In yesterday’s post, it was said that it can be very difficult to get the psychology out of neurology. Much of Psychology is intuitive, despite its lofty claims of being scientific, despite its venerated status with the intelligencia and the media.

Meyerian and Freudian “Psychiatry”, especially in its most repugnant form, that being so-called forensic psychiatry is an ideology that has seeped deeply into the societal consciousness. It resonates with people precisely because it is the product of intuition and primitive instincts about cause and effect in human behavior. We are all experts at creating psychoanalytical narratives to explain human behavior, especially that which transgresses criminal law.

It was said that the psychoanalysts assert that the “mentally ill” don’t believe they are ill as a psychological defense mechanism. This belief is so intuitive that it will win hands down against neuroscience with a lot of people. There is a faction of the “Psychiatry” community, the anti-reductionists, the subscribers to psychoanalytical or psychodynamic theories that shun the notion of anosognosia in what they call “mental illness”

However, the more one knows about anosognosia, the stranger it gets and the more open some people may be to understanding what is possible when a brain is malfunctioning. The brain’s semblance of mind is terrifyingly confounding. Take Anton-Babinski Syndrome for example. This is an extremely rare condition in which a person with damage or a defect of the brain becomes cortically blind. Despite being “brain-blind”, they deny that they are blind and the subject articulates confabulatory reports about what they can see. Due Justice Project asserts that so-called mental illnesses involving neurogenous “psychosis” should be classified as neurodevelopmental encephalopathies. When seen as brain syndromes, it may be easier for some people to accept that people with these physical conditions that do not believe they are ill – are not just “in denial”.

Posting a link to an article in medicinenet.com.

Article About Anton Babinski Syndrome