Phillip Romero is a psychiatrist, an artist and a writer. The ancient Greeks would have been proud of him as a representative of what they called, the 'golden mean'. They respected people who could function well across many fields of endeavor. Their poets were ideally good soldiers, politicians and philosophers. They believed in the well rounded man and in bringing things together.
Psychiatry is a demanding field of medical specialization. It is the study of human behavior in a medical context. Where psychology is the general science of human behavior psychiatry requires a medical background upon which specialist scientific insights and treatments are built.
What is known as 'western medicine is founded upon 'scientific method'. This vaunted method of thinking relies upon prescriptive mental strategies. Things are not accepted as truth unless they have been proved to be true. Many people trained in western science have problems with faith and also with paradigms that do not conform with the ways that they have been taught to think. For example, they may see that acupuncture works but be unable to make any mental or emotional compromise with the facts that they see before them.
Whatever their training doctors are concerned to solve problems of survival. The African 'witchdoctor' might throw bones and utter incantations but he is essentially engaged in the same end purpose as the western doctor, dressed in baggy green pajamas, with his scalpel poised. In many cases psychiatrists have to face the intractable problems of sanity and insanity. Dropping a bomb that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people seemed sane in 1945 in the context of the social environment at that time. Some years later it seemed blatantly insane.
Like the psychiatrist the artist works at the interface between sanity and insanity. Experts tend to agree that cave dwellers who depicted animals and ceremonies on the walls of their caves were doing more than idly recording activities and experiences. Even if they might have been unaware of the significance of the actions they were creating symbols and metaphors addressing the questions of why and how they came to exist in particular circumstances.
The lives of hunter gatherer clans must have been precarious. They must have been threatened by animals, disease and accidents on a daily basis. In some cases the entire clan was wiped out by unforeseen eventualities or by enemy clans. Reality was not rational but it was re
What happened at one end of a rock overhang was probably observed by people at the opposite end. Similarly, in the contemporary world, we watch people playing games on other continents and hear them tapping their bats on the ground. Like clansmen looking at the clouds we look for signs that will affect our survival. Climate change worries us and we are concerned that all the planet's oil and coal reserves will soon be converted into carbon emissions. The question of what to do recurs, as it always has.
In ancient times a hunter and a painter might have co-operated in facing a problem. Returning from a reconnaissance the hunter might have surveyed present realities in the light of metaphors created on cave walls. In a similar fashion Phillip Romero uses the latest technology which is the Internet. He shows how artists' metaphors might hold hope for the imperative social, economic and political solutions for the new challenges of our times.
Psychiatry is a demanding field of medical specialization. It is the study of human behavior in a medical context. Where psychology is the general science of human behavior psychiatry requires a medical background upon which specialist scientific insights and treatments are built.
What is known as 'western medicine is founded upon 'scientific method'. This vaunted method of thinking relies upon prescriptive mental strategies. Things are not accepted as truth unless they have been proved to be true. Many people trained in western science have problems with faith and also with paradigms that do not conform with the ways that they have been taught to think. For example, they may see that acupuncture works but be unable to make any mental or emotional compromise with the facts that they see before them.
Whatever their training doctors are concerned to solve problems of survival. The African 'witchdoctor' might throw bones and utter incantations but he is essentially engaged in the same end purpose as the western doctor, dressed in baggy green pajamas, with his scalpel poised. In many cases psychiatrists have to face the intractable problems of sanity and insanity. Dropping a bomb that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people seemed sane in 1945 in the context of the social environment at that time. Some years later it seemed blatantly insane.
Like the psychiatrist the artist works at the interface between sanity and insanity. Experts tend to agree that cave dwellers who depicted animals and ceremonies on the walls of their caves were doing more than idly recording activities and experiences. Even if they might have been unaware of the significance of the actions they were creating symbols and metaphors addressing the questions of why and how they came to exist in particular circumstances.
The lives of hunter gatherer clans must have been precarious. They must have been threatened by animals, disease and accidents on a daily basis. In some cases the entire clan was wiped out by unforeseen eventualities or by enemy clans. Reality was not rational but it was re
What happened at one end of a rock overhang was probably observed by people at the opposite end. Similarly, in the contemporary world, we watch people playing games on other continents and hear them tapping their bats on the ground. Like clansmen looking at the clouds we look for signs that will affect our survival. Climate change worries us and we are concerned that all the planet's oil and coal reserves will soon be converted into carbon emissions. The question of what to do recurs, as it always has.
In ancient times a hunter and a painter might have co-operated in facing a problem. Returning from a reconnaissance the hunter might have surveyed present realities in the light of metaphors created on cave walls. In a similar fashion Phillip Romero uses the latest technology which is the Internet. He shows how artists' metaphors might hold hope for the imperative social, economic and political solutions for the new challenges of our times.
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