MMHC Swimming Pool
The author identifies the swimming pool at this hospital as a symbol of the emergency of anti-depressants as a game changer in the field of psychiatry. Previous to widespread pharmaceutical treatment, doctors and patients had enjoyed the leisure of a swimming pool and basketball court as a means of restoring well-being. The money to be made in developing anti-depressants saw the pool and basketball court paved over to make room for a new laboratory devoted to research and development of drug treatments.
Rorschach Test
The Rorschach Test is the famous series of inkblots designed to elicit an interpretative response which offers psychological insight into the person describing what they see. Although the responses are subjective perceptual interpretations, this test is specifically designed to prompt a description which conform fairly rigidly to certain expectations. The author recounts an experience of showing the inkblots to a number of Vietnam veterans suffering from trauma which elicited far more precise description informed by flashbacks to the events which stimulated the trauma and which existed far outside the conventions of general response. This divergence serves to reveal the failure inherent in applying any one single test for psychological deviancy to a generalized population designed with the expectation of conformity of experience.
The Smoke Detector
The author engages symbolism to identify what role the part of the brain called the amygdala serves. Although actually quite complicated in the processing of information in which it is involved, it is essentially identified as the part of the which alerts us the potential presence of mortal danger. It acts at the primal level necessary for simple survival of the species. For this reason, the author symbolically identifies the amygdala as the brain’s “smoke detector” that alerts us to the realization that where there is smoke there is likely the presence of a threatening fire.
The Watchtower
A smoke detector is very effective at offering a warning that a threat of fire may be nearby, but it cannot distinguish between smoke which originates from a bed set on fire by a sleepy smoker or smoke produced by overcooking the bacon. To fully implement the protective services of the amygdala, the capacity of the frontal lobes is required. The job of this part of the brain is symbolized by the author in the form of a watchtower seated high enough above the smoke to determine where it is coming from, what is the cause, and the actual level of risk the smoke represents.
Julia
Julia is the name used for a patient of the author who had managed to survive the initial trauma of being raped at gunpoint as a teenager. What she had more trouble surviving was the effects and consequences of that initial survival as her life became a recurring series of willful re-enactments of that sense of helplessness and submission that included stints as a prostitute and the rejection of nice boyfriend who bored her in favor of the adrenaline rush of random sex with a junkie who first beat her up and then stalked her. Julia’s irrational impulse to seemingly relive her worst traumatic experience transforms her into a symbol of everybody who makes the leap in logic to compulsively repeat self-harming behavior stemming from a traumatic point of origin.
