Think About It 106: DOROTHY ROWE

 

Whenever we puzzle over why something happened we rarely say, 'No one knows,' and leave it at that.  Rather we make up some theory — a guess — about the cause of that event.  This happens all the time in medicine and psychiatry, but unfortunately these guesses are often presented to patients as known facts.  Many depressed people have been told that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, and few doctors have gone on to explain that this is a theory, not a fact, because no one knows what a chemically unbalanced brain is.  Some doctors will also say that antidepressants put the chemical imbalance right.  This clearly cannot be the case for, as the scientist Susan Greenfield has often explained, antidepressant drugs have an immediate effect on the functioning of the brain, yet any antidepressant effect is not felt for ten days or so.  Clearly something else is taking place, but as yet no one knows what that is.  Some doctors tell patients that antidepressant drugs, especially the latest drugs, the SSRIs, target certain parts of the brain, but scientists who study the brain say that this is not so.  Drugs which affect the brain affect all of the brain.

 

Depression: The Way Out of Your Prison (1983)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to read the The Real Causes of Depression, an essay by Australian psychologist DOROTHY ROWE in which she argues that depression is not the product of 'a chemical imbalance in the brain' as is widely touted by the medical profession and drug companies — a hypothesis now accepted (though not publicly) by the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Institute of Psychiatry:

 

https://www.dorothyrowe.com.au/articles/item/192-the-real-causes-of-depression-february-2007

 

 

 

 

 

 

You might also enjoy:

 

 

Think About It 080: DOROTHY ROWE

 

 

Think About It 054: DOROTHY ROWE 

 

 

Think About It 014: DOROTHY ROWE

  

The Write Advice 213: KAY BOYLE

 

How to release reluctant students to speech is the first problem for the teacher of writing.  At times the young find it as difficult to express their inner thoughts in words as do those whose minds have solidified into all but unbreakable moods.  But why, after all, should this inability to speak with the heart as well as with the lips be blamed on 'restrictive teaching'?  Is it not more a case of restrictive thinking (induced by restrictive living) causing this muteness, which perhaps no teacher can cure?  One can suggest reading to such students — great poetry, great novels — to help allay the fear of speaking.  But one cannot be sure that the students will dare to understand the words that other men have said.  It takes courage to say things differently: caution and cowardice dictate the use of the cliché.… Most adults, having somehow lost touch with the great simplicities, have forgotten that to write is to speak of one’s beliefs.  Turning out a typescript with the number of words neatly estimated in the upper right hand corner of the first page has nothing to do with writing.  Neither have questions about the prices paid by Harper’s Magazine or The Atlantic Monthly or The Ladies’ Home Journal or Esquire.  Writing is something else entirely, as the young instinctively know.

 

 

'The Teaching of Writing' [reprinted in Words That Must Somehow Be Said: Selected Essays of Kay Boyle, 1985]

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to visit the website of a US-based 

organisation dedicated to celebrating the life and

work of writer, educator and political activist KAY 

BOYLE (1902–1992):

https://kbs.hypotheses.org/

 

 

 

 

 

You might also enjoy:

 

 

Poet of the Month 085: KAY BOYLE

 

 

The Write Advice 193: CAN XUE

 

 

The Write Advice 113: ELIZABETH McKENZIE

 

Poet of the Month 099: PARINAZ FAHIMI

 

PARINAZ FAHIMI

c 2014

 

 

 

 

CINNAMON

 

 

I want to be cinnamon

to be mixed with sugar

when I am braided into dough and sprinkled on its edges

I hide in the lines of Grandmother’s fingers

folded in her prayers

rubbed onto grandchildren’s lips

to sweeten a careful kiss

to nourish the ants on the rug 

and so

I might dissolve into the memory of childhood

and forever bake poems

with the scent of cinnamon

as if I could solve my heartache with spices

and steady it with sugar’s promise.

 

 

 

 

 

From the posthumous collection

Poppies with Alef

 

 

 

Translated from Persian by

ELHUM SHAKERIFAR

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to read about the short life of unpublished Iranian poet PARINAZ FAHIMI, who sadly died of a brain tumour in 2016:

 

 

 

https://www.poetrytranslation.org/poem/cinnamon/#poem-notes

 

 

You might also enjoy: 

Poet of the Month 091: PARWEEN FAIZ ZADAH MALAAL

Poet of the Month 081: AMANA IFTHIKAR FAWAZ

Poet of the Month 011: FATMA BEN MAHMOUD

 

The Write Advice 212: JAMES JONES

 

I would like to leave books behind me to let people know that I have lived.  I'd like to think that people would read them avidly, as I have read so many and would feel the sadness and frustration and joy and love I tried to put in them, that people would think about that guy James Jones and wish they had known the guy who could write like that.

 

Letter to George W (Jeff) Jones [3 November 1942]

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to visit the website of the JAMES JONES LITERARY SOCIETY:

 

 

http://www.jamesjonesliterarysociety.org/index.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You might also enjoy:

 

 

The Write Advice 006: JAMES JONES

 

 

The Write Advice 106: JAMES JONES

 

 

The Write Advice 117: IRWIN SHAW