A Discussion Paper: Disease of the thesis By Chris Fleming
by Roidah Ylagan
“Writing a thesis isn’t always smooth sailing: indeed there is an entirely legitimate place for anxiety, as it can inform us that something is wrong. It may or may not be the case that many geniuses are tortured – but we shout be hesitant to, as a logician might, affirm the consequent.” (Fleming, 2006). It is one the lines that struck me.
Thesis is an approach that is characterized by the depth of inquiry into topics and its extensive construction and evaluation of the agreements. Most would relate it to a kind of mental tic that keeps a researcher keep going that others may have lost their patience in going so. It is natural to be very frustrated with doing research but once you got a little training it would be easier to deal with it.
In the concept of fraud, there may projection which is intended to explain how much meaning can become reversed under the motion of stress and the reversal lead to delusional thinking. (Zuk, 2010). When somebody hides in fraud, everything that he may does may not really be who the person himself. It’s like hiding under a personality that can impress other people. This happens when you are confronted to a new environment. In can also be related with writing, since you have to impress the reader, you write on what you think can impress them not knowing you can’t do it.
Some people might spend their time reading books and other material when they become depressed. This helps them become relax and calm when handling stress. There is a study that was designed to test the view of depression from the effect upon effortful and not automatic aspect of reading. (Henderson, J. 1987). It showed that there are no relationships of depression to word recognition and word attack scores. That depression may not have an effect on how a person comprehends on the content of the book. But because of depression the person tends to gather as many books a possible that she/ he wanted to be pre-occupied with reading materials.Delirium is most often caused by physical or mental illness and is usually temporary and reversible and this may be associated with how a person writes a thesis. It is when a person it not sure of what is the point he wants to address and that’s the time he becomes confused of the topic. He begins to hallucinate things that make his cognitive thinking be impeded. Motion sickness is more on what a person perceives in his environment. If that person looks on things as if it is well organized when to others it isn’t. I may also appear on the thesis he is going to write, since it would reflect that his work not well organized. And when everything looks good to the eyes, there you would find that everything you worked on is all messed up. There comes the realization that you need to do it and start with it again.
A hypegraphia for instance is a driving compulsion or an urge to write. According to Flaherty, Alice (2004), it is an incurable disease of writing. It is when a person begins to write that person can’t stop from writing. They write on anything they find possible to write on. Writing is governed by the different regions of the brain. Cerebral cortex controls the physical movement of the hand. The drive to write is controlled by the limbic system that is deeply buried in the cortex which governs emotion, and said to regulate the human being’s need for communication. People with temporal lobe epilepsy have a higher tendency to develop hypergraphia than other individuals. As of current, hypergraphia is understood to be triggered by changes in brainwave activity in the temporal lobe. It is also associated with bipolar disorder. Manic and depressive episodes have been reported to intensify hypergraphia symptoms. Additionally schizophrenics and people with frontotemporal dementia can also experience a compulsive drive to write.
There have been a few other authors who wrote so much one might conjecture that they had an abnormal writing condition. Consider Frederick Faust who wrote over 530 books during his lifetime. Isaac Asimov, the science fiction writer, wrote over 400 books in his life; and Dame Barbara Cartland composed over 700 Romance. Georges Simenon wrote 136 regular novels and 84 mysteries; and Arthur J. Burks, a legend among pulp writers, wrote over a million and a half publishable words per year. The author of Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carrol also had written over 98,000 letters during his lifetime. On the other hand a block write is the opposite of the hypergraphia. Scholarly writing is often ridiculed in the media were criticism arises. (Giltrow, J., 2002). Those who have hypergraphia, drive to creativity are neglected thus it may lead them to more criticism.
Questions to think about:
1.Are there other factors that can contribute to how a person writes?
2.Will reading Chris Flemming's article, help a person become a better writer? how?
3.When one part of the disease is solved, does a person becomes a better writer? explain
Bibliography
1.Zuk, G. & Zuk, C. (2010). Freud’s theory of paranoid delusion based on the Schreber case contrasted with related theories [Abstract]. Contemporary Family Therapy, 17(2), 209-216. DOI: 10.1007/BF02252359
2.Henderson, J. (1987). Effects of depression upon reading: a case for distinguishing effortful from automatic processes [Abstract]. Percept Mot Skills. 64(1):191-200. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed
3.Flaherty, A. (2004). The midnight disease: The drive to write, writer’s block and the creative brain. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company.
4.Giltrow, J. (2002). Academic Writing: Writing and Reading in Disciple. Mississauga, Canada: Broadview Press.
5.Fleming, C. (2006). Diseases of the Thesis. Australian Universities Review, 48(2). Retrieved from http://tombammann.org/wp-content/uploads/2006/06/Disease_of_thesis.pdf
by Roidah Ylagan
“Writing a thesis isn’t always smooth sailing: indeed there is an entirely legitimate place for anxiety, as it can inform us that something is wrong. It may or may not be the case that many geniuses are tortured – but we shout be hesitant to, as a logician might, affirm the consequent.” (Fleming, 2006). It is one the lines that struck me.
Thesis is an approach that is characterized by the depth of inquiry into topics and its extensive construction and evaluation of the agreements. Most would relate it to a kind of mental tic that keeps a researcher keep going that others may have lost their patience in going so. It is natural to be very frustrated with doing research but once you got a little training it would be easier to deal with it.
In the concept of fraud, there may projection which is intended to explain how much meaning can become reversed under the motion of stress and the reversal lead to delusional thinking. (Zuk, 2010). When somebody hides in fraud, everything that he may does may not really be who the person himself. It’s like hiding under a personality that can impress other people. This happens when you are confronted to a new environment. In can also be related with writing, since you have to impress the reader, you write on what you think can impress them not knowing you can’t do it.
Some people might spend their time reading books and other material when they become depressed. This helps them become relax and calm when handling stress. There is a study that was designed to test the view of depression from the effect upon effortful and not automatic aspect of reading. (Henderson, J. 1987). It showed that there are no relationships of depression to word recognition and word attack scores. That depression may not have an effect on how a person comprehends on the content of the book. But because of depression the person tends to gather as many books a possible that she/ he wanted to be pre-occupied with reading materials.Delirium is most often caused by physical or mental illness and is usually temporary and reversible and this may be associated with how a person writes a thesis. It is when a person it not sure of what is the point he wants to address and that’s the time he becomes confused of the topic. He begins to hallucinate things that make his cognitive thinking be impeded. Motion sickness is more on what a person perceives in his environment. If that person looks on things as if it is well organized when to others it isn’t. I may also appear on the thesis he is going to write, since it would reflect that his work not well organized. And when everything looks good to the eyes, there you would find that everything you worked on is all messed up. There comes the realization that you need to do it and start with it again.
A hypegraphia for instance is a driving compulsion or an urge to write. According to Flaherty, Alice (2004), it is an incurable disease of writing. It is when a person begins to write that person can’t stop from writing. They write on anything they find possible to write on. Writing is governed by the different regions of the brain. Cerebral cortex controls the physical movement of the hand. The drive to write is controlled by the limbic system that is deeply buried in the cortex which governs emotion, and said to regulate the human being’s need for communication. People with temporal lobe epilepsy have a higher tendency to develop hypergraphia than other individuals. As of current, hypergraphia is understood to be triggered by changes in brainwave activity in the temporal lobe. It is also associated with bipolar disorder. Manic and depressive episodes have been reported to intensify hypergraphia symptoms. Additionally schizophrenics and people with frontotemporal dementia can also experience a compulsive drive to write.
There have been a few other authors who wrote so much one might conjecture that they had an abnormal writing condition. Consider Frederick Faust who wrote over 530 books during his lifetime. Isaac Asimov, the science fiction writer, wrote over 400 books in his life; and Dame Barbara Cartland composed over 700 Romance. Georges Simenon wrote 136 regular novels and 84 mysteries; and Arthur J. Burks, a legend among pulp writers, wrote over a million and a half publishable words per year. The author of Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carrol also had written over 98,000 letters during his lifetime. On the other hand a block write is the opposite of the hypergraphia. Scholarly writing is often ridiculed in the media were criticism arises. (Giltrow, J., 2002). Those who have hypergraphia, drive to creativity are neglected thus it may lead them to more criticism.
Questions to think about:
1.Are there other factors that can contribute to how a person writes?
2.Will reading Chris Flemming's article, help a person become a better writer? how?
3.When one part of the disease is solved, does a person becomes a better writer? explain
Bibliography
1.Zuk, G. & Zuk, C. (2010). Freud’s theory of paranoid delusion based on the Schreber case contrasted with related theories [Abstract]. Contemporary Family Therapy, 17(2), 209-216. DOI: 10.1007/BF02252359
2.Henderson, J. (1987). Effects of depression upon reading: a case for distinguishing effortful from automatic processes [Abstract]. Percept Mot Skills. 64(1):191-200. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed
3.Flaherty, A. (2004). The midnight disease: The drive to write, writer’s block and the creative brain. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company.
4.Giltrow, J. (2002). Academic Writing: Writing and Reading in Disciple. Mississauga, Canada: Broadview Press.
5.Fleming, C. (2006). Diseases of the Thesis. Australian Universities Review, 48(2). Retrieved from http://tombammann.org/wp-content/uploads/2006/06/Disease_of_thesis.pdf
Last edited by ylaganroidah on Wed 22 Sep 2010, 9:44 am; edited 1 time in total