By K. Peil – See all my reviews on Amazon
A bigger contribution than he may suspect
This review is from: The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg: Accutane – the truth that had to be told (Paperback)
Dr. Doug Bremner may have made a much larger contribution to the field of psychiatry than he suspects. In this raw, honest, prescient pager-turner, he has confronted (both personally and professionally) the major mistake of the modern enlightenment: The Cartesian division between mind and body, and the privileging of reason over emotion. Indeed, his experience can shake any remaining Freudian flapdoodle from the reader’s mind, notions of the dark dangers of emotion, animalistic if not evil unconscious forces to be suppressively controlled by the rational mind. This misassumption is so deeply rooted in our cultural psyche that the entire enterprise of psychiatry itself has been shaped by it, with surgical, electrical, and now pharmacological solutions that seek to suppress – rather than truly understand – emotional processes, a suppression as effective as the politically correct emotional muzzle of his upbringing.
But as his story so poignantly illustrates, the Cartesian divide also severed two aspects of the human psyche, the Jungian anima and the animus, an archetypal dualism perhaps now more accurately reflected in the hemispheric lateralization of the brain. The divide has left us all half-witted, devoid of emotional sensory awareness and it gifts of evaluative, meaningfully moral – indeed spiritual – guidance. But once you’ve ridden the wind atop the Douglas firs of the Fishtrap, there is no turning down the volume of the resonant rhythms of nature, no denying the powerful feelings that bristle our flesh, tingle our bones, and sweep to the very marrow of identity itself. Nor should there be, as it is vital to our very animate existence. His mother, the lovely, multidimensional Laurnell, was the lost voice, his missing aminus, whispering within the windswept rustle of verdant branches, calling him to unity as a fully integrated human being, able to look squarely and courageously at the truth, however painful, to honor it, and to speak it – rather than deny that the Emperor, however powerful, comfy, and socially lofty his stylish shoes, is buck naked.
We need more heroes like Doug, more Davids to Goliaths such as big pharma, false values, vapid materialism, Machiavellian artifice, and social injustice; more beacons for liberty, honesty, emotional integrity, personal empowerment, humanitarian compassion, and spiritual reunification. I hope his story is shared far and wide. My only regret is that Dan Brown had not read The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg before writing The DiVinci Code. Otherwise, he may have had a much more sweeping, spiritually enlightened, and biologically grounded take on the true reclaiming of the “sacred feminine”.
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