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03/02/2007: The Brain Loves to Make Boxes. Which Explains Why I Discovered the Muslim Yellow Pages at My Favorite Lebanese Restaurant. And Why Box-Making Can Be Such a Dangerous Thing

02/12/2007: The Dirty Little Secret of Every Courtroom Is That Every Witness’s Memory is a Leaking Sieve or Shifting Sands or a Shaky Pastiche, the Scooter Libby Trial's Included

02/03/2007: A Blog for Brainy People Is, I Suspect, Like a Favorite Off-the-Beaten-Path Eating Hole: You Only Drop In When in the Mood. So, Here’s a Reprise for When the Mood Strikes You

01/24/2007: It’s Not Just the President’s Psychology that Should Give Us Pause, It’s the Whole Bias of Human Psychology toward Believing that We Are “The Decider”

01/14/2007: Does the Mind Evolve? We Argue It Does but Admit that More Than 2,000 Years After the Roman Gladiators, It Is Still More Likely to Beat Itself Up Than Lift Itself Up

01/07/2007: One of the World’s Smallest “Engines of Change” Is Also One of Its Most Powerful. On An Almost Unimaginable Scale, the Amygdala Rules

12/14/2006: The Buck Stops with You and Me on the Issue of Breaking the Cycles and the Spells That Cauterize Our Brain’s Ability to Provide Sane, Safe, Suitable Actions and Answers

12/02/2006: What the Brain Does With the Waves It Makes May Be the Most Important Discovery (So Far) in All of Brain Science. A New Book Explains Why

11/20/2006: Why Tony Robbins Never Talks about Funerals on Larry King Live and Other Dirty Tricks that Life Plays on the Happiness-Is-a-Vibration Gurus and Their Followers

11/11/2006: Let's Just Hope That God Is Indeed (As Some Physicists Claim) Left-Handed Or We Just Might Find Our Beloved Planet Abruptly Reversing Its Spin!


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The Mother of All Minds.
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Home » Archives » June 2006 » A Medical Expert on Healing, Meaning and Purpose Tells Us More About How Valuable Reading Plans and Celebratory Notes Can Be to Mentally Ill Persons

[Previous entry: "This Reader Is Struggling with Fears About the Environment and Her Frustration at Not Finding Anyone to Talk About Them"] [Next entry: "If You've Got a Moment, I've Got a Vivid, Articulate Account of One Mind Seeking to Set Itself Aright to Share With You"]

06/02/2006: "A Medical Expert on Healing, Meaning and Purpose Tells Us More About How Valuable Reading Plans and Celebratory Notes Can Be to Mentally Ill Persons"


From Dr. Richard Petty in Atlanta:

I have enjoyed your books and blog, and was particularly heartened to read your sensitive blog item: "For a Seller of Books and Music Products, It Seemed Like the Mother Lode, and Still Does. But It Has Also Turned Out to Be a Remarkable Window on a Gifted and Disturbed Mind” [see item for May 27, 2006].

You probably know this already, but it is common for people with some types of major mental illness to use external anchors to try and keep some semblance of mental cohesion as they feel their world collapsing. Many succeed to a remarkable degree.

I would never presume to diagnose someone whom I have not examined myself, but having seen many thousands of psychotic individuals around the world, the use of reading plans and celebratory notes can not only be a help in diagnosis, but also in therapy. In others, art and music have helped provide oases of solace.

The incredible creativity of people struggling with psychosis, both to make sense of their unusual experiences, and to find safe havens is utterly remarkable. Some psychotic illnesses produce profound cognitive impairments, yet many are still able to show extraordinary creativity and resilience. The trouble comes, I think, when they are projected into the second tier (Beta?) without having stabilized all the earlier developmental levels.

Dr. Petty was for many years on the Faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, and served as the Director of Clinical Research of the Mental Health Clinical Research Center, one of the largest schizophrenia research programs in the world, and also Director of the Inpatient Neuropsychiatry Program at the University of Pennsylvania. He was Founder and the first Director of the Integrated Medicine Program within the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to his medical credentials, he has had extensive training in acupuncture, including advanced work in China, as well as hypnotherapy, homeopathy, and Reiki. He is currently Scientific Director of the Promedica Research Center in Atlanta, and Adjunct Professor at Georgia State University College of Health Sciences. I appreciate his kind words and additional insights into the workings of the mind. For more, go here: "Dr. Richard Petty”.