Re: VMs: Yet another weird hypothesis ...

[Dennis <tsalagi@xxxxxxxx>]

	Very interesting indeed!  I had read about
temporal-lobe epilepsy before 
in a more serious context; a New Orleans conference in,
I think, 2002, had a 
paper on how people with temporal-lobe epilepsy have
frequent mystical 
experiences.  I had never heard about hypergraphy,
though.  

	As I've said before, assuming the VMs author had some
sort of 
psychiatric disorder doesn't tell us a whole lot, since
although those 
people's art is stranger in content, it isn't otherwise
different from 
the art of 'normal' people - 'normal' people don't
produce art, after all.

Dennis

PK#01 wrote:
> 
> In Elmar. R Gruber "Psychic Wars, Parapsychology in Espionage and Beyond" -
> quite a fun book to read (note 1) - op page 198 I came across this:
> 
> In a clinical context, the temoral lobes first became known through what is
> known as the temporal lobe syndrome. The first person to describe it was
> Norman Geschwind of Harvard Medical School (note 2). It is caused by
> injuries (lesions) to the lobes and expresses itself in a reinforcement of
> religious certainties, a compulsion to write (hypergraphy) and the practice
> of bizarre sexual habits. The actual religious belief held is of no
> importance; the syndrome makes the person receptive to any sort of religious
> teaching, which often vaccilate within quite short periods of time (note 3).
> 
> Now - is that a profile of our man or not? If we follow the "sick mind"
> hypothesis of the VMS this certainly supports it :-)
> 
> Note 1 is mine, notes 2-4 are from the book:
> 
> (note 1) -  No I'm not a weirdo, I just read this for it's amusement value
> and don't really care whether it is true or not. I always enjoy a good
> story, true or not (for example Pynchon).
> 
> (note 2) - Norman Geschwind, Behavioural Change in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy',
> in Psychological Medicine, 9, 1979, pp. 217-19
> 
> (note 3) - Anthropological studies provide some indications that shamans,
> indigenous healers and participants in posession cults experience unusual
> electrical discharges in the temporal lobes, see Michael J. Winkelman,
> Shamans, Priests and Witches: A cross-cultural study of macro-religious
> practitioners, Arizona State University, Tempe 1992
> 
> (note 4) - Michael A. Persinger, Religious and Mystical Experiences as
> Artifacts on Temporal Lobe Function: A General Hypothesis, in Perceptual and
> Motor Skills, 57, 1983, pp. 1255-62
> 
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