At 07:43 2-4-98 -0500, Linda wrote:

snip
>To all listmembers,
>
>     Since posting the abstracts on personality a few days ago,
>there has been a lot of discussion on the list about this
>subject. Certainly, debate is a good thing, and many of the
>responses I received were thoughtful and eloquent, but a few
>(not many,but some) were quite angry and seemed to be personally
>directed against me. So I'd like to say a few more things. (If
>this isn't risk-taking behavior, I don't know what is!)
>
>     First of all - I did not write these articles;

snip

Dear Linda and others,

To get angry reactions after writing about a subject that seemed to be
"neutral" and not risky at all is a confusing experience that may happen to
everyone who lives in a multi-cultural society ( for example this list) and
 which only can be avoided  by keeping our mouth shut and  our  thoughts
into our heads.
The subject we talk about may have for some people a history, that others
are unaware of. Our reactions on things we read are not only determined  by
the text as it is, but by the history determined association it evokes in us.
So to understand those reactions one has to search that history. It makes
sense to give this some attention, because being more conscious ofone's own
associations might prevent much misunderstanding. The following says what
associations do come to my mind, when reading  about Parkinson and
personality. I intend to show, telling this, that about this subject much
irritation provoking nonsense is told.
The idea that illness is not as capricious as the lottery and we don't have
all the same chance developing one is attractive for  healthy people, yet
more attractive is the idea that we are able to influence that chance

and that being healthy is not just luck, but our own merit. The confusing
thing about these ideas is that they are not completely untrue. Of course
we have some influence on some chances.
 A woman, who had  been a secretary in a outpatient centre for rheuma told
me once, she was shocked about the casualness in the talking of much
patients about other patients with more severe symptoms than they had
themselves, blaming them for that and considering their own lesser symptoms
as being their merit. Each time I learned somebody had been cured of cancer
and said he owed this totally  to his strong  wish to stay alive, I did
feel pain for people who, to my conviction, had the same wish, not less
strong, but who died nevertheless.  I suppose we all have at least once
felt the uneasiness of being confronted  with someone who talked about an
uncle or neigbour etc. who was a PWP too, but  who was in a so much better
shape, just because he fought it and worked so hard, that he had no time to
develop more symptoms or something like that.
 Yet it is worse when to this ideas the Freudian way of thinking about
motivation is added. To his opinion all behavior, whether we know it or
not, is motivated. So now it is not only the lack of willpower or the lack
of wish to live that causes serious illness, but the disease is wanted
positively by the patient.
He wants it to attrack attention or to punish himself or to be able to
dominate his partner, or to get rid of responsibilities.It is clear that
believing this, is not believing in the usefullness of the Udall money and
to do research to find a cure.
From a personal communication I have been told many years ago the following
opinion on PD : "PWP's main symptom is that they can not express emotions,
so to do that nevertheless they develop a tremor.It is counterproductive to
 try to help them to get rid of the tremor, because than a more harmfull
way may be found to express themselves".
This was said in the early sixties , and the professor who said it rejected
any   remark about the possibility the tremor was a symptom of some
neurological damage as being grossly naive.
This all may seem to have hardly any relation with the article Linda
referred to, which posed in fact another question, not about  the
personality of people who in the future would develop Parkinson, but about
early symptoms and the influence of  a diminished dopamine level, which
exists many years before Parkinson is manifest.  I can not find any
reasonable objection against studying the influence of low dopamine levels
on behavior. But interpretating the outcome, I would have in mind the
danger of confusing visible symptoms with personality traits.

Ida Kamphuis

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Vriendelijke Groeten / Kind regards,

Ida Kamphuis                            mailto: [log in to unmask]