Kierkegaard and Epilepsy

[Greg Shantz]

'The Intriguing Secret of the Machinery'

http://www.utas.edu.au/docs/humsoc/kier ... ilepsy.pdf

Greg

[kjones]

How ridiculous to think that there is more shame over having a nurse for a physical illness than for a spiritual illness!

This article belittles Kierkegaard's perspective of marriage, as if he would have married if he were in perfect physical health. It wasn't that he thought marriage was comical for physically unhealthy people!

[David Quinn]

An interesting article. It puts Kierkegaard's life in a different light. If the epilepsy thing is true, then it is difficult to know how much of it contributed to his decision not to marry Regina. It was probably of secondary concern, but helped tip the balance towards his spiritual rejection of it.

I love the language of the time:

Even though Kierkegaard was not much for sharing confidences, he saw it as his duty to seek advice from another person. "I therefore asked my physician whether he believed that the structural misrelation between the physical and the psychical could be dispelled so that I could realize the universal [by getting married].

It seems that, even back then, the erotic relationship was regarded as the supreme human act!

I am surprised that Kierkegaard felt it necessary to conceal his condition from the public. It seems he feared being an object of pity. This is certainly strange given that he spent his life writing about the spiritual imperative to abandon all worldly thinking.

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[Jamesh]

I generally just assumed that one's intelligent muse, or those situations in which a persons best ideas are constructed, is merely one of a shutting down distractions so as to allow intense concentration.

Concentration is the opposite of the manner in which we generally conceptualise it. It is not a power of the will, a form of deeper frontal lobe concentration and control, but a lessening of the influence of the frontal lobes ability to determine what happens next. The frontal lobe area becomes merely a calculator or CPU, rather than a CPU AND a motherboard. It becomes a matter of the subconscious becoming dominant in determining the data that needs to be sent to the frontal lobes, as a one-way analogue process rather than the normal "conscious" two-way digital interaction. The output becomes a sequenced stream of instructions, for example the mental impulses that create the program "write X, Y, Z", as opposed to what one could describe as a conversation between one's consciousness and unconsciousness.

Lol.. perhaps this is partly why, when we attempt to concentrate, we sometimes we tighten our brows. We try and deaden the area, by constricting it. We seek stillness in the area or non-action and then we try and focus.

For a lot of people, myself included, having to think is a form of necessary suffering. It is why I hate chess. From the perspective of evolution, this is somewhat interesting, why has this evolved? A safety guard against autism perhaps. Maybe our brains developed so much that we found we could spend most of our time within ourselves, and this was a disadvantage, rather than an advantage. Probably.

Our sensing of God IS a sensing this primary controlling subconscious. Other than physical emergencies, what else other than one's subconscious director could be more powerful to our consciousness, as a direct cause. Our actual conscious state is a tiny being of very limited power compared to this beast. Enlightened folk, schizoids, the deeply religious, and others allow it to gain permanent control, and in this manner they prevent one's consciousness from also seeking input information from emotional receptors/stimulators. Non-dualism essentially seems to mean to remove one's consciousness and just retain awareness, by removing the duality required as part of the control contest between the subconscious and the conscious mind.


Foresta Gump and others like her, as well as young potential geniuses, are generally folks that were caused to let the subconscious have consistently direct control when they were immature. Unfortunately she was never aware that it was a bad move to allow the subconscious to seek power via control and utilisation of the emotions. The subconscious has no logic processing areas of its own, it must send data to the CPU in order to calculate the value of new experiences, although values previously stored can be utilised, so it is not completely irrational, just very unreliable. For the QRS though, at the time the subconscious gained the upper hand, they had stored values in memory which directed the subconscious to not seek entertainment from emotions (and the subconscious needs a lot more entertainment than one's consciousness, which is why we have dreams).

[Kevin Solway]

'The Intriguing Secret of the Machinery'

http://www.utas.edu.au/docs/humsoc/kier ... ilepsy.pdf Greg

I personally find the argument for epilepsy unconvincing.

Kierkegaard had a number of health problems, discussed in the following paper:

http://www.stolaf.edu/collections/kierk ... /49004.htm

It seems he may have suffered from tuberculosis, among other things.

His poor physical health may well have factored into his decision not to become a priest, or to marry Regina, but it certainly wasn't the only reason.

As far as hypergraphia is concerned, this normally involves people writing vast quantities of meaningless, and sometimes illegible, stuff, with no real point, or consideration for the reader. It is often pure stream-of-consciousness material, and it is often completely fanciful.

While Kierkegaard wrote a lot, and sometimes obscurely, I don't believe he fits into this category. For the most part his writing tends towards extreme clarity, is tightly reasoned, and the conclusions follow very closely with the reasoning - often in the same sentence.

His "Banquet" for example, is very aphoristic in style.

[Matt Gregory]

What about the rest of "Stages", though? I tried to read it but it was so meandering I felt like he was just trying to fill up a book or something. At the end of it, he even bluntly stated that he didn't expect anyone to read the whole thing. That's a very strange book.

I find the epilepsy thing believable as a cause. I find it hard to imagine another reason why certain people take to God with such great intensity so early in life other than something that interferes with life on an ongoing basis. Epilepsy is a perfect explanation because it not only alters consciousness repeatedly, but back then there may have been no explanation for why it occurs, making it especially creepy and difficult to deal with. I wouldn't be surprised if Weininger had the same type of condition. He did write about epilepsy and he did seem to be describing some type of attack in "The Dog".

The fact that someone has epilepsy doesn't invalidate their conclusions about life (marriage, etc.) just as making a scientific discovery after a freak accident doesn't invalidate the discovery. The physical causes of a logical argument have nothing to do with the logic itself.

[David Quinn]

I personally find the epilepsy prognosis believeable. It is consistent with the troubles he had in keeping his mind in check and not allowing it to become too manic and creative. The fact that most people who suffer hypergraphia tend to write meaningless ramblings doesn't necessarily mean that Kierkegaard didn't suffer hypergraphia himself. It could have been the case that his high levels of rationality and his strong sense of purpose was able to transform the meaningless rambling into truthful, coherent prose.

On the other hand, it might well be that he had a pseudo-epileptic condition brought about by an over-worked and highly philosophical mind, rather than a real epileptic condition generating the intellectual mania. In other words, the authors of the article could be interpreting the matter the wrong way around.

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[Rhett]

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'The Intriguing Secret of the Machinery'

http://www.utas.edu.au/docs/humsoc/kier ... ilepsy.pdf

"And with reference to the last of the tales in the Thousand and One Nights, Kierkegaard remarked that "as Scheherezade saved her life by telling stories, I save my life or keep alive by being productive."


A pertinent point i say in respect to his writing.

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[Matt Gregory]

The other day I came across a passage about epilepsy written by Nietzsche, so maybe it was common for people to write about it back then or something. What is the significance of epilepsy? It's not that common is it? I don't think I've ever known anyone who has had it. Why would anyone feel the need to write about that disease in particular?

[Rhett]

.

The other day I came across a passage about epilepsy written by Nietzsche, so maybe it was common for people to write about it back then or something. What is the significance of epilepsy? It's not that common is it? I don't think I've ever known anyone who has had it. Why would anyone feel the need to write about that disease in particular?

Perhaps their interest corresponded with a phase of psychological investigations into it. I had a friend who had it, - i think my cousin had it during childhood, and have known of someone nearby having an attack.

The friend took drugs for it knowing there would be deleterious long-term side effects and that if he stopped taking the drugs or reduced his dosage the attacks would be more common and of greater intensity. I advised other approaches (resulting in a reduction of confusion and stress which were its main trigger), but he was too weak and kept taking the drugs. He tried various psychological approaches and could see they played a role in his incidence of attacks, but couldn't see that this showed the possibility for a solution.

He had a major seizure at one point during which he fractured his wrist, and it was somehow later determined by his doctor that he had lost something like 20-40% of his vocabulary. He then worked to regain it.

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[Diebert van Rhijn]

One further article about the subject containing different viewpoints on the matter of epilepsy and genius.

Epilepsy and genius

(...)

On the other hand, epileptic seizures have a power and symbolism which, historically, have suggested a relationship with creativity or unusual leadership abilities. Scholars have long been fascinated by evidence that prominent prophets and other holy men, political leaders, philosophers, and many who achieved great-ness in the arts and sciences, suffered from epilepsy.

Aristotle was apparently the first to connect epilepsy and genius. His catalogue of "great epileptics" (which included Socrates) was added to during the Renaissance. Only people from Western culture were included, however. So strong was this tradition that even in the nineteenth century, when new names of "great epileptics" were added, they were rarely chosen from among people in other parts of the world. Working from this biased historical legacy, the famous people with epilepsy that we know about are primarily white males.

But what about this so-called "epilepsy and genius" connection? Certainly, most people with epilepsy would not consider their seizure disorder as something which enhances their natural abilities. According to Dr. Jerome Engel, Professor of Neurology at the University of California School of Medicine and author of the book Seizures and Epilepsy:

"There is no evidence... that either epileptic seizures or a predisposition to epilepsy is capable of engendering exceptional talents. Rather, the occasional concurrence of epilepsy and genius most likely reflects the probability that a common disorder will at times afflict people with uncommon potential."

Dr. Engel considers the co-existence of epilepsy and genius to be a coincidence. Others disagree, claiming to have found an association between epilepsy and giftedness in some people. Eve LaPlante in her book Seized writes that the abnormal brain activity found in temporal lobe (complex partial) epilepsy plays a role in creative thinking and the making of art. Neuropsychologist Dr. Paul Spiers says:

"Sometimes the same things that cause epilepsy result in giftedness. If you damage an area [of the brain] early enough in life, the corresponding area on the other side has a chance to overdevelop."

We know that epilepsy involves temporary bursts of excessive electrical activity in different locations in the brain, locations which house our bodily sensations and functions as well as our memories and emotions. Psychiatrist Dr. David Bear states that the abnormal brain activity found in temporal lobe epilepsy can play a role in creative thinking and the making of art by uniting sensitivity, insight and sustained, critical attention. According to Dr. Bear:

"A temporal lobe focus in the superior individual may spark an extraordinary search for that entity we alternately call truth or beauty."

What is also clear in the discussion of genius and epilepsy is that some of the most famous people in history had seizures. People with epilepsy have excelled in every area. What follows is a list of people who are responsible for changing civilization as we know it, all of whom are strongly suspected or known to have had epilepsy. It's an impressive group.

Continued at Classical writers with epilepsy