Posted by violette on June 17, 2010, at 17:57:30
In reply to Re: My doctor doesn't believe i have ADHD » violette, posted by chujoe on June 16, 2010, at 13:52:34
Chujoe,
You know, I bet being an artist and writer helped you cope with ADD all these years. In fact, I think ADD is an asset in many ways, despite how difficult as it is to deal with. It sounds like having a creative channel/outlet may have helped you.
I watched a movie recently about Temple Grandin--the first autistic person to complete college (it's based on a true story). She got a PhD. She saw the world from a different perspective...if you are not familar with her story, she innovatively redesigned cattle slaughterhouses to not only be more efficient, but to be more humane. Her autism gave her the ability to see things differently. Well, you have to watch the movie to get the full sense. Cattle slaughterhouses are not the most interesting topic, but the story was very provocative.
Sometimes I think medicating for ADD can take away from the benefits of less common ways of thinking. Of course that's a personal decision, but it does cross my mind. It's difficult when the world around you is designed for non-ADDers; so you have to fit in with society rather than the other way around...And since more people are left brain dominant, public school cirriculum is designed for that type of thought pattern (at least it was when I attended public schools). It wasn't until I went to college that I was able to truly be intellectually engaged at school. I had poor grades in high school, but I noticed colleges that are more inter-disciplinary are of much greater interest to me and my grades were much better.
I could be your twin-not as in Kohut's twin transference-but literally:
- I also have a cousin with autism (not mild)
- My family tree is also lost to me for similar reasons (I have future thoughts of marrying someone who has a large, well-connected family)
- Also a very right-brained/lateral/holistic thinker
-Compartmentalizing feelings, imo, is an adaptation developed to cope with emotions, which can result from not being able to express emotions as you stated, ranging to negative parental reactions and all in between...Except: I'm not an artist or writer, but an artist-writer 'wanna be'...I'm creative but I don't think I'm talented enough to make a living off of art, but I do think about it often.
- The 2 'types' of writers is a very interesting observation...but another way to look at the 2nd type of writing is that you think abstractly and visually, and writing allows you to crystalize those thoughts into more concrete terms.
Thanks for the book recommendation. I haven't read a book in a long time (concentration/focus issues), but I put this book on my list after reading this excerpt from a review: "For Bentall, these classifications have little more scientific value than astrological predictions based on zodiac signs." (in regard to DSM diagnoses)
Then after reading Jaspers' concept, noting he was a psychiatrist and philosopher, I moved the book up to #2 on my list of books to read....
This stuff does distract me from work, so I do have to lighten up, but thank you for your post.
:)
Excerpt from book review:
"The philosopher Karl Jaspers, who was trained as a psychiatrist, made a distinction between `understanding' and `explaining' madness. He argued that in the case of psychoses, the most severe form of mental illness, no attempt should be made at understanding what appears as incoherent speech or meaningless behavior by investigating a patient's background and making sense of what he has to say. Rather, psychologists should try to explain psychotic behavior by dividing patients into discrete categories and establishing causal links that should ultimately point towards brain malfunctions or genetic defects.
Richard Bentall shows us that attempts to explain and to understand mental symptoms are inextricably linked. Rather than postulating an unambiguous dividing line between the mentally sane and the insane, he proposes that irrational beliefs and abnormal behaviors manifested by psychotic patients can be seen as the far end of a continuum on which people are distributed. The differences between those who are diagnosed as suffering from a psychiatric disorder and those who are not amount to relatively little, and these differences appear to be understandable when viewed in the context of what we know about normal human psychology.
The classification of psychiatric disorders into neuroses (such as benign forms of depression or phobias) and psychoses (such as manic depression and schizophrenia) dates back to Emil Kraepelin and a number of Karl Jaspers' contemporaries. Although the concepts originally formulated by German psychiatrists at the turn of the twentieth century underwent a series of transformations, the idea that psychiatric disorders fall into a finite number of categories remain the organizing principle for psychiatric practice and research, as evidenced by the successive editions of the DSM diagnostic manual. For Bentall, these classifications have little more scientific value than astrological predictions based on zodiac signs. According to his rather extreme contention, we should abandon psychiatric diagnoses altogether and instead try to explain and understand the actual experiences and behaviors of psychotic people."
poster:violette
thread:951172
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20100615/msgs/951357.html