(no subject)

[ann_leckie]

Reading a book called "The Culture of Pain" the introduction of which promised to be interesting--recognizing that mental and physical pain were closely connected, survey of art and history involving pain, etc. And then I run across the standard bullshit about our pill-popping, pain avoidant age as contrasted with the noble sages of the past who accepted that pain had "meaning" in their lives etc (surely the statement of a man who never suffered chronic pain) and then he marvels that for all the various ways of dealing with pain, pain is epidemic in our society and it seemed as though the more pills we took the more pain there was!

Um. Hello?

I want to read things by people who know what the hell they're talking about and have half a brain, not writers with logorrhea and a book contract.

Then adding to my frustration, the beginning of a chapter wherein he details his stay at a pain clinic for research purposes--the whole first two pages are all about how bitchin' it is to wear a lab coat and look like a doctor. He mentions that his donning the coat was the product of much negotiation with the clinic administration. Presumably to let us know how important lab coats are, symbolically, but also betraying the fact that he felt it neccesary to enter much negotiation so that he could wear the damn thing.

(I freely admit that it's fun to wear a lab coat, especially when you are, as I was, about fourteen and hanging out in your parents' lab "doing Current Contents"--most kids whose parents worked in the lab did Current Contents as a suplement to allowance at one time or another. It wasn't very exciting--the lab folks would circle the articles they wanted, and we would carefully fill out reprint request postcards and put them in the mail, and then go to the library and photocopy the ones we could find. But it did offer the small fun of occasionally going down to the cafeteria in a lab coat. I suspect we got to wear them because our parents knew it would be fun--as an adult, I would not go to the trouble of engaging in "negotiations" in order to wear one.)

Anyway. I'm debating whether to continue reading just in case there's actual information or insight, or whether I should just put it back on the stack and pick up the next one.

ETA-Right, I think I'm done with this book.

It is a puzzling fact that in the twentieth century hysteria has declined precipitously as a medical diagnosis. The near disappearance of hysteria represents a social and medical change on the same order of magnitued as the almost total annihilation of tuberculosis.

Uh huh. So long, dude.

Comments

[mkhobson.livejournal.com]

It is a puzzling fact that in the twentieth century hysteria has declined precipitously as a medical diagnosis ...

Quick! Out with their uteruses!!!

That book sounds like a doozy.

[accordingto-ada.livejournal.com]

My lab coat in grad school *was* fun because I had a "no polo shirt" button pinned near my shoulder. The pin had the international red diagonal line of death over a drawing of an Izod alligator.

Instead of that book, don't you wish you could read the comments the rest of the staff at the pain clinic must have been making about "lab coat guy" behind his back? O...M... G.

[ultradark.livejournal.com]

The decline of hysteria as a medical diagnosis is hardly puzzling. The diagnosis was perhaps the single most emblematic and classic form of pathologizing women's futile psychological reaction/rebellion to extreme social powerlessness. The category had no medical cohesiveness; if you were a woman and complained of sleeplessness, depression, anger, etc., you'd get the hysteria diagnosis and the treatment would likely involve some form of opium derivative. To call a decline in such treatment puzzling today raises questions about the author's understanding of medical history....

[ann-leckie.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I read that sentence with utter astonishment. A few paras on it became clear that he knew that, it was just that he was using a fake "isn't it odd?" to introduce the actual subject. Which was, to me, nearly as bad. If there's one thing that can reliably piss me off, it's being treated like I'm stupid. Why not just start the topic by saying it straight out?

But he seemed prone to that sort of statement. He made a different "isn't it odd" thing when he said earlier in the book, with no further qualification, that it was mysterious how sometimes at moments of pain we feel most alive. This is not mysterious, it's a function of the neurotransmitters we release during stress. I mean, that system in and of itself is very interesting and strange on its own level, but not mysterious the way he was putting it. And that was weird for someone who supposedly had been doing lots of research into pain.

I think someone needs to hit him with a Clue-by-Four quick!

[bellatrys.livejournal.com]

In the interests of science and all, of course. Maybe if we hurt him enough, he will understand why people don't like it very much...

(Zut alors, can anyone really be that stupid?)

Re: I think someone needs to hit him with a Clue-by-Four quick!

[ann-leckie.livejournal.com]

One would hope not!

Regarding the hysteria thing, I think, after having actually braved through a page or two more, that he was actually adopting a fake "isn't this mysterious!" attitude preparatory to saying what everyone knows--that the decline of hysteria as a diagnosis is in fact not puzzling at all. This fits with some of my other annoyances with the book--I don't think he's very respectful of the intelligence of his readers. And just judging from the labcoat episode, I suspect, though I cannot prove, that he's a self-involved prick.