[lbo-talk] Thanks, All

[ravi]

On 16 Jul, 2007, at 18:40 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> Even within the depression support group, where _everyone_ (except
> family & friends present) has experienced depression in one form or
> another, we are careful not to claim we know how another person  
> feels --
> it can be insulting. Do you feel as though someone has dumped a  
> quart of
> Karo Syrup over your brain? Do you feel a pressure on every cell in  
> your
> body just below the pain threshold? Try to enter a busy department
> store. If you don't turn and run, you don't know how someone who has
> experienced a panic attack feels, and shouldn't try to guess.
>

While most of the rest of your post draws a legitimate contrast  
between clinical depression and anguish etc caused by events, the  
above, and the idea that someone can physically assault another  
person for potentially misguided sympathy is a bit ridiculous. The  
reaction that one experiences to sympathy is itself a general (and  
perhaps cultural) issue and is not necessarily tied to the condition  
regarding which sympathy is expressed. It is a peculiarly modern  
notion, I believe, that such expressions of sympathy are interpreted/ 
perceived not in their symbolic sense but in a literal sense that  
should invoke hostility. Such expressions are insulting only if one  
chooses to privilege one's own suffering above that of others  
(whatever be their respective causes) or is particularly pedantic in  
parsing the syntax and ignoring the emotional content.

	--ravi