The Madness of Mental Illness

There’s a line I love from the short story Eleonora by Edgar Allan Poe.  It’s about madness. And who better than the macabre mind who brought us such gibbering, eye-shivering tales of horror as The Telltale Heart and The Pit and the Pendulum to weigh in on the subject of insanity? The quote goes like this: 

“Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence– whether much that is glorious– whether all that is profound– does not spring from disease of thought– from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.”

I take that to mean, coarsely translated – “maybe the reason so many brilliant people go a bit off their heads is because insanity is only one step past genius.”

Another quote, this one from John Dryden, supports this theory:

“Great wits are sure to madness near allied – And thin partitions do their bounds divide.”

Right. So the line between superior intellect and mental illness is a thin, wobbly one. Not entirely surprising news, is it? We look at the Edgar Allan Poes, the Vincent Van Goghs, the Sylvia Plaths and the Ernest Hemingways, who bring us brilliance that shines long past their own lifetimes, and it seems difficult to argue. 

We can chicken-or-egg ourselves to death trying to ascertain whether mental illness drives us toward drugs and drink, or booze and drugs invite the mental illness. But the fact remains that as a society and a culture, mental illness is not uncommon, and we have the pharmaceutical receipts to prove it.Mental illness runs the gamut of everything from mild depression to seasonal affective disorder, to bipolar disorder, to obsessive-compulsive disorder to schizophrenia and psychopathy and beyond. We hate it, we’re afraid of it, and we rail against it, trying everything from denial and a stiff upper lip to electroconvulsive therapy, artificial light and chemical compounds to combat it.

And naturally we’re fascinated by it, and try everything from talking about it, to conducting extensive studies, to clinical trials with placebos, to of course writing about it to understand it.

The DSM IV

The go-to diagnostic tool for mental disorders is The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, commonly referred to as the DSM, published by the American Psychiatric Association. The DSM was first published in 1952, and was born of the necessity to compile statistics and facts around mental disorders in the United States, particularly in the military. The most recent edition is the fifth edition, or DSM-5, be published in May of 2013. 

Beyond the scientific and diagnostic, there is still an endlessly deep pool of writing about mental illness. For true, old-timey madness, one need look no further than the aforementioned Edgar Allan Poe for a dose, or, of course, good old Shakespeare, who wrote more than his fair share of tormented characters losing their way and descending into madness – King Lear, Lady MacBeth and Hamlet’s Ophelia are just three of the countless characters struggling with wavering reality in Shakespeare plays.

Still in the realm of fiction, but less over-the-top dramatic, perhaps the best known is Ken Kesey’s classic novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, detailing the experience of a cocky, gregarious man named Randle Patrick McMurphy in an Oregon psychiatric facility. 

Also very well-known and under the fiction category is the poet Sylvia Plath’s only novel,The Bell Jar, detailing a young woman’s bouts with intense, recurrent and crippling depression. It’s tough to call this one fiction, when by all accounts, the story of protagonist Esther bore an uncanny resemblance to Plath’s own journey, with the notable and sad exception that Esther’s story ends on a hopeful note, and Plath took her own life in 1963.

If it’s non-fiction you’re after, but less dry and clinical than the DSM, an interesting read is Jon Ronson’s 2011 book The Psychopath Test, in which he examined psychopathy from all angles, including discussions with those diagnosed with (or suspected of having) psychopathy. He also conducted extensive interviews with psychiatrists, psychologists and Robert D. Hare, the author of the now famous Hare Psychopathy checklist. Originally a 16-part test, the checklist is now 20 parts, and the most commonly used critera to determine psychopathy. It’s a fascinating read, but probably best avoided by those with hypochondriacal tendencies. 

Whether it’s simply a good story you’re after, or just information, there are as many books dedicated to the subject of mental illness as you could ever hope to read.

This selection, a mixture of old and new, fiction and fact, is just a drop in the bucket.

Credit to: 

by Beth Carswell

 

 

Professor Jane C. Ginsburg Elected to American Philosophical Society

New York, May 3,  2013—Columbia Law School Professor Jane C. Ginsburg, a leading scholar on intellectual property law, comparative law, private international law, and legal methods, was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society (APS) at the organization’s annual spring meeting.

The APS, the oldest learned society in the United States, is unusual in that its membership is composed of top scholars from a wide variety of academic disciplines. Membership is entirely honorary and reflects extraordinary accomplishments in one of five classes: mathematical and physical sciences; biological sciences; social sciences; humanities; and the arts, professions, and public and private affairs.

 

Ginsburg, the Morton L. Janklow Professor of Literary and Artistic Property Law, was elected to the social sciences class. She is Faculty Director of the Law School’s Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts, which contributes to a broader understanding of the legal aspects of creative works of authorship, including their dissemination and use.

 

Fluent in French and Italian, Ginsburg has been a visiting professor or fellow at a number of distinguished educational institutions, including the University of Paris, the University of Cambridge, the University of Auckland, Hebrew University, and the University of Melbourne.

 

In addition to her role as a professor, Ginsburg has published many works, including three casebooks and numerous articles on domestic and international copyright law. She is also a vice president of the Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale, a Paris-based international organization created to promote and defend authors’ rights, and president of that organization’s U.S. chapter.

 

According to APS, her membership creates what may be the first mother-daughter membership in the group’s history. Jane Ginsburg’s mother, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’59, was elected a member in 2006.

 

Founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin, the American Philosophical Society honors and engages distinguished scientists, humanists, social scientists, and leaders in civic and cultural affairs . It promotes useful knowledge in science and humanities through excellence in scholarly research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and community outreach.

Christopher Gandia ’13 Presents Paper He Co-Wrote With Professor Jeffrey N. Gordon

Paper on Money-Market Fund Risk Presented at American Law and Economics Association’s Annual Meeting

New York, May 20, 2013—Columbia Law School student Christopher M. Gandia ’13 presented a paper he co-wrote with Professor Jeffrey N. Gordon about money-market fund (MMF) risk at the 23rd annual meeting of the American Law and Economics Association on May 18.

The paper, “Money Market Funds Run Risk: Will Floating Net Asset Value Fix the Problem?,” stems from Gandia’s work as a research assistant for Gordon during the summer after Gandia’s first year at the Law School. It addresses the recent proposals to stem the risk of MMFs by moving the funds from a fixed one-dollar net asset value (NAV) to a floating NAV. The paper has been cited by the Department of Treasury’s Financial Stability Oversight Council and the European Systemic Risk Board, both of which were established in the wake of the recent financial crisis.

Gordon, the Richard Paul Richman Professor of Law and co-director of the Richman Center for Business, Law, and Public Policy, has done extensive work on money-market funds.

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Columbia Law School, founded in 1858, stands at the forefront of legal education and of the law in a global society. Columbia Law School combines traditional strengths in corporate law and financial regulation, international and comparative law, property, contracts, constitutional law, and administrative law with pioneering work in intellectual property, digital technology, tax law and policy, national security, human rights, sexuality and gender, and environmental law.

Distinguished Legal Scholar Richard R.W. Brooks Joins Columbia Law School

Brooks’ Work Includes Empirical and Theoretical Contributions on Issues Ranging from Criminal Justice and Race to Law and Economics

 

New York, May 9, 2013—Richard R.W. Brooks, a renowned legal scholar from Yale Law School with expertise in contracts, law and economics, and issues of racial justice, will join the Columbia Law School faculty as the Charles Keller Beekman Professor of Law on July 1.

Richard R.W. Brooks

His scholarship includes numerous books and articles that analyze policy issues through the lens of law and economics. For example, in 2006 he had two articles published in theColumbia Law Review:“Incorporating Race,”concerning the theory and practice of attributing race, as a matter of law, to corporate persons and“Credit Past Due,” about the absence of traditional credit institutions in poor communities.

Last year, Brooks and several other leading academics filed an amicus brief in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, the high profile affirmative action case argued at the U.S. Supreme Court in October. The co-authors countered another amici’s argument that race-based admissions policies harm minorities by “mismatching” them in environments where their academic credentials are substantially lower than those of their classmates.

Brooks is also author of a new book analyzing the history and enduring legacy of racially restrictive property agreements, which limited ownership and residency based on race until the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed them in 1948. Saving the Neighborhood: Racially Restrictive Covenants, Law, and Social Norms, written with Yale Law School Professor Carol M. Rose, was published by Harvard University Press.

Brooks’ work also includes articles about the economics of environmental law, minorities’ perceptions of the legal system, and rescission in contracts.

“Rick is one of our nation’s preeminent legal academics, and we are delighted to welcome him at Columbia,” said Columbia Law School Dean David M. Schizer, the Lucy G. Moses Professor of Law and Harvey R. Miller Professor of Law and Economics.

In addition to Brett Dignam, Michael J. Graetz, and Thomas W. Merrill, Brooks is the fourth faculty member to join Columbia from Yale Law School in the past five years.

He holds a B.A. from Cornell; an M.A. from the University of California at Berkeley; a J.D. from University of Chicago Law School; and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley. He joined the faculty at Yale in 2003 and taught previously at Northwestern University School of Law and in Cornell University’s Department of Policy Analysis and Management. Brooks has served as a visiting researcher at the Center in Law, Economics and Organization at the University of Southern California Law School; on an advisory committee to the Social, Behavioral and Economics Sciences Division of the National Science Foundation; and as a research specialist in the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice.

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Columbia Law School, founded in 1858, stands at the forefront of legal education and of the law in a global society. Columbia Law School combines traditional strengths in corporate law and financial regulation, international and comparative law, property, contracts, constitutional law, and administrative law with pioneering work in intellectual property, digital technology, tax law and policy, national security, human rights, sexuality and gender, and environmental law.

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Naureen Shah Questions Effectiveness of Drone Warfare QuestionsNaureen Shah ’07 Calls on U.S. Government to Reassess Drone Strikes Policy

 

U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen have not proven effective at ensuring the security of people in those countries or of the United States, said Naureen Shah ’07, an associate director of Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute in remarks during a recent debate at the Oxford Union.

Shah participated in the debate, hosted by the preeminent debating society at Oxford University in the United Kingdom, with five other counterterrorism experts and scholars. She argued against the proposition that “Drone Warfare is Ethical and Effective.”

“There is no evidence that drone warfare is effective for the people who live in the countries where drone strikes take place,” Shah said at the April 25 event, helping defeat the proposition by a vote of 154 to 86.

Shah, a 2007 Law School graduate, is the associate director of the Human Rights Institute’s Counterterrorism and Human Rights Project. She is also acting director of the Law School’sHuman Rights Clinic.

In the debate, she pointed out that terrorist attacks in Pakistan and Yemen have not decreased since U.S. drone strikes began. In Pakistan, she said, terrorists have shifted their focus to major cities where drones cannot target them to carry out attacks that cripple the economy and political system. Shah also warned that current use of drone technology “perpetuates a state of war” without democratic accountability and may undermine U.S. credibility on the world stage.

Shah’s appearance at the Oxford Union follows several contributions by the Human Rights Institute and the Human Rights Clinic to the national debate on the effectiveness of drone warfare, including the Clinic’s submission to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on April 23. In that submission, the Clinic called on the U.S. to assess the strategic and humanitarian costs of drone warfare and to consider non-lethal alternative strategies for addressing imminent threats.

Retired Marine Gen. James E. Cartwright, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was a witness at the Senate hearing and quoted the Human Rights Clinic’s recent report The Civilian Impact of Drones Strikes extensively in his written testimony, calling the report “thoughtful and useable.” He repeated the Clinic’s recommendations, saying they “provided a menu of review actions that would serve to focus on what in our use, authorities and oversight protocols is working and what may require revision or new measures.”

Shah and Tarek Ismail ’11, a fellow at the Human Rights Institute, also recently led nine other human rights groups in producing a statement of shared concerns submitted to President Obama and Congress. The statement, reported in the New York Times and other outlets, urges the government to ensure that U.S. drone strikes do not violate international law or set a dangerous precedent for other countries fast acquiring drone technology. The White House responded in a statement to McClatchy Newspapers expressing the President’s commitment to transparency. In March, on behalf of the Human Rights Institute, Ismail organized a major conference of human rights and civil liberties groups to discuss secrecy and accountability in relation to drone strikes.

In addition, Shah participated in a series of Capitol Hill events on drones this month, including a May 3 congressional briefing organized by the Arab American Institute and a May 8 hearing organized by the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

The Institute’s and Clinic’s activities are based on two ground-breaking reports on drone strikesand civilian harm published in the fall 2012.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ARk9xD3cBFk&list=PLOAFgXcJkZ2wylFe6-DvegKVh4WEHm0bC

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Columbia Law School, founded in 1858, stands at the forefront of legal education and of the law in a global society. Columbia Law School combines traditional strengths in corporate law and financial regulation, international and comparative law, property, contracts, constitutional law, and administrative law with pioneering work in intellectual property, digital technology, tax law and policy, national security, human rights, sexuality and gender, and environmental law.

ABOUT NAUREEN SHAH:
Naureen Shah is a lecturer in law at the Human Rights Institute at Columbia University School of Law, New York

Taken from  http://www.law.columbia.edu/media_inquiries/news_events/2013/may2013/naureen-shah-hri-drones

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Drones Are Ethical And Effective Benjamin Wittes

 

Benjamin Wittes is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution. He co-founded and is the editor-in-chief of the Lawfare blog, which is devoted to sober and serious discussion of “Hard National Security Choices,” and is a member of the Hoover Institution’s Task Force on National Security and Law. He is the author of Detention and Denial: The Case for Candor After Guantanamo, published in November 2011, co-editor of Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change, published in December 2011, and editor of Campaign 2012: Twelve Independent Ideas for Improving American Public Policy (Brookings Institution Press, May 2012). He is also writing a book on data and technology proliferation and their implications for security. He is the author of Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror, published in June 2008 by The Penguin Press, and the editor of the 2009 Brookings book, Legislating the War on Terror: An Agenda for Reform.

His previous books include Starr: A Reassessment, published in 2002 by Yale University Press, and Confirmation Wars: Preserving Independent Courts in Angry Times, published in 2006 by Rowman & Littlefield and the Hoover Institution.

Between 1997 and 2006, he served as an editorial writer for The Washington Post specializing in legal affairs. Before joining the editorial page staff of The Washington Post, Wittes covered the Justice Department and federal regulatory agencies as a reporter and news editor at Legal Times. His writing has also appeared in a wide range of journals and magazines including The Atlantic, Slate, The New Republic, The Wilson Quarterly, The Weekly Standard, Policy Review, and First Things.

Benjamin Wittes was born November 5, 1969 in Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1990, and he has a black belt in taekwondo

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Imbas 2013

Medieval and Early Modern Student Association

 

Imbas is an interdisciplinary postgraduate conference hosted annually by NUI Galway. The theme for this year’s event is Destruction, Renewal…and back again’, and it will run from the 29th November to 1st December at the Moore Institute, NUI Galway.

The committee is very pleased to announce that this year’s keynote speaker will be Professor Fredric Cheyette of Amherst College, Massachusetts. Professor Cheyette is one of the world’s foremost scholars of Medieval European culture, more specifically on the region of Occitania, what is now Southern France. However, his more recent research has focused on the topic of climate, and climate change, during the medieval period. Aspects of this research will addressed in his keynote address, the title of which will be ‘From the Ancient to the Medieval Countryside: Old Answers/ New Questions’.

Imbas accepts papers from all disciplines on any topic from Late Antiquity to the end of the Medieval period…

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Françoise Burhenne-Guilmin: In Passing

IntLawGrrls

Sadly, Françoise Burhenne-Guilmin has died. She was a tremendously influential figure in international environmental law, through her work on international agreements, her many years as Head of the IUCN Environmental Law Centre, and her contributions to capacity building in this field. From the IUCN tribute:

Françoise was instrumental in drafting and elaborating a number of international conventions, agreements and instruments, such as the African Convention for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora –CITES; the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals; the World Charter for Nature; the ASEAN Agreement on the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources; and the Convention on Biological Diversity. Her real passion was the development of technical capacities through access to information on environmental law and policy. That is why already in the 1970s, she initiated the Environmental Law…

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Should Your Blog Be on Facebook?: The Nuts and Bolts of Fan Pages

food for thought noam noam noam! 🙂

Twins, Towers