Thursday, October 21, 2010

Blog 8:

In "Life imitates art as Truman Syndrome" by The Associated Press, we are presented various cases of what some scientists, researchers and health specialists seem to find as an "interesting example of the connection between culture and mental health"


All the cases are related to either technology; The Internet fro example, or to events in popular culture; T.V shows, realities and movies. Being the 1998 film The Truman Show, the most recurrent allusion. Patients believe that their lives are part of a show, and that they are the main characters.


In my opinion, it would be key to understand what Dr. Joel Gold questions in the article: "Is this just a new twist on an old paranoid or grandiose delusion... Or is there sort of a perfect storm of the culture we're in, in which fame holds such a high value?" I believe when he says that in the culture we are living, it has become so important to be famous he is right. As a matter of fact, I think some of the patients described in the article, like the one who showed up in a federal building asking to be released, might have done such things just to have his fifteen minutes of fame.


However, I am sure there are also some cases in which the patients are really trastorned, and are convinced that what they are living is some kind of parallel reality. In this cases I wouldn't blame them, given that I am not even sure of what reality is, maybe it is nothing but a colective fantasy that we have all agreed to call "reality", so that we don't get confused anymore and end up all in the mental health department of some hospital.


In my opinion, and from what we have been able to learn from history, most of the time it is the people who dare to question things, and think different than the masses, the ones that during their times people called crazy, are the ones who years later were proven to be not only right but also way ahead of their times.


In conclusion, I think we shouldn't judge people who think different, those who in our eyes might look "crazy" because in many subjects we don't really know who holds the truth.



One of the things I found more interesting on " The Truman Syndrome" is, how experts try to scientifically explain the behavior of patients who suffer the syndrome". when I believe they, or us humankind don't have a completely 100% accurate concept of what reality is.

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