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SOLITUDE, INTIMACY AND MENTAL HEALTH

--The intrapersonal and interpersonal dialogue within and without us --

Divided Minds: Twin Sisters and Their Journey Through Schizophrenia by Pamela Spiro Wagner and Carolyn S. Spiro, M.D., St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2005

The relationship one has with oneself is not only of personal interest but an important determinant of mental health.  It is this relationship that can make or break persons, or that can render them successful, well-balanced individuals or unstable and unhappy shadows of the persons that they could have become at their full potential.  One would think that this very important, personal bond human beings share internally could only be affected by one’s own self.  But a great deal of human behavior is socially constructed and a large percentage of those social constructs are created to control and survive social situations.

A February 2008 internet posting1 in the New York Times online included a brief talk by Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist working in the “mind lab” at Harvard University’s Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Taylor recalls in vivid detail what she consciously experienced during a stroke brought about by a hemorrhage in her left brain hemisphere. She had, according to the Times, a “front-row seat on the deterioration of the brain”.2

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