Schristian

This image from Epileptic without reading the surrounding words around it show a small family inside while the rest of the people are crowding around it. I didn’t know whether to share something about this or say what I thought about this picture. So I am going to share what the book says about this image. We can see David B’s view of the dance of the doctors, ironically representing the barrenness of therapies offered by medical experts for his brother, Jean-Christophe.  We can also see the difference between the three people in the middle ( center) who are the mother , father , and son. This I found was interesting and didn’t want to put in my own words just because I didn’t want to mess up the way to actually come out and say it “We can easily see in this image a symbolic representation of the false hopes offered by the experts: the circle-dance infantilizes the doctors (they are playing a childish game), and at the same time it suggests a kind of superstitious ritual.” http://graphicnovelistics.blogspot.com/2013/03/some-notes-on-david-bs-epileptic.html

In one passage of delightful distillation, he exposes the paradox of those arguing to reduce “stigma” over mental illness, as if a bit more progressive empathy would somehow make insanity less frightening. “Fear of those believed to be insane was one reason the Victorians allocated so many resources to building mental asylums,” he writes. It’s a striking point, one he stumbled on while desperately searching for a hospital that could actually contain his son, who has an unerring gift for escape, and an irrepressible urge to run naked through frozen woods and rivers.

This is one of my sources which I will use in my paper. This source pretty much goes into and breaks apart one of the books I will be using called Henry’s Demons. This book is a non-fiction book that just grabs the reader and wanting to keep reading it to find out how the story will play out. This was a source I found that helps me write my paper efficiently. This will help the people reading my paper to understand why this quote is so important and can help me with connecting schizophrenia to Henry’s Demons. First off to understand this passage at all I decided to look up the words that I highlighted…

Distillation:The volatilization or evaporation and subsequent condensation of a liquid, as when water is boiled in aretort and the steam is condensed in a cool receiver

Allocated: to set apart for a particular purpose; assign or allot

Unerring: undeviatingly accurate throughout; not containing any error or flaw

Irrepressible:
not capable of being repressed, controlled, or restrained

Proposal 2
For my research project I will be looking at two books which will be Lowboy and Henry’s Demons. Actually through this book I would love to EDUCATE Parents and people who have questions about this disorder. I will be also interviewing a family of a patient who has this and see what they have to say. My mother works in a hospital and they have a special ward where they keep people who are diagnosed with disorders such as schizophrenia so I am getting help from doctors who are working there with patients. I think that is so interesting to have information fresh from the doctors themselves because they are always around the patient and can give me interesting research and even interesting stories which I could share. I am reading Low Boy by John Wray. I know that it was a course requirement. It is honestly my favorite book read during this semester out of all my classes.)
My main goal for this paper is initially is to educate ordinary people and parents about this disorder. I want them to understand the symptoms and also what can affect a child through his/her daily life. There are ways to prevent this disorder to occur; a teacher has told me that in the past. The teacher is from Queens College so I will be talking to her and also helping her for other resources. I am SO interested in disorders and Schizophrenia is the one I am insanely curious about because I feel like there are so many unanswered questions that even psychologists don’t know the answer too. ALSO I forgot to mention I am in Psychology Pain and Pleasure so I am going to ask my two professors any information they know and maybe they can help me out with research material also. Might do a survey as well!
My process will pretty much be what I have said. I want to take surveys to see what I find and look at a patient from the past and actually sit down with their paper work and just see what I can find. Anything that pops up or seems not normal would be great to find so I can have a lead on how to look at this paper as a whole. I want to read Low Boy again just because I don’t know if you guys have to do this but if I read a book a second time usually I get so much more out of it.
The research I have found is overwhelming so organizing into different sections is the best thing I can do right now. I have a lot of information on the different types of people who have schizophrenia; I also have the two books that I will be close reading too. I will be taking apart the things said in the books and hopefully will help me understand real life problems or stories that I can use in my paper. Like I said I want to pick apart this disorder using these two books, in the same way using the books to help me educate people/parents on what the disorder is ? How it can be prevented? and What symptom’s you can look out for while you child is growing up.

Samantha Christian

Proposal

For my research project I will be researching a cross-cultural study, focusing on how schizophrenia is represented and understood in the U.S. and India. I will be also interviewing a family of a patient who has this and see what they have to say. My mother works in a hospital and they have a special ward where they keep people who are diagnosed with disorders such as schizophrenia so I am getting help from doctors who are working there with patients. I think that is so interesting to have information fresh from the doctors themselves because they are always around the patient and can give me interesting research and even interesting stories which I could share. There is one movie I will be working with. The movie isn’t America hence why I am doing a cross – cultural study on this topic. The movie just deals with a girl who was fine until the age of 10 and something happened to her (rape) that maybe could of triggered emotional blockage of some sort. (I am not done analyzing everything but throughout this paper I will have all my information complete.) The movie was based on a true story of a girl who lived in India. One of the books I will be talking about ( I will  be reading one other book but have NO IDEA which one I should read to better my knowledge about schizophrenia or what would help me out writing the most efficient paper. I am reading Low Boy by John Wray. I know that it was a course requirement. It is honestly my favorite book read during this semester out of all my classes.)

My main goal for this paper is initially to see if there is any correlation between “Indian Schizophrenia” and “American Schizophrenia”.” I know that might sound strange or wrong but from what I know from back home is that Schizophrenia back then in India would just make you mentally challenged. They would use names such as retarded , stupid and idiot. They didn’t know basically what to do with patients. I mean in America I guess you can say it was worse because they would do experiments with patients who had a disorder. They would use them as bait pretty much and test them to see what could happen if  they performed certain surgeries on them . Doing a cross cultural study might be hard if I don’t have the right research material in front of me but I am SO interested in disorders and Schizophrenia is the one I am insanely curious about because I feel like there are so many unanswered questions that even psychologists don’t know the answer too. ALSO I forgot to mention I am in Psychology Pain and Pleasure so I am going to ask my two professors any information they know and maybe they can help me out with research material also. Might do a survey as well!

My process will pretty much be what I have said. I want to take surveys to see what I find and look at a patient from the past and actually sit down with their paper work and just see what I can find. Anything that pops up or seems not normal would be great to find so I can have a lead on how to look at this paper as a whole. I want to read Low Boy again just because I don’t know if you guys have to do this but if I read a book a second time usually I get so much more out of it.

The research I have found is overwhelming so organizing into different sections is the best thing I can do right now. My grandpa was a doctor in India so he has told me crazy stories that if I told you guys would be scared for your life. To me these stories are exactly what I need to hear and then to find research on why the patients were acting that way and use it to illustrate a book about the topic itself.  I have patient’s reports and a ton of books on the topic as a whole. Just need one more book towards my research so if any of you guys know a book I can use other than Low Boy PLEASE let me know. That would be great and I would appreciate it so much.

Some ideas I have for my senior seminar paper have to do with disorders (psychological disorders) I might want to talk about Schizophrenia just because out of the many disorders out there that one is interesting to me. I used to know someone whose mom had it and when my friend would talk to me it kind of scared me because of what was going on in the brain. I want to research about that a lot more and see what actually causes that disorder? What are some ways you can avoid it and a book I want to use for an example is Lowboy. I know there are many other books out there which I will also explore. I once saw a movie about this and it was so fascinating and I just was shocked by everything in the movie. The movie is in Hindi which is a language  spoken in India but here’s a link I found to show you guys what it is exactly about….http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_Park_Avenue

I saw this blog and I knew exactly what I wanted to write….but then I came across this video of someone interviewing Damasio which I thought was so interesting. He answers the question that states…Where does consciousness ‘live’ in the brain? Why are we conscious – and how did consciousness evolve?

Listen to this video and you will either agree or disagree with Damasio…I agree with what he has to say. He says that there was not enough feeling when it came to us consciousness.

http://www.sciencefriday.com/playlist/#play/segment/8349

STRESS: Object

Ever since I started at Queens College all that it has brought me was STRESS. It’s pretty awesome.  NOT!!!

I was and always will be a hard working student. I have a calendar just for school and written on every day would be if there was a Test, Quiz, Project, Exam, Midterm or Final due. I would write these dates down as soon as I could just because I know if I didn’t I would be so stressed even though I am all the time. I grew up in an Indian house so for all you people who don’t know what that means I’ll tell you. It means you basically have to be perfect. Don’t get A-‘s at A+’s. Don’t be late to class instead get there 30 minutes before it starts. You get it. The change for me would have to be that if I receive good grades there is a sudden change in who I am and how the rest of my day will go. If you meet me and I am nasty towards you that just means I didn’t get along with a teacher and I ended up fighting with him or her because of my grade. If I come into class super happy (probably never have lol) then that means the teacher agreed with me 100%. Stress changes me for the good or the bad. If I am stressed right before a test that means most likely I am not ready for it. If I am stressing a little that means I am ready for it but just want to make sure I get a good enough grade that I will appreciate. Basically you earn because of what you put in. I will be stressing just because that is what shapes me to do better.

I guess as a child I always was the one who had nightmares. My brothers seemed to have never had any, lucky them. It started when I was little; when I was around the age of 12 I was obsessed with horror movies. I would watch the craziest movies ever and honestly I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep because I would be so scared. So after watching them I would have to watch a comedy so I could forget about the horror I just saw hours ago. My dreams were insane. Some of them involved me running around and at the same time being chased by crazy men with knifes. Somehow and still till this day don’t know why but they would always chase me and not my friend in the dream. I would shake; seriously shake in my bed because I was so scared. Half the time I wouldn’t know if I was shaking in my sleep or shaking because I was up.  I always believed in ghost and all that other stuff. I remember my mom telling me a story about herself when she was in India and she was outside on night playing and her father called her in for dinner and before she went in she saw a white figure standing by a lemon tree and she scared the hdfkhakfhak out of me. I was SO freaked out so one night obviously I had a dream sort of about that and I remember I was shaking and trying to get up but I felt like my body was being pressured on the bed and there was no way of getting up even though I tried to use all the strength I had in my body. Out of body experiences? Yeah I have had a lot of them. As I got older and into my 20’s now I don’t get them, thank God. I got all of these horrible dreams because of all the crazy movies I have seen in the past

Overall I liked the book The Shaking Woman OR History Of my nerves by Siri Hustvedt. Something interesting that I learned from this book is that whatever she was going through. The condition that she had, she had evidence and research to back up her condition. So there was some sort of proof involved. I personally have been researching a lot of disorders ever since I started taking psychology classes in the 11^th grade because it interests me a lot. I have found so many strange ones that sometimes I wonder if they actually exist. So instead of doubting them I find people who might have any of the symptoms or actually who have the diagnoses for a certain thing. One condition I found while research was someone who was afraid to go out. They were afraid to go out because they didn’t know if   a bathroom was going to be vacant or not. To the average person who cares if there isn’t a bathroom but to a certain individual who might have this condition they have OCD about it and then go crazy thinking about it. So when I read this book and how she would shake while giving a speech like she did when her father past away is Very real to me and I don’t believe that she is lying. I know she isn’t because of the ton of research she did in this book to show us and most likely outside information that she used as well. I learned that conditions like this exist from reading Siri Hustvedt’s book.

It was about 4ish in the afternoon when I went on a walk with my little brother. He was riding his bike and I told him to slow down because we were on a busy street and the cars were going a lot faster than usual. The sound of the cars , trucks and buses were extremely loud and they were getting to me. It seemed like my brother didn’t even hear them. I kept hearing loud honks and people cursing at each other just so they could get there way, I was surprised and wondered why everyone was in a rush. Then all of a sudden I see fire trucks and police cars rushing through the traffic. Thinking to myself why on earth is this going on?? And what happened?? The town I live in is a small town on Long Island so nothing really happens here besides cops stopping cars thinking that someone is driving drunk (which they never are) or something like passing a stop sign. I mean c’mon I think many people have skipped a few stop signs in the past. As my brother and I are on a walk we see a house burning and black smoke coming out. The house is covered with red and in the corner of my eye I see a window where I see someone in Red. I am assuming she is wearing a red cape. I see her face and it had a huge smile on it. I was like to myself there is no way in hell I am seeing this with my eyes. There is no way. So I brush off my face with my hands and look again. Oh there she is smiling at scary smile. I wanted to tell someone. I wanted to tell someone fast. Who to tell? Then I saw a guy who lived in my town. I said to him do you see her??? Do you see her staring at me? He looks and says there is no one there. I look at my brother and he doesn’t even see her. I look at the window and she is still smiling and then she waves. Now I am scared beyond my own imagination.

Analysis: From this dream that I had I woke up feeling under the weather. Not knowing what to do I was rethinking the dream to make sure what really happened. I don’t know if I added anything new or kept it the same. In class we talked about how we think about a dream and then sometimes we retell it but not in the way he actually happened in our heads. To start off I always take walks around my town with my brother but there is never traffic ever because the streets in my town don’t get too many new faces. Everyone knows each other in our town and what not. Yes cops stop cars for going through a stop sign or just to give them a warning but nothing too serious. I seriously don’t think there was ever an intense fire in  my town. If there was it was a little one and no one ever got seriously hurt. The lady in the Red I honestly have no idea where she was coming from. She looked like the devil but female version haha. She looked harmless expect who smiles and waves in a fire. It was like she planned it and she made the fire which burned the house down. The street where that house was located is a street I am never on. There was an old legend when I was in the 3^rd grade that a witch lived there and I being a baby never go there unless I want to take a short cut or something.

Freud:

He believes that sometimes our dreams are wishes (wish fulfillment) that we want to come true or something that we want in life. From the dream I had I can’t really tell what it is I want so maybe Freud interpretation doesn’t work here?