Dan Goodley has expressed very succinctly how I feel about
communications on this email list.
I can understand that some people might be upset by what they see as
blasphemous language or swear words with sexual connotations or
content that jars with personal and perhaps painful meditations on
Remembrance Sunday.
However, the response that shocked and worried me was the suggestion
that it might be desirable for Larry to be censored and even
disciplined by his employer.
I have to restrain myself from commenting as strongly as I would like
on that suggestion! I sincerely hope that Larry is neither censored
nor disciplined, also that neither Larry nor anyone else feels the
need to self-censor for their own protection when they are posting
messages that, like Larry' s, are relevant to understanding situations
that are disabling and question academic and lay models.
The only bit Larry's messages that bothered me was that I initially
misread the closing remarks in his second email as "shouting" at the
person who posted the original message about the book and conference.
When I re-read that message and Larry's, it seemed more of a heart-
felt plea for everyone to pay attention to the view that suicide is
not best understood as a "medical problem".
I would hope that members of this email list would recognise that to
be a valid point of view that needs a bit of shouting about to be
noticed. Also that a certain amount of anger at general acceptance of
the "illness" model is not unreasonable when it affects us personally.
Finally, I would like to congratulate Larry on steering clear of Lake
Vrnwy. That is not meant to be funny.
I find it a deeply disturbing place (that unintended metaphor only
struck me on re- reading for typos). I was taken there once as a
child, it scared the wits out of me as we were driving alongside it
and I had inconsolable "hysterics" until we left the lake behind us.
When my mother took me out of the car to comfort me at the lakeside I
was even more terrified by the "malevolence" of the lake and the fact
that I knew it wanted me to jump in and drown myself.
No one else (my mother, father and younger brother) was affected.
I remain very wary of approaching certain types of bodies of water and
have had panic attacks when caught unawares by them. Before that
incident I was in no way affected by those sorts of water. (Even to
describe what I mean by "those sorts of water" makes me uneasy).
I can't explain why as a child of about eight or nine I found Lake
Vrnwy so terrifying, why I thought it wanted to kill me by compelling
me to jump in.
The only reason that I have gone into such detail is that if anyone
has not experienced this sort of thing then they might take my comment
to Larry to be a joke or trivialising of his experience with Lake Vrnwy.
I believe that some people actually find it a pleasant place that they
would choose to visit. For my part, if I were suicidal it would be all
that was needed to make up my mind!
It is not, to me, a "depressing" place and there are no associated
memories linking it to depressing events or to distressing events
other than encountering the place itself.
How DO you fit those sort of personal experiences into an "illness
model"??
Liz Panton
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