Neuroanatomy Through Clinical Cases Quotes

... apart from its function as communication, human language also often functions as a defense. The spoken word conceals the expressive language of the biological core. In many cases, the function of speech has deteriorated to such a degree that the words express nothing whatever and merely represent a continuous, hollow activity on the part of the musculature of the neck and the organs of speech. On the basis of repeated experiences, it is my opinion that in many psychoanalyses which have gone on for years the treatment has become stuck in this pathological use of language. This clinical experience can, indeed has to be applied to the social sphere. Endless numbers of speeches, publications, political debates do not have the function of getting at the root of important questions of life but of drowning them in verbiage. ~ Wilhelm Reich

I have chosen to use the terms lesbian existence and lesbian continuum because the word lesbianism has a clinical and limiting ring Lesbian existence suggests both the fact of the historical presence of lesbians and our continuing creation of the meaning of that existence I mean the term lesbian continuum to include a range - through each woman's life and throughout history - of woman-identified experience; not simply the fact that a woman has had or consciously desired genital sexual experience with another woman. If we expand it to embrace many more forms of primary intensity between and among women, including the sharing of a rich inner life, the bonding against male tyranny, the giving and receiving of practical and political support; if we can also hear in it such associations as marriage resistance and the 'haggard' behavior identified by Mary Daly (obsolete meanings 'intractable,' 'willful,' 'wanton,' and 'unchaste' a woman reluctant to yield to wooing') - we begin to grasp breadths of female history and psychology that have lain out of reach as a consequence of limited, mostly clinical, definitions of 'lesbianism.'

Lesbian existence comprises both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life It is also a direct or indirect attack on male right of access to women But it is more than these, although we may first begin to perceive it as a form of nay-saying to patriarchy, an act or resistance It has of course included role playing, sel ~ Adrienne Rich

Through the lessons we have learned over the years, especially in obstetric anesthesia where we have seen (and our unfortunate patients have experienced) the unpleasant consequences of unblocked segments or hemi-block with epidurals, and many other clinical situations, we now realize that blocking 60% of the nerves that innervate a joint does not reduce pain by 60%. In fact, it focuses 100% of the pain into the remaining 40% of the joint, therefore, in actual fact, worsening the pain and suffering of the patient. ~ Andre P. Boezaart

She moved, opening to him, her thighs widening, the cool air of the room rushing through the slit in her pantalettes. Her cheeks burned and she moved her hands to block his view.
He was watching them, and he made a low sound of approval. "That's where my hands would be as well. Can you feel why? Can you feel the heat? The temptation?"
Her eyes were closed now. She couldn't look at him. But she nodded.
"Of course you can... I can almost feel it myself." The words were hypnotic, all temptation, soft and lyric and wonderful. "And tell me, my little anatomist, have you explored that particular location, before?"
Her cheeks burned.
"Don't start lying now, Pippa. We've come so far."
"Yes."
"Yes, what?"
"Yes, I've explored it before." The confession was barely sound, but he heard it. When he groaned, she opened her eyes to find him pressed back against the desk once more. "Did I say the wrong thing?"
He shook his head, his hand rising to his mouth once more, stroking across firm lips. "Only in that you made me burn with jealousy."
Her brows furrowed. "Of whom?"
"Of you, lovely." His grey gaze flickered to the place she hid from him. "Of your perfect hands. Tell me what you found."
She couldn't. While she might know the clinical words for all the things she had touched and discovered, she could not speak them to him. She shook her head. "I cannot."
"Did you find pleasure?"
She closed her eyes, pressed her lips tog ~ Sarah MacLean

Towards a Neurobiological Theory of Consciousness, one of the first synoptic articles to come out of his collaboration with Christof Koch at Caltech. I felt very privileged to see this manuscript, in particular their carefully laid-out argument that an ideal way of entering this seemingly inaccessible subject would be through exploring disorders of visual perception. Crick and Koch's paper was aimed at neuroscientists and covered a vast range in a few pages; it was sometimes dense and highly technical. But I knew that Crick could also write in a very accessible and witty and personable way; this was especially evident in his two earlier books, Life Itself and Of Molecules and Men. So I now entertained hopes that he might give a more popular and accessible form to his neurobiological theory of consciousness, enriched with clinical and everyday examples. ~ Oliver Sacks

The evening with its lamps burning
The night with its head in its hands
The early morning

I look back at the worried parents
Wandering through the house
What are we going to do

The evening of the clinical
The night of the psychological
The morning facedown in the pillow

The experts can handle him
The experts have no idea
How to handle him

There are enigmas in darkness
There are mysteries
Sent out without searchlights

The stars are hiding tonight
The moon is cold and stony
Behind the clouds

Nights without seeing
Mornings of the long view
It's not a sprint but a marathon

Whatever we can do
We must do
Every morning's resolve

But sometimes we suspected
He was being punished
For something obscure we had done

I would never abandon the puzzle
Sleeping in the next room
But I could not solve it ~ Edward Hirsch

If we only see things through the cold-eyed lens of factuality and don't listen to the yearning and screaming of unexpressed feelings, life may remain bleak in a mire of clinical hollowness, sodden in apathy and indifference. ("Morning after") ~ Erik Pevernagie

I'm on the Sensa diet. It's a little magic powder based on Dr. Hirsh's clinical trials and studies and it basically signals the brain that you're full through smellology. ~ Patti Stanger

Erwin Strauss, in his brilliant monograph on obsession, similarly earlier showed how repulsed Swift was by the animality of the body, by its dirt and decay. Straus pronounced a more clinical judgment on Swift's disgust, seeing it as part of the typical obsessive's worldview: "For all obsessives sex is severed from unification and procreation....Through the...isolation of the genitals from the whole of the body, sexual functions are experienced as excretions and as decay." This degree of fragmentation is extreme, but we all see the world through obsessive eyes at least part of the time and to some degree; and as Freud said, not only neurotics take exception to the fact that "we are born between urine and feces." In t his horror of the incongruity of man Swift the poet gives more tormented voice to the dilemma that haunts us all, and it is worth summing it up one final time: Excreting is the curse that threatens madness because it shows man his abject finitude, his physicalness, the likely unreality of his hopes and dreams. But even more immediately, it represents man's utter bafflement at the sheer non-sense of creation: to fashion the sublime miracle of the human face, the mysterium tremendum of radiant female beauty, the veritable goddesses that beautiful women are; to bring this out of nothing, out of the void, and make it shine in noonday; to take such a miracle and put miracles again within it, deep in the mystery of eyes that peer out-the eye that gave even the dry Darwi ~ Ernest Becker

Many low-income children face chronic stress from nutritional deprivation or persistent violence at home or in the community. By addressing their medical, emotional and developmental needs through a comprehensive clinical care model, we can lower their risk of developing long-term physical and mental health issues. ~ Irwin Redlener

I listened impatiently to the wisdom of the O'Neills for about twenty minutes until I could take no more (by this time Steve and Susan had me thumbing through the paperback). I slid the book across the desk at them and said, 'This is so much shit.'

That was a mistake because the word 'shit' on the lips of a pastor deeply offended their moral sensibilities. Such was the state of things among us. They took grave exception to the word SHIT, while I was expected to remain noddingly neutral toward their adultery. WELL, SHIT, I thought. Without apologizing, I tried to convince them I was merely 'upset' by the prospects of their separation. Gradually, I achieved the clinical tone that they so admired in the O'Neills and evidently expected in their country parson. ~ Richard Lischer

While play-acting grim scenarios day in and day out may sound like a good recipe for clinical depression, it's actually weirdly uplifting. Rehearsing for catastrophe has made me positive that I have the problem-solving skills to deal with tough situations and come out the other side smiling. For me, this has greatly reduced the mental and emotional clutter that unchecked worrying produces, those random thoughts that hijack your brain at three o'clock in the morning.

While I very much hoped not to die in space, I didn't live in fear of it, largely because I'd been made to think through the practicalities: how I'd want my family to get the news, for instance, and which astronaut I should recruit to help my wife cut through the red tape at NASA and the CSA. Before my last space flight (as with each of the earlier ones) I reviewed my will, made sure my financial affairs and taxes were in order, and did all the other things you'd do if you knew you were going to die. But that didn't make me feel like I had one foot in the grave. It actually put my mind at ease and reduced my anxiety about what my family's future would look like if something happened to me. Which meant that when the engines lit up at launch, I was able to focus entirely on the task at hand: arriving alive. ~ Chris Hadfield

This is the hallmark of a robust biological system: political parties can perish in a tragic accident and the society will still run, sometimes with little more than a hiccup to the system. It may be that for every strange clinical case in which brain damage leads to a bizarre change in behavior or perception, there are hundreds of cases in which parts of the brain are damaged with no detectable clinical sign. ~ David Eagleman

I am not against the pharmaceutical companies. I love them. That's not the issue. The issue is, in some cases, when they do these clinical trials, they control the data. They analyze the data. In some cases, they even write the article. And that leads to at least the perception, if not the reality, that there's a conflict of interest. ~ Catherine D. DeAngelis

Over time, the grueling job of a mother requires one to learn everything from patience to clinical psychology.

When you are "in the fire," it is sometimes hard to recognize the value of what you are learning. But the da-to-day refining process--the problem solving, crisis resolution, mental stretching, mess clean-ups, sleep deprivation, and loving more than you thought possible truly makes you into a smart, aware, beautiful refined individual.

The great secret is appreciating the refined person you are becoming through your trials. ~ Linda Eyre

Through the imagination and the human sense of creativity, the book will examine not only raw clinical data but philosophical perspectives as well. As within many moral fables, animals will be used, at times, to convey a a fundamental truth of human nature. More simply stated, animals that elicit human empathetic responses, will be examined in a religious context.
So, starting with cats, dogs and ultimately other primates, as moral experiments of imagination, we can perhaps understand differing cognitive processes that could have shaped our religious purview. It might be even stated that they should shape our opinion, especially in a reevaluation of the spiritual present and coming future. When this happens, it will help humanity create a unique pristine outlook on its religious traditions. ~ Leviak B. Kelly

I do not think the long-range bullets I fire provide the mark of a man; I am only dimly aware that they are dehumanising me.
They are my opium tto see me through my time here. But with each hit they give, they only provide a feeling respite from the past I cannot escape from and thre present I have chosen to mire myself in. And, grounded as I am in the reality of this hill, I do not yet fully appreciate how this addiction is infecting my future with malediction.
With this clinical, psychopathically detached behaviour considered as normal, proper and expected on this hall, I cannot yet stop to think - because I cannot allow myself to here - of how hese respites may be blackening my soul in all the time I will have left on my own back Home - should I even live through the remainder of my months here, in some other corner of this Hell of a country. ~ Jake Wood

Elder Maxwell on Wintry Doctrines
Elder Maxwell said that "if we are serious about our discipleship Jesus will eventually request each of us to do those very things which are most difficult for us to do."
This was what he came to call the wintry doctrine at the funeral of a young father in 1996 he put it this way "There are in the gospel warm and cuddly doctrines and then there are some that are just outright wintry doctrines… one of them frankly is that we cannot approach real consecration without passing through appropriate clinical experiences because we don't achieve consecration in the abstract. … sometimes therefore the best people have the worst experiences… because they are the most ready to learn." (Bruce C. Hafen, The Story of A Disciple's Life: Preparing the Biography of Neal A. Maxwell, p. 14) ~ Neal A. Maxwell

This does not mean that the one presenting the hypothesis should be resolute to disbelieve his or her postulate but rather the person should be resolute to leave the expressed opinion should they be thoroughly convinced of its lack of accuracy and poignant truth. Whether this truth is made through poetic license and artistic dramatic presentation or through clinical analysis of facts or both, the truth must be embraced not merely denied by blind faith of either new atheism or religious ideals. New or old is of no consequence, only truth and compassion are of value. ~ Leviak B. Kelly

I call it your source-fracture wound, the original break in your heart from long ago. It may have happened in an instant--a little rejection, a shocking abandonment, or a slight misattunement that suddenly made you realize how alone you were in this world. Or perhaps it was a bit-bu-bit splintering as over the years you met with an intermittent meanness, an unpredictable but repetitive abuse, or a neglect that stole your childhood inches at a time. Wherever, however, or whenever it happened, one thing we can assume is that no adult helped you make accurate meaning of your confusing and painful experience. No grown up sat you down and lovingly said, "No, honey, it's not that you're stupid. It's that your big brother is scared and insecure." "It's not that you don't matter, angel. It's that Daddy has a drinking problem and needs help." "It's not that you're not enough. It's that Mommy has clinical depression, dear, and it's neither your fault nor yours to fix." Without this mature presence to help explain to you what was happening to your little world, you probably came to some pretty strong and wrong conclusions about who you were and what was possible for you to have in life. And those conclusions became a habit of consciousness, a filter through which you interpret and then respond to the events of your life, making your grief all the more complex. ~ Katherine Woodward Thomas

Beggars, especially noble beggars, should never show themselves in the street; they should ask for alms through the newspapers. It's still possible to love one's neighbor abstractly, and even occasionally from a distance, but hardly ever up close. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

There are many things that can only be seen through eyes that have cried ~ Oscar A. Romero

A great number of elements in the characters' lives, both psychic and factual, are not communicated to us. [ ... ] These characters, I believe, enjoy a much greater autonomy than we usually think, and are able to take initiatives unknown both to the writer and the reader. When characters have their own will, their own autonomy, it gives the literary universe a greater internal mobility; it also makes the texts through which we view this world all the more open and incomplete. ~ Pierre Bayard

Motivation means we have an idea and we are going to carry through on that idea. We work hard at it, and we are disciplined. ~ Wayne Dyer

We don't like to hurt. And there is no worse pain for fallen people than facing an emptiness we cannot fill. To enter into pain seems rather foolish when we can run from it through denial. We simply cannot get it through our head that, with a nature twisted by sin, the route to joy always involves the very worst sort of internal suffering we can imagine. We rebel at that thought. We weren't designed to hurt. The physical and personal capacities to feel that God built into us were intended to provide pleasures, like good health and close relationships. When they don't, when our head throbs with tension and our heart is broken by rejection, we want relief. With deep passion, we long to experience what we were designed to enjoy. ~ Larry Crabb

I grew up where, when a door closed, a window didn't open. The only thing I had was cracks. I'd do everything to get through those cracks - scratch, claw, bite, push, bleed. Now the opportunity is here. The door is wide open, and it's as big as a garage. ~ Dwayne Johnson

The fact is that the learning process goes on, and so long as the voices are not stilled and the singers go on singing some of it gets through. ~ Morris West

Of all the criminal cases in which Philo Vance participated as unofficial investigator, the most sinister, the most bizarre, the seemingly most incomprehensible, and certainly the most terrifying was the one that followed the famous Greene murders. ~ S. S. Van Dine

First,
quit picking old wounds
and going for walks in the aches
and pains you already made it through -
you call it healing, but
it sounds like a good way
to take a haunting home with you. ~ Ashe Vernon

No one escapes suffering. Everyone goes through tough times. Suffering is a part of our human condition and cannot be avoided. Setbacks, failures, pain, suffering, and hardships are all a part of life, but whether we are able to find peace within the storm depends on our resilience and perseverance. Whenever one of our children tells us that they don't want to fail at something, we remind them that there will be times in their life when they will fail, but it's how they come through it that matters. If we choose to focus on the negative, the failure itself, the darkness will oppress and consume us. Eventually it will destroy a person. We need to embrace the fact that we're human and our lives will be filled with suffering and hardship, but we have the ultimate hope and victory in Our Lord. ~ Karen Santorum

People need a little loving and, God, sometimes it's sad all the shit they have to go through to find some. ~ Richard Brautigan

Social advance depends as much upon the process through which it is secured as upon the result itself. ~ Jane Addams

Existence – what's it good for, if it can't be forever – and the only way to exist forever is through your actions – your civilized, courageous and conscientious actions. ~ Abhijit Naskar

The capacity for people to kid themselves is huge. Living on illusions or delusions, and the re-establishing of these illusions or delusions requires a big effort to keep them from being seen through. But a very old idea is at work behind our current state of affairs: enantiodromia, or the Greek notion of things turning into their opposite. ~ James Hillman

A lot of TV people buy more than one of an item, in case they spot or stain it, but I don't like buying duplicates - it's wasteful. ~ Martha Stewart

While I'm always up for a good scrap, and don't even mind racking up a few bumps and bruises along the way, I'm not really the martyr type. I have sensitive skin and there's nothing that irritates more than nails being driven through it. ~ Tim Marquitz

Because of that I don't care when I read in the newspaper that I am colourblind. I went through a red light in my car and I stopped when I before a green light. So I must be really colourblind, eh? ~ Ruud Van Nistelrooy