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Kay R. Jamison’s book, Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, discusses the traditional view of the “artistic temperament,” with the telltale traits of moodiness, dark creativity, and temporary bouts into mania, with the symptoms linked to manic-depressive illness. In many cases, the artists themselves knew that there was something unique about their states of mind. Of his friends, Lord Byron once said, “We of the craft are all crazy. Some are affected by gaiety, others by melancholy, but all are more or less touched” (Jamison 2). Jamison focuses on those who have, over the years, been revered and stigmatized for being “more or less touched.” Many artists, such as Vincent van Gogh and Ernest Hemmingway, were known as much for their manic-depressive disorders as for the profound and unique musical and literary works they produced. Some of these artists were able to move past their disorder to lead a ‘normal’ life; others, such as Anne Sexton and Virginia Woolfe, were unable to overcome their illnesses, and ended up either in a psychiatric hospital, some eventually killing themselves.

Part 1: The Coon Attack 

The moon was full like a perfectly round yellow balloon waiting to be popped.  A swarm of stars peaked through the obstinate clouds as small sparkles of light.  I imagined the night sky was a long road waiting to be traveled and the stars were the lights that guided one there.  As I moved my eyes down toward the corn field I marveled that no one would ever be able to experience the infinite length of the starlit path that seemed so impossibly distant from Earth.

Tickling was always an interesting concept to me.  When we’re tickled, we laugh.  Laughing generally is a sign of joy, or happiness, but when forced, for example, when being tickled, it isn’t as pleasant, or pleasant at all.  I didn’t like that I didn’t have control over what was going on when I was being tickled- that I couldn’t catch my breath from laughing as easily as I could if I was in control.  Later on, someone suggested to me that it was impossible to tickle ourselves to the same effect as if someone else was tickling us.  I wondered if the reason for this was due to a correlation between this feeling of lack of control and the stronger reaction of being more ticklish.  While interest in this topic has only recently greatly emerged and ideas are still being developed, researchers have actually found a part of the brain they believe to be responsible for our ticklish reactions- the cerebellum (1)

The Drama of the Gifted Child, by Alice Miller, is about the child who was so aware, consciously or otherwise, of the wishes of his parents and had such a strong desire to fulfill them, that he lost track of himself and his own identity.  It’s about the child who never discovered his “true self” because he was so concerned with pleasing those around him, and the repercussions of that later in life, as an adult.  The book discusses the unconscious wishes of the parent being often unconsciously bestowed on the child, with the child absorbing these wishes and morphing into this different person.  The Drama offers help by explaining the problems and consequences of growing up in this way, and suggestions for steps as to remove himself from the person he is not, and move towards finding his “true identity”. 

Entering any art museum, you will walk down many white washed walls with brightly colored canvases mounted upon them. In the abstract section you will most likely pass a canvas that consists of only two or three large blocks of intense color painted upon it. Looking at these colored blocks, you may or may not experience a sense of sunniness, coolness, tenseness, or relaxation. This is a typical reaction to the works of Mark Rothko[1]. Rothko’s art, using alternately radiant and dark colors, is distinguished by the sustained concentration on pure pictorial properties such as color, surface, proportion, and scale, in order to inspire in his audience profound themes such as tragedy, ecstasy, and the sublime. His images are known to provoke raw human experiences, or what we have learned are primary experiences. Not only do his paintings evoke emotional states, they will not evoke the same emotion in everyone. How is Rothko able to achieve such a reactions and why do the reactions vary? I wish to look at this question from a biological and color-centric point of view, disregarding the I-function’s affect on creativity and variability in the brain.

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

Book critique by Tiffany Ngan

"Who wants to live forever?" —Queen

A British secret agent is cryonically (not cryogenically, as generally understood) frozen in 1967 and defrosted thirty years later in the late 90s for the purpose of battling his archenemy and saving the planet from annihilation. Does such a scenario sound familiar? If it does, it is because this plot is that of the popular film Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. While this comedy is based on outlandish and often impossible situations, one might reasonably ask the following question regarding the cryonic freezing of human beings:

Feminism is the constantly evolving, diverse movement that critiques and works to change the power structures that exclude and victimize groups of people. Feminist wave theory is a framework that divides feminism since the nineteenth century into three main waves. Each wave contains wide diversity within itself but all of the waves share the goal of education reform. Education is a structure in our society that can exclude groups or can empower groups. In this paper, I will discuss the field of ecology in a feminist framework. To begin I will explain ecology and the wave framework that I will be using to explore it. I will end with a creative piece inspired by Peggy McIntosh’s Interactive Phases of Curricular Re-Vision: A Feminist Perspective.

The scientific community has long considered the study of feelings to be taboo, a subject too elusive and mysterious to be researched or truly understood. In his book, Looking for Spinoza, Antonio Damasio is able to finally shed some light on what feelings are and why we have them. In the first chapter, Damasio writes that main purpose of his work “is to present a progress report on the nature of and human significance of feelings and related phenomena, as I see them now, as neurologist, neuroscientist and regular user”(Demasio 6.) With this purpose in mind, Demasio proceeds to elucidate the very nature of emotions and feelings, cleverly interweaving his solid scientific research as well as his personal interpretation of Spinoza’s somewhat radical philosophy. Demasio never looses track of the ultimate goal, to connect his scientific knowledge with ideas of great human significance. Thus Spinoza’s spirit is present throughout the book, even in the scientifically descriptive passages. His revolutionary ideas, so far ahead of his time, truly foreshadow what we have now come to understand about our feelings, our minds and ourselves.