Review of Scared Sick by Robin Karr-Morse and Meredith Wiley

I cannot recommend Scared Sick highly enough because of its approachable style, clear explanation of complex medical science for the general reader, passionate advocacy for babies and small children, and its importance in encouraging everyone to pay attention to what we are doing to the youngest members of our societies. I was shocked to learn that it was only from the late 1980s that newborns, whether premature or full term, were given anesthesia when operated on for conditions such as heart defects. It was thought the infantile central nervous system was not developed enough for neonates to feel pain, and so they were simply paralyzed for surgery with no pain relief. It seems to take us a long time before we notice the suffering of others, and the effects it has on them. No wonder we are still in the early days of noticing psychological stress and instigating preventative programs and therapies for it.

Continued at Metapsychology Online Reviews.

 

Review of Living, Thinking, Looking: Essays by Siri Hustvedt

Siri Hustvedt is fascinated by the brain and mind, and what can go wrong with them. She is also fascinated by fiction, reading, writing, art; she writes with verve, intelligence, and understanding about all these things, and others as well. In her latest collection of essays, she notes the link is her 'abiding curiosity about what it means to be human' (ix), and the reader cannot argue with that conclusion.

In an echo from her previous essay collection, A Plea for Eros, she writes that 'no single theoretical model can contain the complexity of human reality' (x), so her intense interest in Freud and psychoanalysis is a critical one, and interwoven with other interests to form a larger organism.


Continued at Metapsychology Online Reviews.

When

When I went to the fridge to get the milk, the bottle was empty. Okay, I yelled, who's drunk all the milk? No answer, of course, because they're all asleep. Or pretending to be asleep so they don't have to be the first to get the tea ready. Then I noticed there was no butter in the butter dish, and the sausages that were leftovers from yesterday were gone too. Right, who's swiping food from the fridge? I yelled again. I opened the freezer door, and the chicken was gone, along with the chops. The polysterene tray was there, as was the plastic from the chook, but otherwise, gone. Jesus, someone would have to be bloody hungry to eat all that. 

Memory

The butcher bird flew on to the fence, and watched us as we pulled out weeds. The roses didn't seem to care much about the riff-raff that surrounded them, the cobbler's pegs and sticky milk plants and thistley things. A moth appeared, fluttering on the surface of some newly exposed soil, and the butcher bird swooped for the morsel. Our friend Cameron also watched us, commenting regularly on how he must get down into the garden sometime, but not right now. His memory is unravelling, leaving sentences all over the earth in front of us, released again and again because Cameron can no longer remember what he's just said. We all sigh. The butcher bird cocks his head.

The dream

The dream involved someone wrapping their arms around me from behind. I did not know who the person was, or why they were hugging me, or if their intent was good or evil. Usually this sort of dream would involve me never finding out the identity of the person. But then usually the dream, which I refer to as an anxiety dream, features a wall and I would be walking along beside the wall until I reached the corner. Around the corner was something foreboding, something bad, but I never knew exactly what, and I could never see it. No matter how far around the corner I looked, the fearful thing remained just out of sight. This time, I looked around and saw the person who had grabbed my torso, and it was a female, with her eyes closed, but she was no one I knew. What was different was the fact that I could see her face, and she was unthreatening. There was no fear.

The cello

The cello was 274 years old. I had never held anything that had lived that long. The sound that came when its guardian played was robust, but I couldn't help thinking how easily the object could be damaged. If it was damaged, though, the music itself would not be, for it could be played, and made to live again, from another instrument. Maybe it would not be so venerable, but the music would still come. It's not the same for humans. When the body is done and gone, the music of that person is gone also; children and work may be left behind as memories, but no new tunes are created ever again.

For really big mistakes

He gave me a hot pink eraser, a giant one, with the words 'for really big mistakes' printed on it. Good, I thought, this is appropriate. Now I can go back and rub out all of those ridiculous things I said to various people over the last four decades, and say what I should have said. All those embarrassing goofs in public, all the insensitive comments, and even the bad fashion days, bad hair days, and bad days. The whole lot, gone! One big pink eraser applied; badness gone! Could I do it with bigger things? Parents? Lovers? Friends? Lend me your past, I shall erase it!