Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Psychology

  • Enlightenment from Sherlock Holmes on COVID-19 associated perilous boredom

    Daniel GelfmanIndianapolis, Indiana, United States Boredom can useful. It can motivate people to do great things. It can also be dangerous by increasing the risk of depression and the risk of participation in unhealthy activities.1 It is an emotional state of weariness through lack of interest that can result in the “pursuit of novel (even negative)…

  • A moonie

    Simon WeinPetach Tikvah, Israel Wally Moon was a legend who stood at least 1.90 meters tall. The most striking things about him were his appearance and his gruffness. When I met him during my residency he was in his early sixties. He had a magnificent girth, fuelled by quantities of non-politically correct food—even then in…

  • The Yellow Wallpaper: The flawed prescription

    Mahek Khwaja Karachi, Pakistan Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote her short story The Yellow Wallpaper in nineteenth-century America when gendered norms prevailed in society at large and notably in medicine. In a previous article, “Charlotte Perkins Gilman, apostle of women’s liberation,” (2019) published in Hektoen International, George Dunea speaks at length on how Perkins’ writings are peppered…

  • The literary breakdown in Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch

    Carol-Ann FarkasBoston, Massachusetts, United States I. Diagnostically speaking, the “nervous” or “mental” breakdown is not a thing. The term has never been formally used in psychology, which has long preferred specific, definable categorizations of symptoms and conditions: stress, fatigue, anxiety, depression, trauma.1 And yet the phenomenon persists in popular usage.1,2 Why? We like the “breakdown”…

  • Hölderlin’s madness

    Nicolas RoblesBadajoz, Spain German poet and philosopher Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin was born in Lauffen-am-Neckar (Würtemberg) in the year 1770. His father, a pastor and a schoolmaster, died two years later. When he was four years old, his mother moved to Nürtingen and remarried, but his stepfather also died soon after the marriage. In addition…

  • Modern neuroscience and the ideas of the Enlightenment

    Stephen MartinDurham, United Kingdom The Enlightenment was a philosophical movement in eighteenth-century Europe that had a major influence on the arts, science, education, religion, and politics. Its principles paved the way for women to work in professions (fig 1), advanced freedom and equality, and promoted racial and religious tolerance. Enlightenment ideas centered on ways of…

  • W.H.R. Rivers and the humane treatment of shell shock

    Soleil ShahLondon, UK “Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there is also a love of humanity.” – Hippocrates War neurosis, or “shell shock” as it was referred to in the twentieth century, could be considered the signature injury of World War I. These disorders involved nervous ailments with no apparent organic lesion. Symptoms included…

  • Edvard Munch: The child who never grew up

    Michael YafiHouston, Texas The paintings of Edvard Munch are often used as an example of the association between creativity and mental illness. Can we, however, analyze them from the perspective of the feelings of a child? Traumatized by the death of his mother when he was only five years old1 as portrayed in The Dead…

  • Of men and brains and rats

    Observers of the affairs of man in an age of mass destruction weaponry have long worried about the future of the human race. Why do men so often make erroneous decisions and act in ways detrimental to their interests and even to their survival? Is not Homo sapiens the epitome of millions of years of…

  • A song for me

    Steve SobelSt. Albans, Vermont, United States Sometimes the obvious is revealed to us as a life-altering revelation that shifts the tectonic plates of our world. Such was the case when I sat in a stuffy, cramped bedroom listening to Taylor Swift singing “Love Story” on the radio. Suddenly I realized this was not just another…