Hypomnema

Researching schizophrenia has led me into the forest of Foucault. I'm seeing more and more research that indicates that Schizophrenia, at best, may be able to be described as a mis-diagnosis, given the extent of co-morbidity between the symptoms of schizophrenia and other mental health disorders. Possibly a disease somewhat 'invented' perhaps, with roots in Emil Kraepelin's petroleum company sponsored scientific investigation of his own invention. The symptoms are certainly wide reaching, auditory and visual hallucinations, delusions of grandeur or paranoia, possession of thought abnormalities, inappropriate or flat affect, inattention, alogia and apathy. On a good day, I can think of about five different areas of the brain that could be implicated, much less a whole bunch of diathesis-stress predisposing factors that would generate a short term presence of any of these.

Anyrate, Foucault. So one of Foucault's propositions that I really like is that so-called 'experts' (let's call them Gurus) in any field, are merely reifying their ego bounds in any diagnosis they care to make. That is to say, the power relationship that is created between the Guru and the patient means that the legitimisation of the knowledge (and practice) of the Guru become the relationship's container, which simultaneously discredits any challenging knowledges, in that very moment of diagnosis. For me that's important to keep in mind, not only in relation to psychology, but I think it has application to my investigation of the essence, not the trappings, of spirituality as well.

And the word in the title comes from Foucault, as I clicked through the Wikipedia path to 'The History of Sexuality' (now I'm definitely coming back to that) I found this definition:

'a reminder, a note, a public record, a commentary, a draft, a copy, and other variations on those terms'.

Foucault on Greek and Roman antiquity:

"In this period there was a culture of what could be called personal writing: taking notes on the reading, conversations, and reflections that one hears or engages in oneself; keeping kinds of notebooks on important subjects (what the Greeks call 'hupomenmata'), which must be reread from time to time so as to reactualize their contents."^[2] In an excerpt from an Interview with Michel Foucault in The Foucault Reader, he says: "As personal as they were, the hypomnemata must nevertheless not be taken for intimate diaries or for those accounts of spiritual experience (temptations, struggles, falls, and victories) which can be found in later Christian literature. [...] [T]heir objective is not to bring the arcana conscientiae to light, the confession of which—be it oral or written—has a purifying value."

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