Blogs

Julia Lewis

11/7/08

Project Draft

Motor Imagery, Mental Health, and the Brain

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Introduction:

Humans are storytellers.  Ever since we developed our characteristically largeneo-cortexes, stories have been the main means for communicating ourunderstandings of the world to ourselves and to others.  Stories give meaning and texture to thelives we live. 

It is well known that our unconscious is receiving many more signals than the conscious mind eventually becomes aware of, or than the unconscious is choosing to use in its creation of the coherent story of “reality” it makes available to the conscious (7). Neuroscience and neurobiology increasingly support the idea that much of what we eventually understand to be behavior governed by our free will is in fact initiated by the unconscious slightly before the conscious mind even becomes aware of it (2).

Mental illness has long since confounded people who have them, their families and those attempting to treat them. The current system for evaluating mental health status entails largely a set of diagnostic criteria that are designed to standardize diagnosis and treatment. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) in its current incarnation is a tome of symptoms, categories and diagnoses that are useful tools for mental health practitioners coming to grips with the varied presentation of behaviors that are characteristic of individuals with varying experiences. There is a vast difference according to all diagnostic measures, between anorexia nervosa, for example, and schizophrenia. Anorexia is defined as:   

Tourette’s syndrome is a highly complex behavioral disorder. There is no real “typical” case of Tourette’s as it is extremely individualized and changes within each person who has it throughout their life. Some who are afflicted with very severe symptoms’ lives are incredibly affected by the syndrome, while most patients go undiagnosed for years. Are the behaviors that characterize Tourette’s syndrome really debilitating? Or are they just different?

 

HISTORY OF TOURETTE’S SYNDROME

 

The Purposeful Migraine

 

In the essay "In Bed," Joan Didion writes:

"And once [migraine] comes, now that I am wise in its ways, I no longer fight it. I lie down and let it happen. At first every small apprehension is magnified, every anxiety a pounding terror. Then the pain comes, and I concentrate only on that. Right there is the usefulness of migraine, there in that imposed yoga, the concentration on the pain. For when the pain recedes, ten or twelve hours later, everything goes with it, all the hidden resentments, all the vain anxieties. The migraine has acted as a circuit breaker, and the fuses have emerged intact. There is a pleasant convalescent euphoria. I open the windows and feel the air, eat gratefully, sleep well. I notice the particular nature of a flower in a glass on the stair landing. I count my blessings." (1)