The Yates case and the idea of a split mother.

"I personally don't think mental illness absolves one of personal responsibility. Nor does the criminal law; the insanity defense is a narrow category, which exculpates the defendant not merely because he's ill, but because he's deprived of volition regarding the acts in question. Which is not to say that Yates case turned out right," Brian in comments, #50, on Patterico's blog.

That is well put. Liberal Chicks and Dr. Helen have commented on the Yates case. A Catholic might wonder how this case is different from abortion; like good mathematicians we may know that the answer is "obvious." Yet still I think this question brings us to something poetic, sad regarding the Yates chidren, and perhaps correctly insightful about individual development.

"In the begining was the Word and the Word was with God." This begining of a Gospel mirrors our feeling of the begining of any human life. Life sems to begin with the impression of the mother and the child is part of the mother. In the Gita, Oppenheimer famously quoted, 'I am Vishna. I am the creator of worlds; I am the destroyer of worlds.' A patient had intrusive thoughts about harming her children, not that she wanted to carry them out. The patient had had an alcoholic mother for whom she had to cover 'because what would the neighbors think.' The therapist surmised that the patient experienced mother's attitude, shown in other ways as well, as a kind of attack on her which she was reexperiencing, as if from the other side, now that she was a mother. At the same time, mother felt intensely for the therapist; one might say that she saw the 'creator of worlds' aspect of Vishna in the therapist; so that, in sum, she was working through the anxiety or perception of both, which is what she did. And ultimately, we are released by or feel we escape from our mothers. The Yates case is an exception, but the jurors, reperesenting us, may have realized that this is not perfectly easy to do and had some sympathy for Andrea, a Vishna without knowledge.

Spanish Civil War

Another view of the Spanish Civil War. I don't offer it to be critical. It is mainly relevant to show how the Eurpean elites clung to a nation state (balance)hope for peace really based on the situation created by the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia in spite of evidence and still do. By prolonging the 30 Years War and in weakening the Catholic, but also with a small "c" for ruling many different cultural/religous areas, King of Spain and Austria, this was Cardinal Richelieu's creation to uplift, in spite of the terrible suffering and death it caused, the King of France. On Richelieu's death the Pope is reported to have said, "If there is no G-d, he (Richelieu) did quite well for himself. If there is, he will have a lot to answer for."

A Liberal Republican Like Dad

Peggy Noonan wonders why Mr. Bush calls our foreign minister 'Condi' and has other heartfelt thoughts. I can't disagree about forced informality. I was told to call the boss, 40 years older, at a technology institute 'Jim' when I was in college, would have been comfortable calling him Mr. X. Felt so alienated I became a doctor. The WSJ was kind of enough to include my thoughts on "W" and Ronald Reagan in their "Reader Responses":

Know? Trust? No Bush would start his presidential campaign near the Tallahatchie River where Emmett Till was killed. Reagan did; Southern strategy I guess. "W" is a liberal Republican like his dad. His school is practical politics. Part of his insistence on being himself was abjuring reading conservative political philosophy, "Leftism" by Kuenhelt-Leddihn for example, which could have better led him away from clichés about what America should be and was, though he has an insider's experience reflected in saying "Condi."

Great post in a free site of the WSJ on the value of the Iraq invasion in changing the politics, 'setting the stage for the destruction of Hezbollah,' of the middle East. Spine tingling for correlating it with the military usefulness of Caesar's seeing that 'Omnia Gallia est divisa in tres partes.'

Singing Hatikvah in a rally in Ohio.

Hamlet and the Middle East

To die at home (soothed by words of the thin Othello Kofi Anaan) or to die in battle with the cur like words of Nasrallah spoken over you; that is the question the Israelis face. This sea of troubles may be easier for the Israelis with a tradition feeling being, life, and development. For me, the fact that a man Zidane has arisen from the life of the enemy gives hope.

Saudi Arabia, doing sweet violence to our expectations, the prince's peace plan had intent, is condemning Hezbollah. Djerejian is concerned that Israel has overreached, should have just looked to southern Lebanon lately. He answers himself later by saying that the Iranians have increased the tactical skill of the Muslim offense. The Iranian safe haven in Syria may be a strategic objective in the present conflict. I suppose that I stand with Shakespeare in recommending "to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them." Have the Israelis asked the Saudis if they might help in the struggle against Hezbollah?

Prospective letter

Going to get to talk with the great attraction of Truluck's on McKinney with me Wednesday, July 12, truly a great seafood place. A new idea will be that ziprasidone's stimulation of the 5-HT1b receptor is what causes sedation or activation (in ~ half the patients). This occurrence relates to my low dose roll in of the drug for a patient and clinical examples will be given. Primary references supporting the neuropharmacological discussion are Stahl's J. Clin Psychiatry article and Richard Green's Neuropharmacology of Serotonin with more modern Abstracts on animals transfected to have increased 5HT1b receptors in the dorsal raphe, also ziprasidone being the only neuroleptic studied that is a partial agonist at the 5HT1b receptor, the rest inverse agonists. Special attaboys for seeing in the structure of Stahl's really very informative paper an interesting deficiency in his discussion of the 5-HT2c/D2 blockade balance section of his article which seems, for several reasons, in error. The role of cryptic mixed bipolar in treatment resistant depression mentioned, example given.

Update: Kim Collins, Joe, Norris and others from the second year came.

Update: Put the ideas off in a prospective letter to the Editor at The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 9-4-06

Update on talk, 10-20-06: Received 'congratulations' from Dr. Gelenberg 'to the authors of the manuscript. It is accepted for publication.'

What did you think of the World Cup? Everybody gets to play psychoanalyst now and say, 'I know what Zidane was thinking. It was ...' It seems to me he didn't want to follow ABC's marketing strategy.

Update:

Alcibiades has a good review of the incident including videos of that and other plays of the Italian player involved. Heather Hunter shares sexual thoughts.

"Reagan" to me

'Our lives are like the grass in the fields. It grows in the morning and is cut down in the afternoon.' Is that the way it goes? It is a calming metaphor. One imagines the structure of grass to be fairly simple. The sun and rain and earth lead the grass to begin again. Reagan Andrews, Jr. died. I can remember him at my dad's funeral and with Connie at a little reception Beverly and I had over at her parents house before our first son was born. I felt good; they were there. I hadn't seen him in a while. I remember a comment he made about the Southern aristocracy after the Civil War, that it 'just disappeared.' And I wondered if there wasn't memory of that in the house off Walnut Hill Lane in well-to-do Dallas where his parents lived. He went to the Air Force when he was 20, listened to Russian shortwave broadcasts from Turkey, came back and got a Ph.D. in Psychology. Those Russians whose love life was on the short wave, heh, no problem. Connie said that 'his time in the AF greatly influenced his life,' which reminds me of a story from Russia. The Russians have a crack fighter group like the Blue Angels. They did a demonstration in China once and were flying back into Russia. The radio crackles, 'What are you doing?' Explanation given by pilot. 'You do not have a flight plan in our system. You do not have permission to enter. We will send our interceptors up to shoot you down.' Pilot leader, "Send up your interceptors! We will see who returns to Mother Russia." With that, they flew unmolested to their base.

A myth of the primitive?

A recent book says some 2 billion would have been killed if we had had primitive tribal life in the 20th century. It's an interesting thought. Right now the Ayammarra Indians, Bolivia, are going through a period of seeking the pre-Spanish idyll, WSJ front page 7-6. Rousseau published on the innocence and beneficence of the primitive and this myth has driven various revolutionary movements since. Interesting that that the 'class struggle' or other issues could serve as screen memories to an idyllic time in infancy, a memory that is a part of normal development. OTOH in a book I commented on before, end of post, the author argued that their were no 'man on man' pictograms before the invention of the bow and arrow, which gave in 'economic' terms an advantage to an organized assault.

Soccer and a great link

For those of us who haven't had the time to watch much soccer. Fifa's world cup site is absolutely wonderful. The first thing about it, there are no advertisements before the video clips! Viva soccer huh! Go to the middle of the web page in 'Germany 2006 Highlights' and click on 'Full Video Highlights' and your good to pick out something. The German coach has come in for praise, the WSJ talks of a 74 yo woman who has the flag tatooed on her hand and around her neck, apparently the tatoo de jour for the Germans. Well, Italy beat them today, and those goals are in the upper left corner of the 'MATCH HIGHLIGHTS' section. One of the orthopods I run into at lunch complained that the Brazilians were allowed to beat Ghana by not having 'off sides' called on them. If an offensive player is between the last defensive player and the goal when the ball is kicked to him that is 'off-sides.' You can see the relevant plays; just click on the icon for the game. But compare to France vs. Spain; it looks like the referees will accept being 'in the neigborhood' which may be best practice. It is a hard call to make; and, in US club soccer, it seems to mean that the offensive player has raced beyond the defense regardless of their status at the time of the kick. We have become too accustomed to severe calls; to me the ref for the Brazilian game got it just right. And of course the Brazilians played it right. Really, once you hear the rules and see the Brazilians play, then you know the rules of the music. And I just loved their goalie kicking the ball out on a quick unexpected shot position; an insect couldn't have had better sudden coordination of its leg.

Bolivia, People and Language

In my limited travels, I have come to love Bolivians and Italians. Visiting Santa Cruz, about which is this blogpost, has been one of my faraway wishes. My comments in the link and the response about Bolivian Spanish reflect this:

When I was in the altiplano, they talked of the ‘Chacoa gezza’ phonetically. Any comments on the variant to the word ‘guerra.’ One veteran we examined probably with an atrial fib, on learning that we could do nothing for him, conversed with some associates seemed to offer that his problem was ‘nerves’ and walked off with a real bearing given honor and respect a part of which was his having been part of the ‘gezza.’

Comment by Frank IBC — 6/30/2006
Bolivians tend to pronounce the letter “r”, specifically the “erre”, like the English letter “z”, or possibly a voiced version of the Castillian “zeta”.

Little Miss Attila calls him 'Hitch.' He came up with an article the key etmology of which might be the Americanization of The English prounciation of the word 'below.' I' still hold his discrediting of the American soldier in VN against him. With this article and a box of Chardonnay from Target*, well you just need company for the party.

*from WSJ 6-28 on house wines at grocery outlets: 'Chardonnay from 7-Eleven, called Thousand Oaks, was actually pretty good -- light and almost as refreshing as a Slurpee -- though overpriced at $7.49 and ultimately not among our favorites. A boxed Australian Chardonnay from Target was quite good and a real bargain at $15.99. Overall, Sauvignon Blanc was the best bet on a varietal, while Chardonnay was the worst. Cabernet was more reliable than Merlot.

Albertsons did well in the tasting on the strength of two brands called Q and Origin. Other Albertsons house brands, Flourish and Voyage (in a box), didn't taste good. Safeway's house brands, Firefly Ridge and Diablo Creek, were just OK or worse. A Harris Teeter offering called Fish Eye was consistently disappointing, although one of its low-priced Oak Creek wines, the Cabernet, was pleasant drinking for $3.99. We didn't like the Charles Shaw Merlot, Cabernet or Chardonnay. In the past, we've said that the best of the "Two-Buck Chuck" wines is the Sauvignon Blanc, but we didn't see it this time. Kroger's Arrow Creek brand was impressive: Both the Chardonnay and Merlot were among our favorites and the Cabernet was OK. They cost $9.99.'