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this is a very interesting and extremely helpful group and i have enjoyed reading the many threads of disscussion. i wish to share some thoughts concerning parkinsons which may seem more suited to a psychological-academic oriented listserv, but i feel others may find my thoughts, if not directly helpful, at least interesting. since i haven't posted in a while, i will briefly re-introduce myself. i am a 27yr old ph.d. student in depth psychology at pacifica graduate institute in carpinteria, california. my previous degrees are: b.a. and m.a. in history, and masters of humanities in humanities. i have parkinson's disease, currently affecting my left side. while difficult to manage, it has also opened many avenues of creativity and scholarly pursuits. i view my condition from a psycho-mythical perspective as well as bio-chemical. i believe it to be very important to be in touch with what archetype is touching you via the illness; as jungian scholar james hillman says: "the gods have become our [modernity's] diseases". i recently wrote a paper titled: "trembling and dreaming with the divine: a personal voyage of archetypal illness" in which i identified a psycho-mythical metaphor for parkinson's. bio-chemically speaking, parkinson's disease is the body's (the brain's) inability to produce neuro-chemical messengers called dopamene. psycho-mythically speaking, parkinson's is a wonded hermes, the divine messenger. i belive personally that one main reason why i manifest parkinson's is, being very sensitive to the external environment and internal self, i extert tremendous psychic energy trying to hear the subtle messages of psyche through the artificial techno-noise of the modern world. hermes, and other archetypes, have difficulty reaching us today. the only path open for them to travel is what i call the "medusian labyrinth of modernity". it is through this labyrinth that psychological wounds travel, sometimes manifesting as bodily symptoms, as in my case. the only way hermes could soulfully touch my psyche was to travel this labyrinth and transfer the wound to me, manifest his messages bodily. i apologize for the length of this, but this is a big part of who i am, thus i feel it belongs in a re-intro of myself. i look foreward to future helpful and stimulating discussions on this group. sincerely, jeffrey romanyshyn ([log in to unmask])