Stop Chicken Pox Itches

Unit 11/08/2006
Borgna: The secret to happiness? Empathy
Robert Carnero

'Communicating with others, open to a relationship with those around us, learning to see people as individuals and not as objects to be exploited to use ": this is for the Eugenio Borgna recipe for happiness. A concept of happiness - that the well-known psychiatrist - which provides an opening on the outside, rather than closure within themselves, in their own personal expectations, in its own specific problems. This attitude, however, would ultimately make unhappy rather than happy. Borgna
comments on the boom of publications on happiness: "Obviously this is a sign of interest in publishing the fact that our society is hungry for happiness. And every human experience takes place within the horizon of a possible happiness. While the idea of \u200b\u200bhappiness change depending on historical era and new horizons of meaning prevalent, it is also true that the last century was a time of great unhappiness, as it was time crossed by great suffering, of great pain, individual and collective. Perhaps this current pursuit of happiness is an attempt to reduce the thorns that have plagued us and torment us in the illusion, or in the hope that being happy is really possible. "
Professor Borgna, how do you think there is a way "safe" to be happy?
"Happiness is an experience chameleon, whose design depends on the direction that we give to life. A first major split is between those who think that it would be to share and participate in this experience with others, maybe worrying about the welfare of others, and who, instead, believes that it is something related to the individual, to be consumed in solitude, in a key selfish and egotistical. "
Based on his clinical experience, in so far as is possible to generalize, as the idea of \u200b\u200bhappiness is perceived by those who experienced a situation of mental distress?
"In the psychic pain, but I would say in general the experience of each of us, happiness and unhappiness are conditions that continually encroach upon one another. It is difficult to live only one of these two situations, as it were one hundred percent. Even when a person experiences a moment of happiness, there will always be shadows. And when these shadows fall thicker, we are witnessing, for example, depression. Notwithstanding the legitimacy and indeed the duty, to do everything possible to not feel bad, for not living understanding depression as a disease, but I would say that those shadows that I mentioned are not to be exorcised at all costs. "
In what sense?
"In the sense that today's consumer society tends too often to smuggle false ideas of happiness, to bring happiness at all costs, the recipe is simply and tragically, in the possession of certain material goods. It tends to forget to emphasize the inner life, which, if lived fully, is able to expose and challenge the pseudo-meanings that the company wants to advocate the absolute well-being. This constant search for ever more advanced goals, the economic well-being to run TECHNOLOGY, ends up producing a creeping neurosis which is the opposite of happiness. Also because if you run behind this waterfall illusion, when it shatters the illusion, this crisis throws into despair those who, meanwhile, have not been able to imagine an alternative. "
Often authors of these books about happiness are representatives of different religions. But religion creates happiness or unhappiness?
"The religious experience can be vital and progressive experience, or surface and regressive. Everything depends on the content with which the interior is filled. If you value the components of intersubjectivity and self-sacrifice, this results in happiness. "
What about when they impose religious precepts and prohibitions, for example in matters of sexuality? In this case, are not likely to make people unhappy?
"The answer to the example which is just about her, that of sexuality. Risks exist both in made taboo, but also in the negation of all limitations. The repression of the sexual instinct can be dangerous, but so too is the Don Juan, the attitude of those who, like Don Giovanni, tends to see the other as object to use, sex is not living a moment of communication, but as mere biological performance, and thus arrive to its reification. Also in this field, and the more enlightened members of the religions teach it, it is important to live the values \u200b\u200bthat respondents feel the authenticity of our people. "
How does it feel to comment on the research of Princeton University is rich more so who are perceived to be less happy?
"It is obvious that the wealth called other wealth, owners tend to want a lot more, and this run has become something neurotic. But when you know first hand the suffering, the daily difficulties, it was taken to better understand the suffering and difficulties of others. And in this capacity for empathy, I think, lies one of the main reasons for happiness. "

psychosis from the analysis of emotions
Eugenio Borgna, lecturer in Nervous and Mental Disease Clinic at the University of Milan is in charge of the Psychiatric Hospital Maggiore of Novara. Author of numerous works including The archipelago of the emotions of the heart Intermittences , Melancholy and The wait and hope, (all published by Feltrinelli) alternates with a more technical production, addressed to colleagues psychiatrists to more popular books which analyze emotions and feelings that may be signs of discomfort, and psychosis. Borgna challenges the naturalistic interpretation of mental illness in vogue today, looking for the causes of psychosis in the malfunctioning of the brain centers and its treatment in medicine and nell'elettroshock. While declaring the use of essential drugs in the case of psychosis, defends the need to form a relationship with the patient and to penetrate the world. Borgna's talent lies precisely in its ability to penetrate the world of psychosis, especially in relationships with patients and on the written page, where with the help of the stories of his patients and of famous literary works such as Antonin Artaud psychotic and Gerard de Nerval, he manages to give voice to silent scream of the disease.

Nopsych.it 08/11/2006
compilers of DSM were on the payroll of pharmaceutical
Davis Flower

The New Scientist and Washington Post, two of the most influential magazines worldwide, have recently announced. (NS 05/29/2006, 04/20/2006 WP) Of the 170 members who collaborated in the drafting of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the so-called "bible" psychiatric, 95 of them, more than half, had ties to pharmaceutical companies, before or after publication. The percentage rises to one hundred percent in the group who worked with schizophrenic disorders, psychotic and mood. Precisely the areas identified by the Chicago Tribune recorded the highest sales of psychotropic drugs, with a turnover in 2004 stood at over 30 billion dollars. The more profitable market, the more connections.
scandal, not surprisingly, occurred along with the growing debate on drugs, became the leading psychiatric treatment, if not the only one.
Similar accusations had already been made in 2002 by Allen Jones, investigator dell'OIG ( Pennsylvania Office of the Inspector General ) against the "Texas Medication Algorithm Project Administration Bush. The funding, in fact, starting in fact from Pfizer and Janssen Pharmaceuticals. Jones in his statements after they were fired.
Often the authors of the texts are also psychiatric consultants, researchers and lecturers of multinationals and many diseases were invented after the treatment was prepared. In practice, before you try drugs, then you create the disease. According to a survey of
British Guardian, published in March 2002, the university received large sums of money from the industry to settle in their scientific articles the therapeutic properties of new drugs. Joe Sharkey, another investigator in the field of medicine, goes further, arguing that many psychiatrists are members, directors or shareholders of the same pharmaceutical industries.
is not easy to predict the long-term consequences of such interference, but it certainly helped to broaden the definitions of mental illness, inventing new ones so they can be prescribed "drugs" of last generation.
Mildred Cho, of Stanford Univeristy explains: "The existence of disease categories validates the need for medication. Pharmaceutical companies have an incentive to exert influence on those who formulate those categories." The fact remains that today, psychiatry has not demonstrated the existence of chemical imbalances that would justify the use of substances chemical.

Source: www.washingtonpost.com/

Republic 08/11/2006
Rome, he kills the former priest accused of pedophilia Pomezia
The accused a group of young adults to the events of 1993

ROME - He committed suicide Marco Agostini, 43, former pastor of Pomezia arrested last April on charges of pedophilia and sexual abuse, wrote in a note: "I'm not a pedophile." The priest was under house arrest in his mother's house in the area Prenestina an apartment in Rome. The woman was absent for only a few minutes, but when she returned she found him hanged with a sheet to a fisssato beam in the sink, on the terrace of the building. In the note left by her mother's former pastor wrote: "I'm sorry mom for what has happened in recent months but I must say I am not a pedophile." Agostini had previously attempted suicide by ingesting the tablets but was found and taken to hospital in time.
Marco Agostini had been arrested as part of an investigation into incidents that occurred in 1993 when in fact he was pastor in Pomezia. He was accused of hundreds of abuse reported by a group of boys, who had attended the speakers directed by Don Marco. To accuse the former priest of age who claimed not to have spoken before of fear: it claimed to have been plagiarized and gradually be persuaded to his attention: Agostini was described as a man of great charisma, great ability to recruit and bring people together. When he was arrested in Assisi, where he was transferred from Pomeroy and was involved in a home-youth hostel, not a few were the voices that were raised in his defense.
Along with Augustine, for whom the Vatican had begun the process of secularization is not just learned of the allegations, had been involved in investigations Don Ennio, pastor of St. Benedict, and Don Germano, senior pastor of the church of San Michele, still in Pomezia .

Galileo Magazine 08/11/2006
NEUROLOGY
Underlying instinct
Tiziana Moriconi

decisions, even those who believe the most logical, do not result only from careful thought and sensible reasoning. The instinct always takes a hand, and not just a matter of "gut": the deviation from rationality has a neurological explanation. When it's time to choose the amygdala, the region of the brain processing of emotion, plays a key role. As shown by the study by Benedetto de Martino of the Department of Imaging Neuroscience, Institute of Neurology, University College London, published in Science.

According to the theory of decision-making when our brain has to make choices is using analytical operations. In reality it is shown that when the information available is incomplete or too complex, individuals are based on simplifications and intuitive rules of thumb and approximations. In particular, our choices may be strongly influenced by the way in which we are presented the various options (framing effect). Prove that there exists a physiological basis of emotional choices undermine the theory of decision-making. Just what I have contributed to the British researchers.
The experiment involved twenty students and graduates in a sort of gambling while they were undergoing magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Participated has been communicated to the amount of money ($ 50) which might win. Then they were asked to make a choice in two different contexts. In the first (pattern of income) were to choose to earn $ 20 compared to 50 or risk having all but one most likely to lose than to win. In the second (scheme of loss) would choose to lose $ 30 of the 50 or, again, to play around with the same probability of the scenario above. The two schemes do not differ in substance, but in the way they are presented.
The context has been very important in directing the choice: the participants risked significantly more in the pattern of loss in the scheme of income (61.6 per cent in the first case, 42.9 percent in the other). In agreement with the predictions of the researchers, therefore, the subjects were less inclined to risk when it was used the word "gain" compared to when they were put forward the idea of \u200b\u200bloss.
"Thanks to the scans of resonance," explained the study's authors, "we were able to identify the brain areas were more active when subjects chose in accordance with the framing effect (ie not in the key risk and earnings risk in the key loss) and we recorded a significant bilateral amygdala activation.
A different pattern of activation of brain areas was observed when subjects take decisions that go against their general trend. In these cases we observed a high activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). When you choose to go against their intuition, the ACC activity would indicate an opposition between two neural systems: a conflict between the tendency to respond to respond more analytical and emotionally.
Considering the individual variability in the sensitivity of the manipulation, the researchers also calculated an index of personal rationality and found a significant correlation between reduced activity and influenzabilità in the mid-prefrontal cortex and orbital (Ompfc): who acts more rationally shows increased activity in this area. Dell'Ompfc injury, in fact, cause the inability to develop strategies and behavioral impulsivity. It is believed that the Ompfc integrating information from the amygdala and attempt to predict the results which will have a certain behavior.
"Our research," the authors conclude, "suggests a model in which emotional information are integrated into decision making. In evolutionary terms, this mechanism might confer an advantage since no explicit signals may prove essential. This seems especially true in our present society based on symbols and where to make decisions is often required capacity for abstraction, according to that same mechanism that may lead to an irrational choice. "