A 1970’s professor hopes sex will reduce depression.
Dr. T.J. Dillion, Ph.D., a hardnosed Experimental Psychologists, questions the validity of research done by clinical psychology in support of ‘talk’ therapy for depression. He delves into the literature from the National Library of Medicine (MEDLINE) to the “Pop” psychology journals where opinion trumps evidence. He attempts to parse the roots of The Mind and Body concept from early philosophers— i.e., Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, et al. from Augustinian Christian dogma. We leap forward to the 1200s to the era of Roger Bacon who espoused the use of Aristotelian empiricism in the study of just about everything; no authority, no belief, no theory, no theology, could replace what we can see or hear. He rejected rationalism that said that truth is not what we see or hear but is intellectual and deductive, and he perceived it to be based on words. About 100 years later Alfred Korzybski argued that human knowledge is limited both by the human nervous system and languages humans have developed, giving only abstract connections between the observed and the ‘documentation’ of that observation, therefore assuring no direct access to reality. He summated this relationship as “The word is not the Thing.” Augustinian theodicy uniquely defined the boundaries of mainstream religion up until Martin Luther published his Ninety-five Theses. The after-birth of the Reformation morphed into a Hodge podge of cultish religious organization that influenced moral guidance for years to come. One of these churches shaped the morals of our main character who is fascinated with sex and suffers depression. He has entered the seventies as a professor and finds sex aplenty for the taking.
He cogitates and copulates his way through a thesis on the validity of psychological therapies. His findings are not earth shattering but worthy of attention.
