MedWorm provides a medical RSS filtering service. Over 6000 RSS medical sources are combined and output via different filters. This feed contains the latest medical blog items that have been tagged with 'individuality'. Sat, 03 Sep 2011 03:30:24 +0100 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5139880&cid=t_216437_109_f&fid=34750&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpsychcentral.com%2Fblog%2Farchives%2F2011%2F08%2F16%2Fbest-of-our-blogs-august-16-2011%2F Our society has an unshakeable desire to be “normal.” Whatever normal means. In fact, I have forsaken my own truth at times, because the idea of being normal, problem-free, low-maintenance, unencumbered by illness or age seemed too attractive not to embrace. But the fact is whether you’re dealing with chronic pain, physical or mental illness, financial issues or weight gain, being free of life and all of its abnormalities is near impossible. Why are we trying to hide ourselves in an effort to be perfect and illness free? I realized this after seeing friends I hadn’t seen in a decade. While at first burdened that my life had veered too far from normal (in both my personal and professional choices), I finally had to laugh at myself. I realized that all this pressure t... World of Psychology blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5139880 Tue, 16 Aug 2011 11:37:01 +0100 5139880 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5078079&cid=t_216437_180_f&fid=38612&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2Fpickthebrain%2FLYVv%2F%7E3%2Fkg-ct-XPXBk%2F Males especially are particularly vulnerable when it comes to this subject matter. It has a lot to do with our male ego. What’s the first thing that males ask each other when they meet? ‘So what do you do?’ We then begin to respond with the job, the business, the project or whatever else we ‘do’ – and this is what defines us. Or that’s what we think. We may just as well ask… ‘So what do you make? (in dollars that is)  as if that is what also defines us. Personally, I would rather know ‘who you are’ than ‘what you do’. Why? In My Mid Twenties I Went Into Business In my mid twenties I went into business with a relative of mine and found myself in the position of a director of a multi-media company. However, as the years passed I discovered that the direction my rel... PickTheBrain | Motivation and Self Improvement blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5078079 Thu, 28 Jul 2011 08:54:11 +0100 5078079 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5028388&cid=t_216437_107_f&fid=34860&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.corporeality.net%2Fmuseion%2F2011%2F07%2F10%2Fcare-of-self-and-keeping-track-of-ones-identity%2F A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about neurophysiologist and Nobel Prize winner Ragnar Granit’s essay on the distinction between discovery and understanding as two separate modes of scientific work, which, he suggested, are differentially distributed throughout a scientist’s life-course — young researchers are impatient to discover something new, whereas older scientists are more interested in getting insight, he suggested. Even more interesting, in my view, is Granit’s thoughts about how researchers ‘keep track’ and ‘take care’ of their identity in order to achieve understanding and insight: By “keeping track of one’s identity” I mean cultivating the talents of listening to the workings of one’s own mind, separat... Biomedicine on Display blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5028388 Sun, 10 Jul 2011 21:25:45 +0100 5028388 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4992743&cid=t_216437_107_f&fid=34860&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.corporeality.net%2Fmuseion%2F2011%2F07%2F01%2Fhouse-wrapped-in-dolls-hair-artist-meta-comment-on-entire-museum%2F Just saw this on Danny’s blog. Artist meta-comment on entire museum:  The former London home of Sigmund and Anna Freud, now the Freud Museum, is enveloped in a cats cradle of rope made of dolls’ hair. Standing as it does on a prosperous suburban street of imposing redbrick villas, the bound house looks like a scene from a dream itself, a dream of home denied. Such dreams are typically untangled on a therapeutic descendant of the very couch that sits inside the museum; the fairytale Rapunzel tress-ropes also suggest the kind of psychological decoding of myth and culture that Freud indulged in. It’s interesting how an entire exhibition can transform and be experienced in a whole new way through one persons art-work derived from subjective associations. She hasn’t changed... Biomedicine on Display blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4992743 Fri, 01 Jul 2011 08:38:09 +0100 4992743 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4952930&cid=t_216437_107_f&fid=34860&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.corporeality.net%2Fmuseion%2F2011%2F06%2F18%2Fimpatient-discovery-vs-mature-understanding-revisiting-ragnar-granits-view-of-the-goal-of-scientific-work%2F Prompted by a recent guest blog post on the Scientific American site, I’ve just revisited an almost 40 year old essay titled “Discovery and understanding” by the Finland-Swedish neurophysiologist and Nobel Prize Winner Ragnar Granit. Growing out of a talk (see video here) that Granit gave at the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in 1972, the essay was published in the Annual Review of Physiology later the same year. I remember dimly having read it when I was a PhD student a few years after it was published, but apparently I didn’t really appreciate it then — and didn’t understand the deeper significance of the message either. But now I think I’ve got it. And it’s quite interesting for discussions about the culture of sc... Biomedicine on Display blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4952930 Sat, 18 Jun 2011 20:22:49 +0100 4952930 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4580943&cid=t_216437_107_f&fid=34860&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.corporeality.net%2Fmuseion%2F2011%2F03%2F13%2Fthe-material-basis-of-a-unified-self%2F My old interest in biomedical identity, individuality and personality was stimulated by an opinion piece on Buddhism and the brain by physician David Weisman in last week’s online Seed. Weisman discusses the apparent similarities between some of Buddhism’s core ideas and the alleged findings of neurology and neuroscience with respect to the non-existence of a unified ‘self’. On this convergent view, the ‘self’ is fragmented and impermanent; what ’exist’ are constantly changing emotions, perceptions and thoughts. The idea of a permanent, constant ‘self’ behind it is an illusion. It struck me that this is not an uncommon view among humanities and social science scholars today. And that several influential Western philosophe... Biomedicine on Display blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4580943 Sun, 13 Mar 2011 18:22:57 +0100 4580943 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4525046&cid=t_216437_107_f&fid=34860&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.corporeality.net%2Fmuseion%2F2011%2F02%2F26%2Fnew-web-technologies-of-biomedical-self-presentation%2F Like biography, autobiography has always been an important genre for science communication — like Francis Crick’s autobiography What Mad Pursuit (1988). A couple of decades ago, only a tiny scientific elite had, in practice, access to present themselves autobiographically in the form of book-length memoirs and interviews in newspaper and magazines. Science communication through self-presentation was thus largely restricted to famous life scientists, medical doctors and their famous patients. Now, thanks to the web, and especially social web technologies, public self-presentation has become an opportunity for the global biotechnoscientific multitude. Medical and nursing students, life science PhD students, and all kinds of ordinary patients are blogging, facebooking and t... Biomedicine on Display blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4525046 Sat, 26 Feb 2011 14:08:29 +0100 4525046 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3831354&cid=t_216437_87_f&fid=39187&url=http%3A%2F%2Fgetbetterhealth.com%2Fis-that-er-doctor-packin-a-smartphone-or-a-revolver%2F2010.08.06 I have a new “smartphone.” It’s a Droid from Verizon. Pretty cool. I like what it can do, though it tends to enable me tendency to chronically check my email. I like the features, between ease of texting, voice dialing, etc.  But it’s big, compared to me dear departed flipphone, whose corpse lies in state in my pickup truck. But I noticed one day, as I reached around my side, that the large phone now on my hip felt remarkably like my revolver. Odd feeling that. I was in public and I remember panicking, wondering if I had forgotten to conceal my concealed weapon for some reason. And as I pondered this, I realized that both represent fundamental differences in the way we view individuality. Maybe it’s a stretch, but I’m a writer so I’m supposed to stretch. (more... Better Health blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3831354 Fri, 06 Aug 2010 19:00:05 +0100 3831354 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2286206&cid=t_216437_107_f&fid=34860&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.corporeality.net%2Fmuseion%2F2009%2F03%2F23%2Fa-personal-turn-in-biomedical-studies%2F Studies of biomedicine (a subarea of science studies) has long been defined in terms of social studies of biomedicine (social studies of science). Over the years, some, but alas not many, scholars (including myself) have tried to infuse some awareness of the individual and personal dimensions of biomedicine. Now, an interdisciplinary conference titled ‘Turning Personal’ at the University of Manchester, 16-17 September, promises to take the discussion a step forward by providing a forum for the discussion of how social research can incorporate more complex and multi-layered accounts of personal lives into academic writings and analyses: It has been argued that we now have a sociology without real people and the same may be said of some sister disciplines and although there h... Biomedicine on Display blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2286206 Mon, 23 Mar 2009 19:51:28 +0100 2286206 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2021452&cid=t_216437_133_f&fid=35082&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.gbrettmiller.com%2Ftake-me-as-i-am%2F I wrote recently about the Dream Theater song “Solitary Shell” and how it brought to mind the impressions many people have of autistic individuals.  Tonight I popped in Dream Theater - Live at Budokan to help get the creative juices flowing.  The first song in their set list for this show is a song called “As I Am”, an excellent opening. Anyway….  I’m pretty confident that this song wasn’t written with autism in mind, but the message the writer is trying to get across - that he is a unique individual and should be accepted as that - reminds me of what many of my autistic friends ask for.   (Like most poetry, this is best appreciated in spoken, or in this case, sung form.   Just imagine a driving guitar, bass and pounding drums as you read th... 29 Marbles blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2021452 Mon, 08 Dec 2008 05:55:36 +0100 2021452