Reading an Iraqi Newspaper (14th October 2013)
Reading an issue of an Iraqi newspaper is good reflection on what is happening in Iraq these days. I do not care much about the political news but on the columns written by Iraqi individuals about their lives. Here is a reading in today’s issue of Azzaman Arabic Daily Newspaper.Hadi Abbas Hussein from Baghdad wrote a short story entitled “Tiring Delusions” about an Iraqi father who lives in a rented apartment with his two married sons. The father always had dreams about leaving Iraq. Recently he decided to go to Georgia. He told two of his friends about the idea and they asked him to do them a favor in going to Georg...
Source: psychiatry for all - October 14, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
The Somnambulistic and the Sun
She stands before you naked you can see it, you can taste it, and she comes to you light as the breeze. Now you can drink it or you can nurse it, it don't matter how you worship as long as you're down on your knees. He woke up that day feeling numb and while he was taking on his clothes he started regurgitating his dream as a phlegmatic breakfast. He went walking for work feeling dazed with a constant hiss in his ears. While he was walking he noticed that the sun is facing him so he decided to keep "staring at the sun" till somebody looking like Robin Williams appeared and said "hi". The&...
Source: psychiatry for all - September 27, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
The Falling Leaves of Arabic Communism
The papers of both novels started to come in my hands as I turn them and the two books ended like trees in autumn, devoid of their fallen yellow leaves. The first novel was bought from Algeria, the second form Iraq. Both about a life of a communist. Both written by a communist. An ex-communist?Both main characters are ill. In the Algerian novel he had paranoid delusions and spending the time in a mental hospital, the Iraqi novel he had paraplegia, spending the time in a wheelchair. Both are men who are taken care by a European woman. Selene, the French, takes care of the Algerian anonymous protagonist, and Maria, that nurs...
Source: psychiatry for all - September 8, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
The Circle of Zero
On of the worst things of living in a country like mine, Iraq, is that there is no liberty of thinking. Since childhood and we were being trained about what is permitted to think about, about what is permitted to write and read. Liberty to read whatever you like was actually present since there is nothing available to read only after it passes through the filters of censorship: governmental, religious, and social. Before 2003 I didn't know about Iraq history. And this is bad because you get hold of the continuity of what you are living in.After 2003 every former Iraqi politician that was regarded by Saddam's regime as bad,...
Source: psychiatry for all - September 5, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Reading Iraqi Newspapers
An article published last Thursday named Plastic Palms in an Iraqi newspaper named Al-Aalem Al-Jadeed (= The New World) talks about those ugly plastic palms that the government had bought from outside of Iraq to decorate Iraqi streets. What breaks the heart is that those palms are not only ugly but their price is triple the price of real palms that the Iraqi farmer are ready to provide.Another article in the same newspaper published last Sunday named Twereej Tobacco talks about an old story from the city of Twereej, the city of origin of the current Iraqi prime minster. The story says that on each side of the river that pa...
Source: psychiatry for all - August 26, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Slipping by the Rye
I became aware since some time that I like the same kind of novels, the novels in which the main character is young, actually is a teenager like in "The Cather in the Rye" & "Les chercheurs d'os" or even a child like in "To Kill a Mockingbird" & "Le petit prince". Thanks to the wikipedia I knew that those kind of novels got a name in literary criticism and that is Bildungsroman, or more simply "Coming-of-age novels".I remembered Eric Erikson's stages of development, particularly the two stages:1. Identity Vs. Role confusion that occurs between 12 and 18, and2. Intimacy Vs. Isolation that occurs between 18 and 35 ye...
Source: psychiatry for all - August 18, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Free Association (4 Jun 2013)
It is 1:29 p.m. and my French exam is at 3:00 p.m. and I am just waiting for the time. Yesterday I read something interesting about the necessity of being active and having healthy habits. About how lethargy and fatigue can be a way of living and how it is important to combat depression by activating the self. I remembered Regis Debray diaries written from the prison in South America and that phrase that says that all human misfortunes are caused from being unable to combat boredom when we are alone in our room.Yes, boredom when we are alone in our room. I understand that so well. Yesterday I read Russell. I liked him so m...
Source: psychiatry for all - June 24, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Free Association (Part 1/2013)
Yesterday I had some free time at the evening and I decided to watch that French film DVD "Un Ete Brulant" (=a hot summer". As usually in front of almost all French films I was taken by the music and the photography and the way of direction. But the story was so silly. I knew that the story was so silly after it ended. There is nothing. What surprised me that one of the characters who doesn't have a work was supposed to be a communist. We know that almost at the end of the film. I remembered how once I was talking to a man in a bus and he told me that the Iraqi communists are contradictory if we compare the way they live w...
Source: psychiatry for all - June 23, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
The Catcher in the Rye
I passed more than half of the novel yet didn't understand the significance of the title. I started to hurry up the reading and some words started to be missed. I liked Phoebe much, so when she appears in the papers I slow down and here comes the lines where the word RYE appears again and CATCHER too:"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around-nobody big, I mean-except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff-I mean if they're runn...
Source: psychiatry for all - June 22, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Contemporary Iraqi Conversations
"In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice: "Always try to see the good in people!" he would say. As a consequence I reclined to reserve all judgments. Even I have a limit." With these words the new version of "The Great Gatsby" starts with Carraway's voice narrating his memories while he is a resident in a psychiatric ward.I was in bus going to work when we passed by that city south of Baghdad named Alexandria, a city Alexander the Great had passed in once. I asked the man sitting next to me about the prices of rent of apartments in this city. He answered tha...
Source: psychiatry for all - June 20, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Deja vu for deja vus
A colleague told me once that in one of the Iraqi board exams a question was difficult and it says: (Discuss the statement: “A delusion is a delusion even if proved to be true”). This phrase was taken from Fish’s psychopathology if I was not wrong. I am not writing here to discuss this statement but I am writing since I am much hurt by the misunderstanding that veils psychiatry. The film starts with his waking up from a dream in which he sees a crime: “two men fighting on the beach of Deauville till death while a third man watching.” He wakes up and goes to the bathroom. He is frightened to see a beautiful lady w...
Source: psychiatry for all - June 15, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Between Biyouna and Fanon, I ate Sardine
Yesterday I took lunch again in that restaurant which seemed to be attained only by manual workers. I bought a can of sardine and yogurt and ate them with the sauce of potato and rice. Celery and onion was added too. I was so hungry. It was about 3:00 p.m. At the lodging I had access finally at TV5 and, to my surprise, the first thing to watch was Biyouna acting in another funny movie. She is a typical Algerian woman. In a scene that made me laugh she asked the mirror: "Mirror, my mirror, tell me who is the most beautiful woman in the world." And at the bakery she asked the man if...
Source: psychiatry for all - May 22, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Diary of an Iraqi Cosmopolitan Citizen
"As Syria descends deeper into chaos, knives are being sharpened and battle lines being drawn in Iraq." says an article last December in Foreign Policy.That was an enough dose of "foreign" policy to me so I switched the internet navigation to more "internal" affairs of this big world and the best story that appealed to me was Depardieu's. The french actor Gerard Depardieu, says an article, was granted the Russian nationality and passport. Depardieu wanted to get rid of the high taxes for the high salaries in France. As an Iraqi, living in Baghdad, I understand him!They say that chronic stress can cause, among oth...
Source: psychiatry for all - January 3, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Eclipse of the Memory
What is the benefit of reading poetry for example? And to make the question more answerless we can add "since you will forget most of what you have read?"Lately I found a movie which was issued back in the 90s, "Total Eclipse: Rimbaud and Verlaine". I was estranged to the emotional unrest of Rimbaud and Verlaine. Back in the 90s a friend lent me a book about Rimbaud, a book that I liked to a degree that I photocopied it. And since not more than 2 months I have bought a new book about the life and poetry of Rimbaud. But when I saw the movie it seemed that I am getting to know Rimbaud for the first time in my life. When I re...
Source: psychiatry for all - January 1, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
