...well, ok, it's only a stick.
More things to think about - like the 'enigma of reason'. Which is the name of a book that I am currently listening to. It's quite complex... much of the claim is that reasoning developed as an after-the-fact means of justifying our decisions which were based on intuitions and inferences. Such intuitions would be, loosely, rational - in that we inferred from the way the world has worked in the past or the way the world seems. But essentially, the fancy-dan process of reasoning is primarily and originally about 'looking good' in front of others. I did that because... and here are the good reasons that, even though I didn't realise it, I have just made up so you think I am reliable.
It seems pretty compelling to me.
I am also reading two other books: Cracked, by James Davies, which is excellent, and Experiences of Depression by Matthew Ratcliffe.
Start with the latter. It explores depression from a phenomenological perspective: what it feels like. And this is great. He suggests that the depression experience an 'existential change': the world, as it appears to them, is not as the world usually appears. The world is lacking possibility, significance; the sufferer feels unable to connect, make contact, act. To be honest, it's the first time I've read something that really resonated with my experience. No, wait: not quite that. It's more that I feel I have experienced existential changes, at various points, and I resonate with the concept that the world can feel very different. I need to try to put into words, at some stage, what I experience. But, as Ratcliffe says, it is incredibly hard to do.
Davies' book is a critique of psychiatry, and boy, is it compelling. Very readable too. No phenomenology.
Drawing these ideas together, I have a feeling that the 'reasons' for treatment or that justify treatment, are justifications for the kind of treatment a certain society with a certain mind-set 'thinks' are appropriate: drugs, self-help, positive thinking, focusing on happiness. But in fact, looking at it all a different way... recreating connections and trust; using the placebo effect and allowing 'healing' to happen where 'curing' can't... something different, at any rate, from pills and mantras.
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