Comments on: Antidepressants suppress identity? http://neuroanthropology.net/2008/04/16/antidepressants-suppress-identity/ For a greater understanding of the encultured brain and body... Sun, 20 May 2012 14:29:53 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Warren http://neuroanthropology.net/2008/04/16/antidepressants-suppress-identity/#comment-5561 Wed, 20 May 2009 14:42:53 +0000 http://neuroanthropology.wordpress.com/?p=230#comment-5561 It goes without saying on this blog that personal identity development interacts with culture, but until this is explicitly learned we tend to think that there’s still an essence unfolding. But when you know you’re on an antidepressant that alters your personality and you have the contrastive pre- and post-antidepressant memories to tell you that there’s been a change, it can make one feel, or at least worry about being, inauthentic after a while. It’s still biology and culture interacting in development — just culture more efficiently crossing the BBB.

]]> By: Richard Affleck http://neuroanthropology.net/2008/04/16/antidepressants-suppress-identity/#comment-5516 Fri, 15 May 2009 14:38:44 +0000 http://neuroanthropology.wordpress.com/?p=230#comment-5516 I’m sorry Anya. Even Martin Seligman admits that the sunny, ‘optimistic’ personalities he has studied are not those most in touch with the truth. I’d go further: they’re not the most in touch with themselves. This may be news if you’ve been relieved from suffering by such drugs, or if sitcoms seem funny to you. I myself am on two antidepressants and a mood-stabiliser, and after many years of every such drug in the MIMS, and lots of talking therapy I’m still addicted to misery, because there is a cruel beauty in it that I know too well not to love. And anyway, these things prolong my life so I might turn it to account somehow, maybe like some of those famous depressives of yore, artists, writers, etc — I won’t labor the point. (Robert Lowell claime that the fire went out of his writing when he started on lithium.) On the other hand, if poetry doesn’t turn you on, you need but read the newspapers. Richard Affleck, BA, B. Psych (Hons)

]]> By: Anya http://neuroanthropology.net/2008/04/16/antidepressants-suppress-identity/#comment-5314 Wed, 15 Apr 2009 20:44:46 +0000 http://neuroanthropology.wordpress.com/?p=230#comment-5314 No!!! Anti-depressants reveal the true identity! A healthy state of mind! Depression is a disease which “kills” our true identity. The anti-depressed state is the normal state. The abnormality is the desease:depression.I can’t see how this article is thought provoking…it’s absurd…

About the first patient (Julie) when she says she doesn’t have a sense of who she really is without medication, I would ask her to stop taking her medication, thus leaving her in a depressed state of mind. Depression gives the wrong idea about what’s really happening.

This article is totally ridiculous and absurd

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