mental illness is like getting into a rut

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Categories: Comparisons

An example of explaining science with metaphor and an idiom (getting into a rut). Here, Dr Carhart-Harris uses an extended metaphor:

"In mental illness we often go down a track, you know, implicitly or unconsciously, deepen the rut in that track, we get stuck, and what psychedelics do is free up the system, and what the system is your mind, and so that stuckness and the depth of that stuckness can be sort of opened up, there can be a freeing action, but with that freedom comes a requirement to be supported when the mind opens up that way, because perhaps there's been defensive quality to digging those ruts as deep as they've been…"

Dr Robin Carhart-Harris

Dr Robin Carhart-Harris (Professor of Neurology, Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences at the University of California) was speaking on an episode ('Psychedelics and Mental Health: Rose Cartwright meets Robin Carhart-Harris') of the BBC radio programme/podcast 'One to One'.

[Please be aware that a word may have different nuances, or even a different meaning, according to context.]« Back to Index

Author: Keith

Former school and college science teacher, teacher educator, research supervisor, and research methods lecturer. Emeritus Professor of Science Education at the University of Cambridge.