i wanted to understand from close up what was going on with neur psychoatic patients. I av the opportunity, thanks to a nerologist at hospital, to just sit in on these extraordinary sessions. Once a week, more or less, i was there. These sessions lasted about three to four hours in the morning. So it was an exceptional amount of time, an exceptional focus of attention. That should be the paradime for all health practice,. and, of course, is not anywhere in the world. And as i said, this unit doesnt all exist any more, but for reasons i'm not aware of, really a but this was, they existed for a few years.
Shermer and Arikha discuss: what it means for a mind to be disrupted • dementia, senility, and Alzheimer’s disease • mental illness and the labeling problem • the social construction of mental illness • neurology and psychiatry • agency and volition • memory and amnesia • autobiographical memory • self and embodied self • brain modularity • brain as a machine • emotions and cognition: bodily changes first then the awareness of the emotion • conversion disorder/hysteria • depression • metacognition: thinking about thinking • exteroception and interoception.
Noga Arikha is a philosopher and historian of ideas. The author of Passions and Tempers: A History of the Humours, she is associate fellow of the Warburg Institute and honorary fellow of the Center for the Politics of Feelings, London, and research associate at the Institut Jean Nicod, Paris. She is based in Florence, Italy.