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Analysis Of Andrew Marantz's Unreality Star

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A physician has an unenviable position. He is closest to man approaching a god-like stature and when that god stumbles, the consequences can be disastrous. This is even more so in the field of psychiatry where the fact that mental illness exists is not disputed, but the diagnoses and treatment is often suspect. However, despite the demise of 'doctor knows best ', we still need to trust a psychiatrist since diagnosis is based on a patient 's expressed thoughts and overt behaviours rather than solely on biological phenomena. This requires not only that the patient trust the doctor, but even before that, the doctor appreciates and understands the context of those behaviours; behaviours that are influenced by the patient 's environment. In his essay, "Unreality Star", Andrew Marantz agrees that while all mental illnesses have rules, " clinically recognized delusions conform to a familiar set of themes, including persecution, grandiosity and erotomania", however, he emphasizes the context may vary, "form is fixed, content is not". The essayist stresses the importance of this content when he quotes Joel Gold, a former attending psychiatrist at Belleview Hospital, “All productions of the mind have meaning. To disregard any content, no matter how psychotic it is, seems to me to be a miscarriage of what the discipline was founded on". This content is based on the environment of the patient-an interplay of his social, cultural and technological experiences. The International
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