#65329

9450 Gilman Dr.

La Jolla, CA 92092-0100

Vanessa Kosiyanon

CAT3-Catherine Gere

TA: Yeesheen

April 29, 2009

Introduction to Mind Control

This quarter in CAT, you will be reading some articles on the topic of eugenics. Later on in the quarter, we’ll be stepping into some articles discussing how certain methods were used to control others in the past. Two of the articles in which you will be reading will be Psychosurgery: Intelligence, Emotion and Social Behavior Following Prefrontal Lobotomy for Mental Disorders by W. Freeman and J. Watts, and “Talking Back to Ritalin: What Doctors Aren’t Telling You About Stimulants and ADHD” by Peter Breggin. From these articles, you will be able to see that the methods of mind control were different, but the ideas, which influenced these methods, were still quite similar.

In Freeman and Watt’s article, you will read about their methods of lobotomy and how they believed they came up with the ultimate “cure” for “abnormal” psychiatric behavior. You’ll read about different cases of different patients and how their cases came out to be “successes” in their own way. In Peter Breggin’s article on the other hand, talks about how these “successes” are merely nothing more than a want to believe that something is a success, which may lead someone to actually believe something is a success when it really is not one.  They prove that the “cures” really do not improve, but instead break something by trying to fix something that is not broken.

            Freeman and Watts seem to see their patients as successes when they seem to follow their idea of what is “socially normal”, such as apologizing for bad behavior after an operation. In Ritalin though, we find that children who have taken Ritalin seem to follow similar behavior. “For a variety of reasons, children will almost always tell authority figures such as doctors what they imagine the adults want to hear. They may consciously or unconsciously lie in order to gain approval.” (Breggins 84). This is because they may fear punishments for not liking or not taking the drug. This explanation could very well explain the patients in Freeman’s hospital’s behavior of submissiveness and subservient ways. The patients who were once “ill” before, perhaps afterward were not truly “cured”, but instead were just telling the doctors what they wanted to hear.  This is probably why both lobotomy and Ritalin are not used today as cures for those who are mentally sick.

        The classification of who is sick is quite vague in each of the methods explained in each article. In Freeman’s article, a boy who merely just masturbated often was said to have been in need of a lobotomy due to his “mental illness” in excessive sexual drive. After the operation, the boy’s masturbation became infrequent or had pretty much stopped altogether. Of course today we would not consider such actions or behaviors to be a means, which indicated an ill mind, instead we would consider it a natural normal behavior that does not need any special attention.  In Ritalin’s case, we find that many of the children who were given Ritalin were diagnosed as “hyperactive”. Today we find that just as absurd as well, we see that children are meant to be hyper active, and because of this, we do not see it as something that is abnormal nor do we see it as something that is in need of any special attention. 

        Today we see both lobotomy and Ritalin as something that changes a person from what they once were, not something that is a cure, but instead something that takes away what a person once was. It makes people more hyper, less hyper, more social, less social, less depressed, more happy, or what the doctors want people to think the most “more normal”, but in reality, it just takes away a person’s true self, dubbing their old selves as abnormal or ill, and slapping on the word normal to their new, created-by-others-selves. In this class you will read and link how our past technologies are still controversial today, for we have new technologies of brain control such as the ability to genetically choose your child or alter one’s child through the choosing of genes. We still have medications such as Ritalin and Prozac, but instead they are no longer given to children, but instead to only adults. Even so, is it still right? Who do you believe has the right to choose of whom or what is considered normal. Do we have the right to force individuals into certain taking part in certain “cures” as they did to people back then with lobotomies and with children and Ritalin? You can decide for yourself this quarter.

Tal Golan; TA: Yeesheen

CAT 2

Discussion: Tu/Th 5:00-5:50pm

January 21, 2009

Reason Has Its Flaws

As a child, one is always taught in school never to panic during an emergency. Instead, one is always to remain calm during the event and use their logic to do what is best. Though this is true, it is not always what happens. Picture this, a work office catches on fire on the fourth floor with only one exit available to the whole building. In some cases, one would imagine people going out in a single file line calmly, yet efficiently to guarantee that everyone makes it out alive and unharmed. This is one possibility, but instead, there are and have been situations in which people end up panicking, pushing, shoving, and screaming because they are so terrified of losing their life, even though they logically know that that is not the proper way to handle the situation. Logic should be used in this situation, logic is taught to be used in this situation, some try to use logic in this situation, but in some cases, logic ends up not working. This is because logic is not the answer to everything. Though it has accomplished great things in our history, it cannot always be expected to be applied in every situation. The world we live in is not based on black and white, true and not true reasoning like the ideas of the time of the Enlightenment. Reason has its limits, because in reality other factors such as emotions, personal ideas, and personal morals interfere with the idea of reasoning and logic.

There was a time when reason and truth ran much of the world. Philosophers were passionately compelled to find answers and meanings. During this time, logic ran everything. Descartes was one of the philosophers who took reasoning as law. Everything for him was step by step, and everything for him needed to be absolute and clear, otherwise, he refused to see it as an option. In his piece, “Discourse on Method for Reasoning Well and for Seeking Truth in the Sciences”, Descartes talked of nothing but reason and logic and showed through his writing method and ideas, that it ruled his way of thought. He constantly used words such as “examine”, “rule”, “analysis”, and “reason” to explain his journey through life. It was apparent that he believed logic was the only answer to everything.

Everything to him was either black or white, it was one way or it wasn’t, there were no gray options in his world of reason. Throughout the reading though, one could come to see that his reasoning lead him to deny pretty much everything that existed in this world. Everything was black or white, nothing to him was gray. He criticized things such as the ideas of geometry and science (which are the very few constants throughout the planet), and the ideas of Sparta (which was one of the most powerful and influential empires in history). In the end, Descartes was not really able to find an answer to anything through reason, except for the one fact that he believed to be true, the existence of God, which ironically other people tend to question today. The fact that Descartes used reason to conclude only one truth, which also happens to be criticized by others, proves that reason is not always the best outlook to have for everything.

Just last weekend, I was in Irvine visiting my boyfriend. While visiting, we went to a place called Boomers, a small park which had both inside attractions (arcade games) and outside attractions (go-karts, miniature golf). I was most excited about the rock climb. I’d never rock climbed and had always wanted to try despite my small fear of heights. People do it all the time, so I knew it was safe. When I got to the attraction, my boyfriend cheered me on and told me to be careful, but I knew that I’d be fine. I got strapped in. The worker managing the rock climb asked me which level I’d like to try: easy, medium, or hard. At that moment I saw a kid climbing the hard one with ease and thought, why not? If he can do it, so can I, so I said hard. I waited while watching for the kid to finish. The kid reached the top and started repelling down from the wall with no hesitation or fear whatsoever. “This won’t be bad at all,” I thought to myself. The kid got off and the worker strapped me to the rock climb wire and made sure it was securely fastened. “Go,” he said, and I went off. I started climbing with ease, no fear, no worries. As I went up, it got scarier by each step, it wasn’t so easy anymore. I kept going though because I didn’t want to give up half way. Little by little, I finally made it to the top. “Okay,” I thought, “That wasn’t so bad.” I looked down. I was really far up. A little panicky, I yelled “What do I do now?” “Rapel! Rapel!” people answered. “What?” I yelled back, too scared to let go. My leg started shaking from the pressure, I was worried now. I knew I had to jump down, but I couldn’t. “I’ll be perfectly safe if I let go, I’m supposed to let go, it’s made so I won’t get hurt,” I kept trying to reason with myself, but no matter what I kept thinking, I wouldn’t budge. “I saw the kid before me come down with no harm, so if he can do it, I can do it. If he was okay, I’ll be okay,” I kept thinking, but my hands just clung on. In Descartes’s world, this would not be the outcome. In his world, other factors such as fear would not have affected my logic reasoning. The answer instead would only be black or white, safe or not safe, and I would be expected to follow that reasoning, instead of doubting my safety despite my emotions. But in reality, it turned out that I couldn’t use logic in this circumstance because my fear was too strong to be reasoned with. Even though I had logic in my mind, my emotion did not allow me to follow it, ultimately proving in the end that logic does not always work.

Today in society there is and has been an ideology called eugenics. The main basis of this ideology is “better breeding”, or in other terms, creating a “perfect society” by only allowing those with “good” and “well-structured” traits to pass on genes to our future generation. This is thought to be a very reasonable idea. It is an idea with the hope that one day our world will be filled with people who do not suffer from physical, health, or overall “quality” defficiencies because no “bad” qualities would be passed on. Does this sound unlikely? Well, in our society, it has actually come to be considered logical. Scientists such as Davenport have been able to find and use scientific evidence to support and prove that the idea of Eugenics is reasonable. He has considered the arguments against it and even has answers to refute them, such as questions like “How does the environment play role in one’s outcome?” He argues that “There is no heredity without enviornment and few environmental effects which are not dependent also on heredity”(Davenport 27). He argues that without a child able to have the fullest oportunity of good genes, then the child can not use the environment to it’s full potential. Though this sounds logical and has support, the idea of eugenics is still severely criticized. People think it is immoral, which influences their idea of what is reasonable. People think it is absurd, because they fear that they may be the ones unable to breed, which influences their idea of what is reasonable. Some people just find it illogical overall, because their ideas do not match with those who believe in eugenics. Though it sounds reasonable to many, many others are unable to see the other side’s logics because their differences in ideas are too great to agree, therefore logic can also not be expected to be the only factor in this area.

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