels -- finished Tana French's The Likeness last week, am reading PD James' new Dalgleish novel, The Private Patient, now, and have Reginald Hill's The Price of Butcher's Meat to read afterwards -- and the arrival of the Wall Street Journal through the door slot almost every day, a little 6-month perk for having completed about 200 online surveys in the last few years ... I love the WSJ, its editorial board notwithstanding.

Here are a couple of recent gems from its pages:

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Destructive Delusions: How therapists and 'victims' seized on the idea of repressed memory, leveling false charges and ruining lives, by Theodore Dalrymple, a book review of Dr. Paul McHugh's Try to Remember: Psychiatry's Clash Over Meaning, Memory, and Mind. Best lines:

"One of the most extraordinary outbreaks of popular delusion in recent years was that which attached to the possibility of 'recovered memory' of sexual and satanic childhood abuse, and to an illness it supposedly caused, Multiple Personality Disorder. No medieval peasant praying to a household god for the recovery of his pig could have been more credulous than scores of psychiatrists, hosts of therapists and thousands of willing victims."

"In Try to Remember, Dr. McHugh hints at the cultural context in which preposterous and vicious accusations against parents and others could be so easily believed by seemingly intelligent people, including courtroom judges. ... Freudianism alone could not have produced the necessary atmosphere; there must have been other forces at work as well. The sanctification of victims and victimhood comes to mind."

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Japan's Latest Fashion Has Women Playing Princess for a Day

Japanese women in their 20s and 30s are dressing up as doe-eyed princesses, aiming "to look like sugarcoated, 21st-century versions of old-style European royalty. They idolize Marie Antoinette and Paris Hilton, for her baby-doll looks and princess lifestyle." They buy $1000-outfits (frilly dress, parasol, handbag, shoes) and work their straight hair so that it's curly with 'super-volume" to assuage a "longing for a happy-ending fairy tale," if you accept that bit of sociological analysis.

The women (aka 'girls') particularly idolise 24-yr-old Keiko Mizoe, sales clerk at one of the stores that sells the gowns, who calls those who sport the look "perfect, gorgeous and feminine."

A 16-yr-old who's buying the clothes online because the store seems too intimidating says:

"Their cuteness is beyond human. I'd like to be like them."

A 36-yr-old housewife felt "shy about her plump figure" so she lost 33 pounds and can now wear the tight-waisted dresses, on which she spends $2,000 or $3,000 a month. Her parents "send the couple food so they have more money for Ms. Yamamoto's shopping sprees.

'I figure it's OK as long as what I'm buying is pretty,' she says."

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How a Drug Maker Tries to Outwit Generics describes how pharmaceutical company Cephalon, Inc. maximises profits on its drugs, in particular, its narcolepsy drugs Provigil and Nuvigil, and entices customers away from cheaper generics. The company, using an apparently common tactic of pharmaceutical companies, has been recently increasing the price of Provigil -- now $8.71 per tablet, 24% more than 8 months ago and 74% more than 4 years ago -- so that patients will have an economic incentive to switch over to Cephalon's new and longer-lasting narcolepsy drug, Nuvigil, which will be available next year at a lower cost -- and, critically, which won't be off patent until 11 years after Provigil will be:

"It works like this: Knowing that Provigil will face generic competition in 2012 as its patent nears expiration, Cephalon is planning to launch a longer-acting version of the drug called Nuvigil next year. To convert patients from Provigil or Nuvigil, Cephalon has suggested in investor presentations that it will price Nuvigil lower than the sharply increased price of Provigil. By the time the copycat versions of Provigil hit the market the company is banking that most Provigil users will have switched to the less-expensive Nuvigil, which is patent-protected until 2023."

One woman who takes Provigil off-label for Parkinson's stopped taking the drug when her cost went to $565 per month. Her insurer, like most, won't cover payment of an off-label use (a use not approved by the FDA).

The article later notes that "fully preventing tactics like Cephalon's would be difficult short of outright regulation of drug prices. Most other countries in the world control drug prices, but most U.S. regulators and legislators have opposed such moves."

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In further drug-related news: Power of Suggestion: When Drug Labels Make You Sick by Melinda Beck looks at the effect of nocebos, which are the opposite of placebos: the power of suggestion that brings on illness:

"Research deliberately causing nocebos has been limited (after all, it's kind of cruel). But in one 1960s test, when hospital patients were given sugar water and told it would make them vomit, 80% of them did.  Studies have also shown that patients forewarned about possible side effects are more likely to encounter them."

Interestingly,

"the rare, serious side effects listed on drug package inserts -- say, toxic epidermal necrolysis, in which one's skin falls off in large sheets -- are less subject to nocebo effects."

It's harder to "suggest" one's skin to slough off than to evoke headache and fatigue by suggestion, and anyway, as is noted in the article, large percentages of the general population experience these vague symptoms regularly; in a 1968 study of healthy subjects not on medications, only 19% said they had no symptoms (such as headache, fatigue, dizziness) in the past 3 days. Also noted, that anxiety about illness can bring about common side-effect symptoms like nausea, diarrhea, dry mouth and rapid heart beat.

** Hours after I read this, I learned that the dear friend of a friend of mine is suffering from exactly this "rare, serious side effect" of toxic epidermal necrolysis, likely from anti-inflammatories she had been taking for a while.

Lesbian rights pioneer and longtime activist Del Martin died yesterday at age 87. She and her partner of 55 years, Phyllis Lyons, were married in the first legal gay union in California in June in San Francisco.

"While working for a construction trade journal in Seattle, Ms. Martin met Ms. Lyon, an employee at the same firm, and the two became romantically involved and entered into a permanent relationship in 1953."

Imagine what that was like, in 1953 ...

(Photo credit: Woman Vision Productions)

Austen Ivereigh writes at the Catholic weekly America's blog, In All Things, today about the influence of Rene Girard and Chiara Lubich on the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams' "unity" speech to the bishops gathered at the Lambeth Conference. If you don't follow Anglican or Episcopal politics, you may not know that there is a rift in the church on the issue of gay rights, including authorisation of same-sex marriage and ordination of gay bishops. That rift may be metonymous for the larger conflict between 'traditonalists' and 'liberalists' in the church. 

Ivereigh masterfully summarises in a paragraph Girard's central idea about the mimetic mechanism and scapegoating, then looks at large chunks of Williams' speech for the influence both of Girard and of the Italian mystic Chiara Lubich, whom he identifies for her practice of kenosis, or self-empyting for the sake of other. (Girard and Girardians also speak of kenosis as essential to Christ and therefore something to imitate.)

I definitely take a 'side' in this debate, but reading the Archbishops' articulation of what the 'other side' hopes 'my side' will hear, I feel empathy for their pov.

The whole speech is at Ruth Gledhill's column.

Photo: Harriseye (Flickr)

A long article in Psychology Today ("Mystery of disgust" by Erik D'Amato, 1998), examining what makes something disgusting, and why, contains this interesting bit:

"[E]ach area of disgust is, in its own way, a jarring reminder of our animal nature. The things that most disgust us -- defecating, dying, giving birth, eating dubious or unclean foods -- are the very traits we most conspicuously share with other animals.

"Perhaps it's no coincidence that the only body product we generally don't find disgusting is tears -- the only one considered uniquely human.

"Social disgust operates much the same way, according to [Jonathan] Haidt: 'If physical disgust is about distinguishing ourselves from animals, then social disgust is about distinguishing ourselves from "demons." "Human being" is a charged category, and we want to keep its boundaries clearly defined. Someone who cheats on his taxes can be human; someone who eats human flesh cannot. Socially disgusting acts are those that reveal that you have inhuman motives.'"

 

"The reason such reminders of our 'animality' are so harrowing may be equally uncomplicated: any reminder of our animal nature is also a reminder of our own mortality. Certainly, we can coolly discuss death and even come to terms with it; indeed, the knowledge of life's precariousness is singularly human. But it is also the most crucial threat to the psyche, and as such must be repressed. No wonder so much of what we find disgusting relates to death and illness: blood, boils, amputations, and mutilations suggest the fragility of life; corpses and body parts simply verify it."

So -- things disgust us to the extent that they remind us that we, like all animals, die?

What interests me particularly about this is that many of the people I've known in real life and through books who have been most willing to sacrifice their very lives for others' benefit -- which amounts to a "crucial threat to the psyche" -- have also been those most easily disgusted and repulsed by hospitals, corpses, bodily functions gone awry, and physical mutilations.

What's going on there?

via TMN  

Two ideas (one idea) from Book Group Buzz. The folks there find these quotes useful for starting a provocative conversation about a book. I think they would be, but even more so simply as a way to look at the world and relationships.

Two lines from Rumi:

Keep looking at the bandaged place.
That's where the light enters you.

And a comment made by a sex addict:

"After the first hundred beautiful bodies, it's the flaws that are erotic."

Reminds me of May Sarton's question (in Recovering), "Is there anyone, I sometimes wonder, who is not wounded and in the process of healing?"  Or perhaps not healing ...

I've uploaded another PDF file for anyone to use, a backgrounder for Cries & Whispers (1972), the last in the BergmanFest! series I'm hosting now.

The first thing I thought of when I heard about New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's implication in a prostitution ring, after his years of hard-line rectitude, was the Shakespeare play, Measure for Measure, rather fresh in my mind since I saw it last summer. Even the title of the play, taken from Matthew 7:2 -- "For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again" -- makes the connection pretty obvious, but Spitzer's similarity (as portrayed in the media, anyway) to the Duke's puritanical-seeming deputy, Angelo, brings the point home. Angelo is known first and foremost as a strict and merciless enforcer of the laws, a zealous man, a disciplined man, a man who resists temptation; as the Duke says, Angelo "scarce confesses that his blood flows, or that his appetite is more to bread than stone."

Spitzer's critics and observers paint him with much the same brush: "I've never known anyone who was more self-righteous and unforgiving than Eliot Spitzer," said U.S. Rep. Peter King (R) of Long Island. Daniel Gross, at Slate, says that one thing is clear: "Spitzer has been hoisted by his own petard, brought down by the same kind of investigation he pioneered as a prosecutor." Walter Shapiro at Salon opens with "New York's first-term Democratic Gov. Eliot Spitzer turned out not to be the model of rectitude that he seemed" and later says, "Reform politicians who hold themselves up as moral exemplars run the risk of not living up to their own self-proclaimed ethical standards. ... Spitzer has gone from lion to laughingstock in just 14 short months as governor."

As Daniel Colvin notes in his excellent essay on MFM, "the congruence between outer actions and inner values is one of the overriding themes of the play, especially as it is manifest in the issue of seeming and being."

But though we may see both Spitzer and Angelo as hypocrites (Andrew Sabin of Sabin Commodities "described Mr. Spitzer's alleged conduct as 'the most hypocritical thing in the world'"), incongruent in the inner and outer being, espousing one thing and doing another on the sly, that's not the perspective of the play.

Colvin goes on: "[T]o call him a hypocrite misses the mark: he is as surprised at his lust as anyone else, at least at its onset, and he questions his moral status at first. His virtue had always been quite real for him, and his slide into sin catches him off guard ... : 'Even till now, When men were fond, I smiled and wonder'd how.' ... 

"Angelo finds in himself, then, a double nature: the first is the virtuous individual that would have carried on with propriety; the second, a carnal, lustful, power-hungry character who, though surprising to him, is nonetheless part of who he is. ... That Angelo was liable to temptation and sin was not surprising, nor was the experience of his falling unusual (though by no means excusable). His pride, however, was quite unwarranted, and it was itself a major sin. Moreover, it made him especially vulnerable to temptation and sin." And to the schadenfreude now warming the hearts of many. 

Measure for Measure is not a tragedy but Angelo's lack of self-knowledge and his pride are certainly tragic flaws. Angelo is, in the end, tricked into marrying the woman he was formerly engaged to but threw over when her dowry was lost at sea,  and so he is saved from ruin, imprisonment or death, though he may not view it that way.

I have to disagree with the WSJ's judgment that Spitzer's story isn't "Shakespearean" because it's not noble enough. It's just as noble or ignoble as Angelo's story in Measure for Measure. It remains to be seen how Spitzer's play will end.

Added 3/12: Many seem to think that Spitzer is more like a Greek tragic figure than a Shakespearean one ...

If you have an interest in Glenn Gould, I recommend this article from the Toronto Star to you: "The Secret Life of Glenn Gould: Nearly 25 years after the death of perhaps the greatest piano virtuoso of the 20th century, the Star reveals a dramatically fresh portrait of the Canadian icon."  Describes his relationship with a married woman (and quite a bit about her apart from him), his unusual sense of humour, his paranoid episodes, and his phobias, addictions and obsessions.

A smattering of online ideas, opinions, images that are intriquing, amusing, perplexing, and inspiring me right now:

1. America Assimilates Terrorists. Source: Onion: "After 5 Years In U.S., Terrorist Cell Too Complacent To Carry Out Attack."  TV addiction, weight gain, and debt has done 'em in.

2.  Sorted Books Project. (via Blog on a Toothpick.) Fabulous. Books and journals shelved  to tell a story. Example: A Day at the Beach. The Bathers. Shark 1. Shark 2. Shark 3. Sudden Violence. Silence. Also: Genealogy of the Supermarket. 

3. Eye contact and shame as invitation to violence at Preaching Peace: "Using shame to keep order will ultimately result in violent chaos and death as the citizens and community become each others' police. While there are laws and agencies to prevent this, the fact that the leadership has resorted to invoking shame suggests that they're not working..."

4. Sex and death, reminders of mortality, from Experimental Theology:  "[I]t appears that there are good theoretical, observational, and scientific reasons to believe that religious faith is operating as an existential buffer, as a defense-mechanism to repress death anxiety. This will not prove to be the final story about faith. But it is the beginning of all faith." Believers who remain in "this 'defensive stage' of faith ... never fully confront the anxiety that necessarily accompanies an existential sifting of faith. This adventure is, simply, too scary a prospect. Thus, most retreat from this work and remain, keeping with Freud's metaphor, intoxicated."  Hence, bodily sins (sex and drug use) are most shameful in American society and in Christian (among other faiths) culture. Hence, our 'animal-reminder disgust' triggers: Body products (e.g., feces, vomit), Animals (e.g., insects, rats), Sexual behaviors (e.g., incest, homosexuality), Contact with the dead or corpses, Violations of the exterior envelope of the body (e.g., gore, deformity), and poor hygiene. 

5. Photo of a Royal Poinciana in bloom in Miami in June. Mmmm.

6. How to keep lettuce and other greens 'bright, firm and flavorful' for a week.  

7. In Seattle, 31 church-goers report their experiences at (or almost at) 31 faith community worship services, including the Seventh-day Adventists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Catholics, Episcopals, a mosque, a synagogue, Sea-Tac's (airport) meditation room. church on TV, and 'the Jesus freaks at Mars Hill.' (The prospective attender couldn't find the Baha'i worship space and no one would answer the phone.)  They weren't that chuffed with what they found. (If you're skimming, read #10, #13, #15, #18, #19.)

Dave Pollard's post on The M Word (as he calls it) is insightful and illuminating, especially his analysis of why masturbation is so frowned upon. (I have to think more about the prescriptions that follows his analysis, though.)

After comparing and contrasting the activity of masturbation with the activity of playing video games, he asks why the stigma against masturbation exists. His answer is that there are two reasons, which we have confused.

The first is instinctual, Darwinian: "Social activities are best done with other people, not alone." Eating, sleeping, working (hunting), talking and having sex with others helps the species succeed more than doing these things alone. (He explains each of those.)

The second is cultural and derives from 7 billion of us living together on a crowded planet in which power is maintained by hierarchy and a manufactured sense of scarcity: "Self-restraint is a virtue."

Pollard says, "When it comes to things we 'must' do -- eat, sleep, have sex -- self-restraint dictates that these things be done with decorum or (as with sleeping and sex) when this is impossible, in private. Self-restraint also dictates that these things be done as rarely as absolutely necessary, and hence overeating and obesity, sleeping in, and masturbation, are stigmatized as unrestrained excesses suggesting weakness of character."

Yes, this is exactly my experience, especially of sleeping in. I find that people expect reasons and a defense for sleeping late more than once in a blue moon. There is a hierarchy of best defenses, too: not feeling well (sleeping late is understandable), going to bed extremely late the night before (again, understandable, though less so as lots of people manage to exist on 5-6 hours of sleep), hangover (acceptable in some circles and not in others), and so on. Someone who is a whirling dervish of busyness 364 days a year can get away with proclaiming that they've spent the morning in bed lounging, as it's somehow believed that they've earned the rest by their busyness.

This cultural concept of the virtue of self-restraint seems to mesh nicely in American ideology with Puritan values of hard work, progress, and efficiency -- getting a lot done by working hard, resisting idleness as antithetical to communal progress and an individual's strong moral character, etc.  Even with these guiding virtues as the rule, though, masturbation and sleeping late should not be stigmatized, because they actually accomplish something -- one relieves stress, the other allows the body to rest and repair itself. It seems to me that the stigma is less about the result of these activities and more about what these activities seem to imply about the person performing them: she's not busy enough, prone to addiction and/or inertia, indolent, needy, self-focused, not following the rules. As Pollard summarizes, they signal, God forbid, a "weak character."  

His suggestions for "declar[ing cultural war on self-restraint" include some that appeal to me -- destigmatizing restaurant tables for one and making widespread use of resealable food containers -- and some that don't -- making nudity legal and socially acceptable (aesthetically, I'm so not there yet!). As far as encouraging and teaching kids to masturbate, OK by me as long as it's not in public -- again, aesthetically, I'm not at the place where I want to witness it among children, strangers, or 99.99+ percent of the population.