Alison wrote:
>>I don't find it such an odd idea that passionate erotic love can be
thought about as a kind of mental illness. I'm not sure that would change
anything about the subjective experience of it. I do worry slightly at the
pathologising of human experience, though: how long before there are pills
so one doesn't suffer its torments?<<
It's not about romantic love, but in light of Alison's worry, look at what
has happened with Viagra and other such drugs. There's a wonderful book
called "A Mind Of Its Own"--the author's name escapes me now and I'm not
where I can look it up easily--which is a cultural history of the penis. A
large part of the last chapter is given over to how a marketing-driven,
ever-widening definition of erectile dysfunction has precipitated not only
the medicalization, but also a kind of industrialization of erections. The
author's point is not that such drugs ought not to exist or that there
aren't real conditions which they can and should be used to treat, but
rather that the drug companies, in defining erectile dysfunction in such a
way as to make almost any man who has even once not attained a full erection
when he wanted to have sex feel like he ought to seek medical help (this may
be a slight exaggeration on my part of what the author says), are
pathologizing something that ought not to be pathologized. Another very
interesting book that looks at the trend of pathologizing human experience
and the attempt by government and other industries to bring what used to be
the communal nature of much of that experience under institutional control,
is Five Bodies--again, I cannot recall the author's name right now.
Richard
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