There is something interesting and at the same time disturbing about the idea that cancer emerges as a result of behaviour, or “personality type”. Following the psychological research on cancer patients that begun in the 1950’s, the type C personality was formulated. So what characterises this “cancer personality”?
Bacon (1952) studied breast cancer patients and found [...]
The experience of carrying a genetic mutation is often described as living with an internal time bomb. The amputation of the breasts or ovaries can therefore be seen as an attempt to neutralise it.
In her book Psychotherapeutic Treatment of Cancer Patients, Jane Goldberg claims that “it has been repeatedly observed that cancer often emerges within [...]
The fear of an alien presence invading the body, nourishing itself from its cells and harming it before departing to become a detached (and sometimes alien) entity, is often attached to the anxiety of pregnancy. In films like Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby or Lynch’s Eraserhead, this anxiety is represented by the horror of the parent who [...]
Tagged carrier, fear, responsibility, subconscious, terror, womenWhat are the psychological consequences of seeing oneself as a vehicle hosting selfish genes that would eventually destroy the body? Does that make one see a pregnancy as the gene’s victory? Or the host’s free will? Can a “vehicle” even claim to have a free will or have reproductive desires been confiscated by these little [...]
Tagged alien, carrier, fear, selfish, terrorIn Greek mythology, a miasma is a contagious power that has an independent life of its own. Until purged by the sacrificial death of the wrongdoer, society would be chronically infected by catastrophe.
The Greek drew parallels between birth and death as equal sources of miasma, and those who were in contact with the dead or [...]
Is it possible that the narrative of genetic mutation within a family line has the elements of a Greek tragedy? Much like the dramatic art-form originated from hymns in praise of Dionysus - god of fertility, wine and ecstasy, it raises the core questions of human existence, questions of suffering, of fate, family, (hubris?) and [...]
Tagged art, narrative, predetermined, tragedyIs it possible that the ideal of perfection is flawed from the root and contradicts human nature? We experience happiness, beauty and pleasure in a more complex way than theories of salvation and utopia often suggest. Pleasure and pain are not the opposites they might appear to be. Physical pain is often associated with sexual [...]
Tagged art, beauty, happiness, pain, terror“There is only one inborn erroneous notion … that we exist in order to be happy … So long as we persist in this inborn error … the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in great things and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are [...]
Tagged dissapointment, happinessHealth has often been attributed to happiness - or perhaps more accurately: disease ultimately causes unhappiness. The famous roman phrase, ‘healthy mind in a healthy body’ is accepted as one of life’s absolute truths.
There is probably no argument with the fact the physical pain, weakness or the threat of an imminent death cause suffering. But [...]
The more control we poses over our environment and ourselves, the less we can accept either randomness or imperfection. Medical technologies might present solutions designed to assist an individual, yet they often represent an aspiration to order in the social sphere. It seems that the desire to abolish imperfections from the nano to the global [...]
Tagged ideology, order, politics, suffering, utopia