Lao Tzu And Mental Disease

 

Dear Elaine,

Thanks for your email.

The writings ascribed to Lao Tzu are superb -- about 3000 words, spread over 81 short poems, many of which are admired for their insightful paradoxes, including: "The profoundest truths are paradoxical." 

Notably, Jesus and G.K. Chesterton are frequent sources of paradoxical observation... for example: "The first shall be last and the last first."

Since there was no way to know the following facts in pre-scientific cultures -- and Lao Tzu lived around 500 B.C. -- I must alo note that very often "depression" and "anxiety" are "built into" one's body, almost certainly upon a genetic foundation. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/common-genetic-factors-found-5-mental-disorders

In this regard, many (if not most) mental diseases are analogous to Down's Syndrome or Cystic Fibrosis - physical diseases arising from genetic anomalies https://www.medicinenet.com/genetic_disease/article.htm

It may be that mental disease can be favorably modified by "talk therapy" and "attitudinal shifts." 

But many psychological diseases are biochemical disorders in need of biochemical modification, chiefly mediated by pharmaceutical drugs.

To expect "exhortation" to end serious, chronic psychological disorders is like epecting "exhortation" to change a conservative's mind or a liberal's mind.

When human characteristics are hard-wired in the tissues of one's body, expecting change is like expecting a heterosexual to become a homosexual by choice - or by "conversion" therapy.

Don't hold your breath. And don't bet the farm.

Pax tecum

Alan

On Tue, Aug 3, 2021 at 11:35 AM EK wrote:

"If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. if you are at peace, you are living in the present."
— Lao Tzu (From The Epoch Times)

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EK