Posted by Jen2 on March 1, 2005, at 11:05:29
Hi,
There was a segment on a cross-Canada radio show yesterday about depersonalization. Thought some of you might be interested to see the transcript. There are lots of links embedded in the text of the transcript, so if you want to see those you can go to www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2005/200502/20050228.html
Jen
The Current: Part 3Depersonalization: Filmmaker
For the next half hour we're going to explore an age-old---but little discussed----mental illness called depersonalization disorder. It's something we all might experience at one point in our lives.
For instance, if you've ever been in a car accident, or fought in a war, or suffered a terrible loss, you may have felt numb, detached, as though these awful things weren't really happening. Most of us snap out of it after a short period of time. But imagine if you remained frozen in that state, floating above the action--there, but not there at all.
Jonathan Caouette is a filmmaker who not only suffers from the illness, he's made a film that tries to capture what it feels like to live with it. His film, Tarnation, has been called disturbing, compelling and beautiful. He is now thirty-three, but when Jonathan was eleven, he borrowed a camera and began to document his strange, sometimes tragic, life. There is no real narrative, rather the film combines home movies, stock film footage, and interviews with Jonathan's family, including painful scenes with his mother, Renee, who is also mentally ill.
Jonathan Caouette was in Houston this morning, where he's shooting a movie. He is the director of the film,Tarnation. It has already opened in Toronto and makes its Vancouver debut on March the 4th.
Depersonalization ExpertDepersonalization disorder has been plaguing people and intriguing doctors for decades---because it can be as difficult to diagnose as it is to experience.
Dr. Daphne Simeon specializes in Depersonalization Disorder at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, where she runs the only clinic in North American devoted to its treatment. She's also writing a book about depersonalization due out later this year. She was in New York.
Depersonalization & Art FactboardAccording to depersonalization.info, an information clearinghouse for the disorder, chronically depersonalized people are usually highly intelligent--and prone to philosophical ruminations. In fact, it was the existentialists who believed that human beings' greatest enemy was depersonalization--specifically the depersonalization of the soul---or the way the modern world can sometimes turn us into robots.
The French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, called depersonalization "The Filth". One of his most famous novels, Nausea, is about a writer who's haunted by the great question of his existence. He keeps a diary chronicling his every thought and mood in order to remind himself that the inability to feel the beauty and wonder around him would mean the death of his soul--another way of describing what it feels like to suffer from the disorder.
Depersonalization has also been called the "Alice in Wonderland" disease--when a person's world is distorted--small things are big---big things small---and nothing is as it seems.
William James, the nineteenth century American psychologist and philosopher called depersonalization "the sick soul". Other literary depictions of depersonalization include Albert Camus' The Stranger or The Outsider, Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground, and Jorge Luis Borges' story, The Aleph. And modern filmmakers such as Ingmar Bergman and Woody Allen have often tackled the notion of how the big city, modern marriage and too much money can sometimes contribute to feelings of depersonalization.
But most scholars would say Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard was the first to name existentialism as our only hope to fight depersonalization. His work--which peaked in the mid-1800s-- decades before Mr. Sartre, or Woody Allen were born---often dealt with the fact that depersonalization is caused by our increasingly industrialized world.
But we won't get into that debate----lest we "alienate" any listeners.
poster:Jen2
thread:464887
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050227/msgs/464887.html