The Combine is the mental ward. This plays into Bromden's idea that the whole institution is like one big machine. When the patients come in, they're broken down until they themselves become part of the machine too. They do the same things every day, just like a machine. They are also dehumanized, like they were just pieces of metal. The Combine literally cuts the patients down until they're only good for being part of the machine.
McMurphy is just as vulnerable as the other patients because he's a human too. I think that's a major point in this book; that they are ALL humans, and NOT parts of a machine. McMurphy shows the humanity (and its inconsistencies) that the other patients are lacking. The fact that McMurphy has all these basic human flaws that landed him in the mental ward in the first place show how human he really is. The others have all been told that they have something inhumanly wrong with their heads. But McMurphy's gambling problems and socially normal. McMurphy is "normal", and remains that way. That's how we know the combine hasn't gotten to him yet.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
Imprisoned by the bell?
Come to think of it, mental wards and schools really aren't too far off from each other. The biggest thing they share in common is that they are scheduled down to the minute. As school, we have to stay in one specific place, until the clock tells us otherwise. We have a system of bells to tell us when we're allowed to leave that place, and another bell to tell us when we have to be in our next place. We can't leave the school during the day, and we have others responsible for us while we're there.
We get a small amount of allotted social time too. During lunch we get to socialize with each other, but only under the watch of several teachers to make sure we don;t jump around on the tables or set the ceiling on fire, or pull a fire alarm. Once that time is over, we're ushered back to our respective rooms by the bells.
Our school is by and large split into different academic groups during the majority of the day. The kids who are able to handle the tougher curriculum are in honors classes, and tend to only be in classes with the honors kids. In general, the kids who take cp2 courses are with all the other kids who take cp2 courses for most of the day, because most of the day consists of those academic classes. So our school is split up by class level just like the mental ward is split up between the different types of patients.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Mental vs. Physical Illness
The biggest, and only legitimate thing mental and physical illness share is that they both cause suffering to whoever they affect. Mental and Physical illness are not the same thing any more than a lemon is an apple. They are both fruit; that is all.
Physical illness is often times a lot harder to cure than physical illness. This is largely because the physical body is easier to diagnose and treat, and because we understand things we can see better than things we can't. We have hundreds of years of doctors to diagnose physical problems, but we are still in the midst of figuring out the mental ones.
If someone breaks their arm, they can go to the doctor who can put their arm in a cast, give them some painkillers, and say "come back in a month and it'll be healed". The body can be trusted to heal itself, except in rare circumstances.
The mind, however, once affected, cannot be trusted to heal itself. That is the very nature of mental illness; there is no safeguard with which it can just "go away". Sure, if someone goes through a bad break up, or suffers grief from the death of a family member, their emotions will run their course, and eventually the person will be mentally normal again. But if their is something wrong with the way that person's mind runs through and reacts to those emotions, there's no telling when, or if, they will get past them.
Mind illnesses can often express themselves in obsessions, or obsessively repetitious thoughts. Through therapy, one may learn to control those thoughts, but there is really no guarantee that any amount of psychology will work. That's just the nature of it. It's an inanimate science, and no matter how logical the break down of Freudian psychology, no two minds are the same. Bodies however, are all basically similar.
So, in their diagnosis, treatment, and healing, physical illness and mental illness are really not the same thing at all, and can't be treated as such.
Physical illness is often times a lot harder to cure than physical illness. This is largely because the physical body is easier to diagnose and treat, and because we understand things we can see better than things we can't. We have hundreds of years of doctors to diagnose physical problems, but we are still in the midst of figuring out the mental ones.
If someone breaks their arm, they can go to the doctor who can put their arm in a cast, give them some painkillers, and say "come back in a month and it'll be healed". The body can be trusted to heal itself, except in rare circumstances.
The mind, however, once affected, cannot be trusted to heal itself. That is the very nature of mental illness; there is no safeguard with which it can just "go away". Sure, if someone goes through a bad break up, or suffers grief from the death of a family member, their emotions will run their course, and eventually the person will be mentally normal again. But if their is something wrong with the way that person's mind runs through and reacts to those emotions, there's no telling when, or if, they will get past them.
Mind illnesses can often express themselves in obsessions, or obsessively repetitious thoughts. Through therapy, one may learn to control those thoughts, but there is really no guarantee that any amount of psychology will work. That's just the nature of it. It's an inanimate science, and no matter how logical the break down of Freudian psychology, no two minds are the same. Bodies however, are all basically similar.
So, in their diagnosis, treatment, and healing, physical illness and mental illness are really not the same thing at all, and can't be treated as such.
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