On Thu, 10 Dec 1998, Matthew King wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, 1 Dec 1998, Ian Robert Douglas wrote:
>
> > forgive me if I'm missing the point here, but it seems to me what is
> > interesting in the case of Ritalin is not so much the enforcement of
> > normality, but precisely the question of how it is that our societies are
> > becoming so pathological for their inhabitants.
> Cause rather than effect????
> I think it's a very good point. Still, before depression and Prozac,
> ADD was the classic case of a pathology produced and defined by its
> treatment--if Ritalin makes you "better", then you have ADD(and
prosperit-V.V) (just like
> these days(which ones? -V.V) you know you have depression if Prozac
makes you
"better").
Well , i always thought that Prozac works in some other way....some kind
of treatment of hard mental disorders (like scizophreny?).?
> But now that Ritalin and Prozac are so readily available(do you mean can
buy it at you your local drugstore?Well, "La clinique" comes closer and
closer to your house...beware of it....some great day you will awake not
in your proper house, but in mental instititution) , it almost
> becomes questionable whether ADD and depression are serious pathologies at
> all. They're no big deal because they're so easily treatable....
>
> > We seem to have come a
> > long way from the cameral dream of the healthy, tranquil civitas. Either
> > that or governments (and States) really have lost control.
>
> Or you could look at it like this: whereas governments used to need to
> ensure that everyone had access to basic material goods, education, etc.,
> in order to realize that dream, now they just have to add Prozac and
> Ritalin to that list.
>
> I readily grant that this is not a pretty picture....
>
> Matthew
>
> ---Matthew A. King---Department of Philosophy---York University, Toronto---
> "If I had the use of my body I would throw it out of the window."
> -----------------------------(Samuel Beckett)------------------------------
>
>