Another Letter to the New York Times by Larry Sandberg
By Categories: Letters To Editors

The New York Times
September 20, 2007
The Brain, the Mind and Mental Illness
To the Editor:

Sally Satel (“Mind Over Manual,” Op-Ed, Sept. 13) suggests that the diagnostic confusion within psychiatry is due to a lack of “a clear picture of the brain mechanisms underlying … mental illnesses.” She says psychiatry “lacks a firm grasp of the causal underpinnings of mental illness,” suggesting the “staggering complexity of the brain” as one reason.

Her article suffers in its being biased by the current zeitgeist that overemphasizes brain-based mechanisms as causes. While this may, in fact, have explanatory power for some conditions, it is more likely that causal explanations will often include frames of reference that are psychological (including psychodynamic) as well as biological.  Continue reading Another Letter to the New York Times by Larry Sandberg

Larry Sandberg’s Letter Re: The New York Times article on “The Frayed Couch”
By Categories: Letters To Editors

The New York Times
September 16, 2007
The City

To the Editor:

Re “Patching Up the Frayed Couch” (Sept. 9):

It is not only psychoanalysis, but all intensive psychotherapies that have become less popular in contemporary culture. This is due, in part, to the introduction of alternative therapies like drug therapy and cognitive behavior therapy. But there is also a devaluation of time and an overemphasis on speed and efficiency that discourage many people who are in need from engaging in a deeply introspective process.

Continue reading Larry Sandberg’s Letter Re: The New York Times article on “The Frayed Couch”

Michael Holquist’s Review of Mark C. Baker’s The Atoms of Language: The Mind’s Hidden Rules of Grammar
By Categories: Books

Click here to Read: A review of Mark C. Baker’s The Atoms of Language: The Mind’s Hidden Rules of Grammar by Michael Holquist.

This book is of particular interest to anyone involved with ‘the talking cure’, because it posits a connection between the way the mind works and the way that language works. A contribution to recent thinking about Universal Grammar, Baker focuses on “parameter theory.” Since this a thorny and highly technical landscape where linguistics contends with both biology and philosophy, we must be grateful that Baker has a gift for lucid exposition. He provides a plausible and clearly articulated account of why grammars from the most diverse languages vary within a surprisingly limited range. Analysts will find this a useful tool in meditating the question of how UG might relate to UC.
Michael Holquist