Madness, fear

We have had clients who have previously withdrawn too abruptly and sought help in desperation for acute depression or other severe symptoms. The syndrome may be difficult to recognise if the client does not connect her symptoms with abrupt tranquilliser withdrawal. Alternative medication for symptomatic relief may confirm the client s and her family s fears that she is going mad or is about to die. 

If there was one lesson his Misl Vremya habit had taught him, it was that disembodiment was nothing to be feared bodies were containers, as disposable as Coca-Cola cans. So, in the final analysis, his mind was the only essential part of himself worth saving. And he d shot Skoglund - once he d completed the necessary modifications to the system - as a means of sparing his sanity. An eternity with that man s ill-tempered mind at his side would surely have driven him mad. 

In the early 1950s, researchers Humphry Osmond and John Smythies wrote a paper about the mental effects of mescaline that came to the attention of Aldous Huxley, who invited Osmond to visit him if he should be in the Los Angeles area. Huxley s wife, Maria, was initially apprehensive about such a meeting, fearing that Osmond "might wear a beard." When Osmond did go to L.A. for a psychological conference, Maria was satisfied that he was not a Bohemian or a mad scientist (he didn t have a beard), and he stayed with the Huxleys. Maria, ironically, finally asked about getting some mescaline for Aldous. Osmond s reaction to the proposal was favorable, with one reservation ... 

The composition of brain phospholipids has been extensively investigated by adsorption column- and thin-layer chromatography (TLC). Table 5 lists the major classes of brain phospholipids from different animal species, as compiled by Kuksis (16, 27-30). At the end of the 1990s, the fear of mad cow disease (BSE) may have addressed the purity criteria for the applications of brain phospholipids from cows. 

Men ought to know that from the brain, and from the brain only, arise our pleasures, joys, laughter, and jests, as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs, and fears. .. It is the same thing which makes us mad or delirious, inspires us with dread and fear, whether by night or by day, brings sleeplessness, inopportune mistakes, aimless anxieties, absentmindedness, and acts that are contrary to habit. 

In recent years concerns associated with food produced with antibiotics or hormones or by biotechnology or treatment with irradiation have increased. Mad cow disease and other prion-related diseases have created great fear and economic havoc. The terrorist events of 2001 have shocked the food industry, government, and consumer into recognizing the possibility that some form of bioterrorism may be transmitted through food and water. 

Mercury is a very useful chemical, and if handled properly, can be used routinely without fear. There is no need to shut down a laboratory because of a mercury spill. Clean it up immediately and continue. However, if spillage is not cleaned up, the vapors can cause chronic metal poisoning after prolonged exposure (Table 6-2). An extreme example is the old-time Hatter s disease. This occurred when hat makers treated beaver fur with HgfNOj), to permit the fiir to kink into felt. After continued exposure, the hatters often got the shakes. Anyone who shook was mad as a hatter. Mereurous compounds are much less soluble than mercuric compounds. In fact, a spoonful of calomel (Hg2Cl2) often was given... 

The analysand s psyche may try to resolve these internal conflicts with reversion to the old order, with the former modes of ego-functioning and dominant complexes reasserting themselves (for example, the violent activities shown at the bottom of Plate II-3 or as intellectualizing defenses against somatic activation). The patient and therapist may have to face a fear of madness or paralyzing confusion (as shown by the three-headed white bird in the alembic in Plate II-3), one that is very different in experiential quality from the initial resistance to an encounter with the unconscious. 

But there s a problem. Cholesterol is found only in animals. The most widespread means of procuring cholesterol for commercial purposes is to extract it from the spinal cords of cattle or from lanolin, the natural grease found on wool. These days, people are concerned about products derived from animals — and particularly from cow brains and spinal cords — because they fear that these may transmit bovine spongiform encephalopathy (bse), better known as mad cow disease. 

The global scope of the risk society, its self-reflective quality and its pervasiveness create a new backdrop for standard moral panics. Perceptions of heightened risk evoke images of panic. And in populist and electoral rhetoric about such issues as fear of crime, urban insecurity and victimization, the concepts of risk and panic are naturally connected. The realm of political morality, however, is just about distinctive enough for the BSE ( mad cow disease ) or foot and mouth disease panics not to be moral panics. Only if risk analysis becomes perceived as primarily moral rather... 

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