Radical Psychiatric Techniques: C or D?

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Lobotomy, electroshock, massive doses of LSD etc - were these promising avenues of therapy, cruelly cut short by public hysteria?

― tarden, Tuesday, 10 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I'm all about trepanning. My Dad's Makita 550 proudly says in the instruction manual that has an automatic cut-off which senses when a hole has been breached and turns the drill off. Elsewhere it proudly proclaims that it can drill through masonry, bone and even metal. You put the two together and you have a magical way of reproducing the end of Pi.

― Pete, Tuesday, 10 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I always wanted to be trepanned when I was having my nervous breakdown(s). Always thought it would be more useful to drill a hole in my head and let the thoughtworms out than to dose them full of lithium. But no one ever listened...

Like that great scene in Ghostbusters where Egon tries to defend his self trepanning by "I would have been successful if you hadn't stopped me!"

― masonic boom, Tuesday, 10 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Did anyone else see Ghostbusters on Channel 5 on Sunday then?

There's some great stuff on radical psychiatry in Toni Davidon's novel _Scar Culture_ [Edinburgh: Canongate, 1999(?)] if anyone's looking for a good read.

― alex thomson, Tuesday, 10 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

From what I remember:

Lobotomy, electro-convulsive therapy - Genuinely useful if used in an intelligent way. They sound brutal (and obviously can be applied in such a way) but they aren't just about turning people into nodding vegetables

Massive doses of LSD - complete dud.

― Nick, Tuesday, 10 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

There's something wrong with being a nodding vegetable?

― tarden, Tuesday, 10 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

*nods*

― Nick, Tuesday, 10 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Rowlfing!! Named for indeterminate shaggy grinning animal on the Muppet Show!! Someone you have only just been introduced to squeezes your joints till they HURT EXTREMELY HORRIBLY — then you cry and it is cleansing. That'll be $300 please.

― mark s, Tuesday, 10 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

That is not a proper psychiatric technique but some tree hugging hippy crap alternative remedy. You might as well say Bach Rescue Remedy is a Radical Psychiatric Technique (but it does taste nice, mmm).

― Emma, Tuesday, 10 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Indeterminate? Rowlf is a dog!!

― Josh, Tuesday, 10 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

ect ie shock therapy continues unabated down under - they were going to buzz me if I didn't get better - spent four months in a psych clinic - and it was talked about re my father's health, but he only spent 3 wks on the inside. On the outside the roses grow and the sun it still shi=ah=ines Sorry - antidepressants works for me and for some people i know, so thankfully cool, as is talk therapy and cbt - if only for establising life on a level of logic to get yr brain abck into gear. LSD probably had its useful moments in my self-medication daze, though I wasn't already hallucinating - still, it did make me proclaim loudly for an extended period of time how beautiful everything in the world was, so I doubt it's sense and sensibility. I don't know - I think, and after reading mucho de Foucault (it ryhmes, ok?) that us loonies should be let out to run the country on one day of the year, while the pollies, police and business folk get a course of ect, largactil and cbt - just to shake the shit up a little.

― Geoff, Tuesday, 10 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I was hospitalized after boarding school. I was in such a massice depression that drugs and talk therapy didn't work. They decided to do ECT. They anesthized(sp) me so i do not remember it at all . But i still have an odd depression in the side of my head.

― anthony, Tuesday, 10 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Dud, because they helped fuck Bud Powell up real good. Though Rachmaninov wrote some good shit after he got zapped.

― Josh, Thursday, 12 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

some people when they come outta the place after ECT have an electricity habit & they have to keep giving themselves shocks off heaters & stuff (this guy once told me).

― duane, Thursday, 12 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

A massive dose of LSD would slip down perfect right now, perhaps sprinkled on some Haaaaargen chocolate brownie icecream.

― chris, Thursday, 12 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Nope never had an electricty habit. But do you know what i wouldnt be alive w/o it.

― anthony, Thursday, 12 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Better living the carefully modulated doses of chemistry

― Sterling Clover, Thursday, 12 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

no i didn't literally believe that thing about getting habituated to electric shock. but i'm sure the guy he was talking about truly believed he was. (didn't keep him alive, 'cause he no longer is)

― duane, Thursday, 12 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

seven months pass...

Hello, where the hell am I. how did i end up on the moniter of the computr. why is every word i say typed out. man this is one major trip. fuck you u computer. help im going to die. Lsd is very bad. My name is johnatan doe and im still a vergin. help me im going to comb.

― John Robert doe, Monday, 25 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

No man, you shouldn't comb... Hair are your aerials..

― electric sound of jim, Monday, 25 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

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