Unintended Irony
In the world of studying how the brain works or sometimes doesn’t seem to work, ironic circumstances very often go unrecognized or unintended. Sometimes, the ironic dimension is so obvious it does not need pointing out. Occasionally, it does:
“I had a widowed aunt with a painful trauma history who became an honorary grandmother to our children…On the last day of her visits I’d drive her to the airport, where she’d give me a stiff good-bye hug while tears streamed down her face. Without a trace of irony she’d then complain that the cold wind at Logan International Airport made her eyes water. Her body felt the sadness that her mind couldn’t register—she was leaving our young family, her closest living relatives.”
Insane Asylums
It is far outside the range of political correctness to refer to mental hospitals as insane asylums anymore, and that is only partially because today’s facilities are a mind-bending improvement over what they replaced. Even so, the very word “asylum” still carries enough negative charge to produce intensely negative reactions. The irony here is that those horrific facilities of the past initially chose the word asylum because the original meaning of the word—still used today in connotation of political refugees seeking to escape oppressive regimes—meant a place of sanctuary and protection.
Julia
The case study of a patient named Julia is one of the most fascinating in the entire book. The cause of that interest is directly related to the irony involved and how the extremity in Julia’s case can be extrapolated into a near-universal familiarity. Julia was raped at gunpoint as a teenager and then proceeded to spend most of youth willfully seeking out opportunities to replicate certain aspects of that traumatic event such as helplessness, male domination, and humiliation.
Flashbacks
The fundamental foundation of psychological therapy, regardless of the precise details of the therapeutical theory, is talking openly about traumatic events. All routes to healing through therapy make a pathway through the unquestioned concept that the best way to deal with trauma is to get it out in the open and honestly discuss it. The author is witness to a moment of epiphany which provokes him to question the validity of this idea. Discussing traumatic create the opportunity for the patient to experience flashbacks and in some cases these flashbacks are so extreme as to actually mentally recreate the trauma all over again for the patient to that point that it can actually seem to be taking place. This, of course, is not the positive outcome intended as the therapy itself, ironically, bring the past to the present and creates an entirely new level of traumatic experience.
Worship Neither God Nor Man
There are many problems with investing religious belief in the one charged with ministerial duties. Too many problems, really, to mention except for the one at the top. When you worship in man for any reason, you have put yourself firmly on the path to tragically ironic disappointment. Such is the lesson to be learned from the case of true blue Catholic, little Paul, and his the neighborhood priest, Father Shanley who routinely sexually abused him. The reason little Paul never thought to tell on the priest is exactly the reason the priest got away with and, possibly, the reason Shanley became a priest in the first place:
“Father Shanley was the closest thing to God in my neighborhood.”
