Ms. Hustvedt, as a Ghost researcher and writer take part in multidisciplinary case conferences by medical professionals, they teach budding psychiatrists. In your book you write that you ask all of the people, where do you locate the mind or the soul. What do you think: Where is the soul in the body?
So the most you need to locate somewhere from the neck up. I would deep (laughs). For me, the soul is put on top of here. (Hustvedt puts a Hand on your belly below the chest.)
What can Doctors from your new book?
for Years I have read and read and thought and then I realized that this question of the relationship between the body and the mind have been treated again and again from many different perspectives, also from the point of view of medicine, but that ultimately we do not know still how everything works together. I work as a volunteer with patients in the inpatient psychiatry. Here we encounter constantly on the Problem: How can we formulate questions in the diagnosis? These categories change as our society. So homosexuality is no longer true today, luckily, as a disease.
In Germany, it was in the seventies. I can imagine how someone would call on Monday morning in the office: “sorry, I’m still gay, I can’t come to work, I’m sick.” And the boss says: “Good improvement.”
As we see how the culture defines what we see as a disease – and this applies not only to mental Suffering. But this kind of paradigm, on which all the disciplines are constructed, are rarely questioned. I have the feeling, and to irritate that it’s my job to throw Sand in the gears to be kind of a pain in the ass! Although I’m not a Doctor, not a psychiatrist, not a neuro-scientist, I have, in the meantime, a good basic knowledge in these disciplines. And usually I know the history of these areas of expertise, and with philosophical questions connected with it, better than most of the experts. The truth lies between the fields. I would like to bring people from different angles think about differently about your own practice. The natural Sciences and medicine are considered to be hard Sciences, to provide certainties, but often that’s not true.
do you Have an example?
Almost every person in the West thinks that testosterone is the aggression hormone. That’s why more men seem to sit in prison, you better be able to think spatially, and so on. This is linear Thinking. I started to read articles about it, and after 200, 300, I came to it: In reality, so far no one was able to prove a link between testosterone and Aggression in humans. It’s not there. This is so crazy! The importance of the hormone for the psychology of the people is not clarified. Western medicine and its model of the human body as a kind of a machine can explain a couple of things really well, the bone structure, the heart. But the nervous system, the endocrine system – these are very different stories. Doubt is not only an expression of intelligence; it is a necessity.
I have brought you, by the way, a scientific Paper. I thought, instead of flowers.
Thank you! I am a passionate reader.
I wanted to impress you. They call themselves a pain in the ass for me, you are his court jester. You declare the Emperor naked. The Emperor, the brain researcher, who always sat on the throne in this case. And now you say: We know nothing.
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… “, DR. v. hirschhausen’s STAR live a HEALTHY LIFE”. The issue is now on newsstands, or here to buy.
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“herb, or club”: What you can learn about the high-performance medicine of naturopathy – the Best of the patient’s immune system: How it defends us so that we sit fit bleibenWo the soul? Writer Siri Hustvedt on the duet of body and mind
Well, not quite. But the ubiquitous metaphor from the mechanical engineering from the “wired” brain, it seems to me not appropriate. There are apparently specialized regions in the human brain, we know, but they do not work in isolation and are not immutable. The brain is a dynamic Organ in the body of an individual, which is in constant interaction with what lies outside of this body. That means that the brain must also be in relation to what is outside of him and making it work in the first place. Morality, for example, is a date between people, and affects more than one Person and more than just a brain. I just want to make to the explanation of the gap between the brain and the mind is attentive. I’m not trying to plug this hole.
there Is a difference between the body and the spirit?
most of The people make a difference, in Western culture, we see both the units as separate. You can lose an Arm, and you are still you. But if you have injury to the brain, can change your personality. It is then no longer “you”. You can imagine the mind as an inner voice, an inner narrator. But this voice is not there from the beginning, you developed.
her book is called “The Illusion of certainty”. What is our greatest Illusion?
The hope that we could reach some kind of immortality. As my mother said We all suffer, we all die. It is a hard truth to accept. We are mortal. We are vulnerable. We need other people to survive.
Many people, especially women, have gotten the idea that they are sick, for example headache or back pain, because the body is trying to tell you something.
The neuroscientist António Damásio says in his book “In the beginning was the feeling,” the nervous system had come into play, as the feeling appeared in the evolutionary history. This is an important Thesis. Your question aims at. Should we not listen to our body when something is wrong? Yes, of course! I think this is one of the reasons why cancer is such a terrible thing. Because people don’t feel it. Only if it’s very late, sometimes too late. Because this type of error in cell replication, adhere to sends no signals as it does a sick body usually.
over interpret, But particularly the cancer of many people. There is an esoteric model, as a result, all diseases due to a conflict in the past, would be triggered.
But no, this is ridiculous!
The way I see it, dif such a Thinking only leads to a bad Conscience …
… because they have allegedly done something wrong. I think it’s just awful, because it is not so that you can think of, through good thoughts, healthy.
you Know the research by Ted Kaptchuk, the thinkers of the Harvard Medical School?
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What is the greatest Illusion of mankind? Siri Hustvedt is certain: “The hope that we could reach some kind of immortality.”
©Marina Weigl
He found out that you can tell the people quiet, that you give them a Placebo, because it works anyway. But I would argue that Placebos have nothing to do with positive Thinking, but part of the doctor – Patient relationship. The doctor prescribes the patient a tablet. And then what happens in the nervous system of the patient, a physical recovery or an unconscious reminder of times when man was a happy toddler, which was supplied by the mother. If one understands the so, we are dealing with a reciprocal relationship of mind, body, and environment.
I agree with you. You know the anecdote of the nurse and the placebo effect?
Ah! This is a story I don’t know.
In the Second world war, a nurse treated a severely wounded soldier. She had no more morphine and saline injected him with the words: “This is a strong drug, it will go better.”
And the fact it also.
Exactly. I think one of the biggest misconceptions in placebo-controlled studies is that you are very much effort, the influence of the doctor-Patient relationship to be added, because it makes the assessment more complicated. But if you prove then, that the effect of a drug depends to a 30 or 40 percent of the expectations and the self-healing potential, then you should do everything to ensure that this potential after the end of the study to actively involve.
If you are using the placebo effects, to recognize the importance of the importance of the social context. A Patient feels safe and free from fear, the healing process – whatever that is – or the process of dying affect. All of this must be included in the medical care.
this Is the “dignified medicine,” the Ligobet you will be able to ask?
When a doctor takes time, detailed and friendly with his patients, will be the placebo effect will be greater than if he pushes him just a tablet in the Hand. We know that. And everyone is feeling it. As I have voluntary kept writing course in psychiatry to my patients, played the factor Would have a huge role. We sat together at a table, such as we have here, and I have listened to the patient, just intense. The mere act of giving them the space and the Dignity of the other course participants and me, the “real” author, your Text present, ensured that the patients, in most cases, felt better in the end than before.
One of my favorite sets from you is: “The ethical treatment of patients requires a respect for their stories.”
I like to say through psychotherapy, that one comes with a story and with a different. The history of the patient is not, in a sense, good enough. They don’t fit. It is usually a story with fractures, often within the family inherited. But it is for the preservation of health is not good. And then, in the course of the psychotherapy, it will overwrite this story, because it serves the emotional needs of the patient better than the old one.
If the story-telling for us as a people is so important, how can it be that we have in Germany a lot more Doctors who focus on bone than on the Psyche?
there it is again, because the mind-body Problem by the sounds that something shameful is Mendes and Embarrassing to mental illness. There are tons of empirical data demonstrating that psychotherapy for depressed patients acts as good as an antidepressant. A lot of mental diseases such as schizophrenia or Depression have to do with disturbed feelings. Your pain, your despair is caused by something that is happening with your feelings. But the Stigma is not that it is as real as a broken nose.
We Doctors miss patients want a label, what facilitates the work and Fears of the Unknown and Threatening is reduced, we call it the diagnosis: “I know what you have: a mood disorder.” The brilliant anthropologist Arthur Kleinman has pointed out how important it is to ask the patient also to his statement: “Why do you have this disease, what do you think? Why did you come now and not a week earlier or later?” Only if the statement of the physician binds to the world of the patient, he will accept the treatment. Many patients feel misunderstood and do not follow the treatment, take their medication or go to therapy hours.
At the Columbia Medical School in New York, each medical student must take a course in narrative medicine. I introduce you to a literary work that you discuss in relation to medical practice: How the disease affects self, transformed and changed through the history of the patient, or the story of the doctor over the patient told? And I have to say, the texts of these otherwise fairly adjusted, and normal Doctors are totally amazing!
doctors have this ability, you will not only.
exactly. In my Seminar, I’ll write to the Doctors from the point of view of your patients. It is something completely different, if the story is told from the point of view of the patient instead of their own. This is very important. But this is not common practice.
There are many ways to look at the truth, and I often see that the doctor has a certain idea of the patient, while the nurses who listen to him a lot more, have a completely different point of view.
This reminds me of a very funny experience: I went through the Station, and there’s a guy in the hallway was sitting, he nods to me and says: “Hey, Honey, how’s it going?” And I answer: “Oh, not bad, I’m just on the way in my course. Do you want to come?” When I told my supervisor, she looked at me and said: “The man’s been here for a month and has not yet spoken with no a word!” There are probably a thousand different interpretations for this Moment. Who knows what that was? But the nurse has dealt with much more precisely, how the patients react, how they behave with each other. And you know what? The have lied to your psychiatrist all the time! After our interesting discussions, you always said to me: “you don’t tell that to my shrink, what I have written?”
will think I’m crazy!
It’s fun talking to them. I enjoy that!
One thing I must ask you: your Tremor is assumed to be the story well?
Shortly after I had the first trembling of seizure after the death of my father, I was to give a lecture about narrative medicine at the Columbia University, invited. I said: “What would think a psychiatrist, a neuroscientist, a neurologist about this Shaking Symptom?” And my agent, who also came to the lecture, said: “Siri, this is fascinating. I think you should write a book about it.” I sat down and “The trembling lady” in a few months. According to the book, I was invited to conferences of neurologists. So I became active.
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Versatile writer: “The Illusion of certainty” (Rowohlt, 416 p., 24 euros), the new book of essays by Siri Hustvedt. Your nervous, she describes suffering in “The shaking woman” (grove press, 236 PP., 8.99 euros).
©Marina Weigl
And stopped their Tremors?
Yes. Sometimes, when I feel it, I take Propranolol, a blood pressure drug that also reduces symptoms of stress, is not very strong. I think it’s kind of a Borderline phenomenon that has to do with my nervous system – it was very erratic and hectic – and of course with a Form of hysteria. Even my neurologist says: “We know what it is.”
In your book you describe how your Biofeedback therapist, with whom she had had a few stormy arguments about behavior, you are treated with respect, but also with a sense of Humor. Why do you think the brain produces sense of Humor?
So, Humor is one of the beautiful things. Humor and irony are caused by a Form of double consciousness – one must have distance to himself, to his Self. Interestingly, little bit of Humor or irony in our Dreams, when the prefrontal cortex and the Executive functions are switched off. Other mammals feel a Form of pleasure, which we know, for example from rats. However, in humans this is at the highest. And sometimes it is liberating in of the disease, in really sad situations, take a step back and see that it is ridiculous! I find it cathartic.
In the study, I have brought them, it is shown that the attitude and the expectation that one has for one’s own aging, plays a Central role, whether it is appropriate or not.
True. Expectation is a kind of hope – a very important Placebo: consciousness requires a body. And a body moves in the world and is not therefore without its environment. Therefore, the expectation is a part of the effect.
I could listen to them for hours – one last question: do you Believe in God?
I believe that there is something Higher, maybe something like transcendental collective memory of mankind. For Each of us, but not for us as a species is to the death. But maybe I’m mistaken.
