Wednesday 25 September 2013

Quest 2, "What Is Abnormal?", Discussion. 4: the disordered famous

In exercise C following the general interest reading "What Is Abnormal?", Quest asks us to discuss this question, which is number 4 of 5:
  • Do you know of any famous people who suffered from a psychological disorder? If so, who were they? Do you know what disorder they had?  (Hartmann, 2007, p. 176)
Write your response to this question in a comment below. 
If you like, you can also reply to a classmate's previous comment. 

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Reference
Hartmann, P. (2007). Quest 2 Reading and Writing (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

8 comments:

  1. The famous people that I know is the singer whose name is Karen Carpenter. She is a pop singer in 70s. She is the lead vocal of the band "Carpenters" that was very successful and become the signature of the 70s. Sadly, she was refuse to eat and thought she was very fat although she was very thin. She is anorexia nervosa.

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    Replies
    1. Noina has given an excellent example of someone whose psychological disorder was so serious it led to death at a young age.

      And on the topic of anorexia nervosa, I saw a report in Scientific American today that you might find interesting as another example of how important it is to have a correct and useful definition of a term, for which reason the author of "What Is Abnormal?" needed three paragraphs to define the term abnormality before he could apply it to the specific disorders discussed in the third part of that reading (Hartmann, 2007, pp. 173 - 175).

      In "Expanded Clinical Definition of Anorexia May Help More Teens" (2013), Tara Haelle reports that the American Psychological Association has changed their definition of anorexia nervosa from the one given by Hartmann in "Culture and Mental Illness" (2007, p. 167) to one that focusses more on the strictly behavioural aspects of this mental disorder, rather than the possible physical symptoms.

      References

      Haelle, T. (2013m September 25), Expanded clinical definition of anorexia may help more teens. Scientific American. Retrieved September 25, 2013 from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=expanded-clinical-definition-of-anorexia-may-help-more-teens

      Hartmann, P. (2007). Quest 2 Reading and Writing (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

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  2. There are many famous people who suffered from a psychological disorder. I recognizes one famous women. She is Diana, princess of Wales. It was a famous news that she very awared about her weight. She refuse to eat and that make her look too skinny. That cause the rumors all over the world that she got an anorexia. This kind of disorder can found over the world. Especially, in the country that believed women should be skinny to look great.

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  3. I known one famous person who suffered from disorder, Vincent van Goh. He was great artist who painted starry night. He has bipolar disorder which is psychological problem about swings between high and low. He has long sad period in his emotion.

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    1. Thanks Bass. I couldn't remember while I was writing my comment what his disorder actually was, but bipolar disorder sounds right.
      I wonder if he would have been such a great painter without that disorder?

      Picasso had no disorders that I know of, and was perhaps the greatest artist of the last century, but somehow Vincent's madness seems an integral part of his art. But I'm certainly no expert on art.

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  4. The first famous person with a psychological problem that came to my mind was the painter Vincent van Gogh, who is the artist whose painting is the image on page 165, the one that you have all been writing out the past week. Van Gogh had some serious mental disorders, and was actually a patient at the hospital when he painted the image on page 165. I can't remember the name - Hospital Ward at Arles? That might be it, but I need to check.

    He had cut off one of his ears, and his brother put him in the hospital, but the treatment didn't work, and he committed suicide shortly after. He also seems to have displayed withdrawal, and had problems interacting with other people. He was, nonetheless, a great painter, with a very distinctive style. As Hartmann suggests in the reading "Looking at Art: What's the Story?" (p. 73), some knowledge about when, how, by whom and why a work of art was created can deepen our appreciation of that work of art. And in the case of the painting on page 165, it supports the choice of this image to introduce chapter 6 "Abnormal Psychology".

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  5. I don't know a lot about this question but I think,most of female movie stars usual confuse about her eating. it may clause by the culture. nowadays, most of people in the world think that slim body is more attractive obese body.So, a lot of female movie star try to lose her weight but sometime, it become a disorder.

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    Replies
    1. And what sort of bodies are considered attractive for men? Do they have eating or other related disorders as a result?

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