Diagnostic manuals are broken. We need to a whole new conception of mental illness.
Richard Dawkins would have called his book “The Selfish Brain” had he read the second edition (2014) of Sue Gerhardt’s masterpiece of popular science, “Why Love Matters”. Our brains are a work in progress well into the 25th year of life. They remain neuroplastic for the rest of our mortal coil.
Babies are born prematurely, with their brains half-formed. It is the role of the maternal figure (typically, the mother) to facilitate the maturation of this magnificent organ via tactile stimuli, sensa, speech, and above all, good enough mothering.
Putting the finishing touches to our brains is our main and only undertaking in life well into our twenties. In effect, we grant access to other brains so as to form cerebral networks with family, friends, peers, teachers, and role models. Our brains apart, our bodies are incidental until we are ready and fit to procreate.
Adulthood involves the unwinding of these earlier promiscuously open networks. The brain is firewalled and fortified by reality reframing and filtering defense mechanisms and narratives. Emotions and cognitions mediate our experiences. We become increasingly more solipsistic as we age, culminating in death, the ultimate in schizoid states.
Find and Buy MOST of my BOOKS and eBOOKS in my Amazon Store: https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/60F8EC8A-5812-4007-9F2C-DFA02EA713B3
source
what a marvellous synopsis of human brain!!❤
Yessss!!!!
I think one thing people get wrong about mental illness is calling it mental health.
Thanks for yet more self understanding Prof Sam
Take away the human need to make money to survive and mental health issues will evolve drastically.
Please convert some academics to this rational thinking about mental illness, they need it urgently. Psychological science has become too ideologically brainwashed and is now all about normalising pathology. Young psychologists are trained to believe that there is no "normal" and that thinking otherwise is an act of oppression. Wokism has quite effectively corrupted science with political correctness and complete biological denialism.
This is very good relational and causal analysis of mental health disorders. I wish mainstream psychiatry and society in general could learn from this!
We do live in difficult times. Everyone wants to be the ultimate!
What do you call a cougar who uses a hearing aid?
Def Leppard 🐆 . . . Hysteria is a good song, hysteria is the modern condition.
UK has never been civilized. They caused harm, mayhem and destroyed people and their families. COLONIZATION!! 41:47
Thank you for being human. 💚
Great suggestion concerning the DSM and ICD. I completely agree with you.
Thank you for all your fantastic lectures. I have learned more from you than in all the years obtaining a psychology degree.
Amazing lecture. Structured and logical 🥰 thank you so much
Thank you for saving my brain I have learned so much from you. I share your videos all the time.😇🌷
Here here….its all riveting but especially the last bit. Way above making sense and it may be a crime to listen to this! Prof Vaknin is so good at what he does and who else do we have doing this at this level? The diagnostic manual creators need to pay attention to this man following a bout of hanging their heads in shame and fingers crossed, it leads the way.
Is the brain active in the dying moments, in an nde? I read that scans show that it is inactive, or dead. So do NDEs rise from the spirit? That seems to be the real question: to what extent does the spirit encarnate and manifest through the brain? We are told its a ‘psico-bio-social process’. But that s just words isnt it! 😉
Not everyone sees subtexts) not everyone asks about what it is to be a human.
Thank you Prof. Vaknin🙏🙌🔥💚
By far… One of THE BEST yet!👏👏👏👏