Hi Rambi!
"The myth of Mental illness" was one of my favourites. He goes back a few years. For a time I was very much enamoured of his views. However, one learns that reality is too complex to be embraced by the philosophy of any one man.
Another author that I loved, probably no longer read, was R.D. Laing. I believed in the therapeutic views of Laing, his rationalizing of mental illness, his ability to crawl inside his client's heads and see their illness as reasonable-- but in the end, it was his depression and alcoholism that destroyed him. So illness is not a myth. When we accumulate enough of it--we die.
In regards to Luther, one cannot argue two positions at once. Because I was standing on one side of the fence, does not mean I was entirely unsympathetic to the other view(s).
Actually, I am presently reading a biography by Haile. Luther was indeed brilliant, witty, and profound on the one hand, and simple and child-like on the other. Leaving aside what has been covered...the hate and rage he sometimes expresses is so palpable that it stuns. I cannot, in conscience, see it as an expression of health. It seems incongruous and unkind to attribute it to moral defects in a God loving and fearing man, who otherwise had such greatness. I find many of his beliefs repugnant, as he would find mine evil, but no-one can deny him his place in history. |
