The figure of the zombie is a classic of horror cinema. The zombie is an undead, or a sort of corpse that continues to live a monstrous life, apparently dependent on a force in his brain that imposes a single task on him, namely the search for food. Food is no longer a necessity, it seems the residue of a primordial instinct that no longer has a specific purpose, but it is the only thing that remains. Zombies live on as long as their brains are intact.
GA Romero has created a trilogy on this theme over the years. Suddenly the dead begin to resurrect as zombies, for an unknown cause this phenomenon spreads and seems unstoppable. The living try to escape the cannibal fury of the zombies, while the zombies roam and crowd inside houses and streets. In the first episode (Night of the Living Dead), a group of people find refuge in a country house and endure the zombie siege to a tragic ending. In the second episode (Dawn of the Living Dead) we see society succumb to the onslaught of zombies, while in some areas men organize to kill them one by one. This is the episode in which the metaphorical theme of the world unable to face the monstrous appears clearly. Instead of killing the dead and destroying their brains, trivially cremating them, humans insist on burying the dead, and do not feel like killing the resurrected in the guise of their loved ones. The scientists who on television argue the need for killing are unheard and criticized: people seem to believe that in these monsters there is still a human life, and that it must be respected. A group of friends flee the now besieged city by helicopter and take refuge in a shopping mall populated by zombies. Eventually they will not resist the siege and the survivors will flee. killing are unheard and criticized: people seem to believe that in these monsters there is still a human life, and that it must be respected. A group of friends flee the now besieged city by helicopter and take refuge in a shopping mall populated by zombies. Eventually they will not resist the siege and the survivors will flee. killing are unheard and criticized: people seem to believe that in these monsters there is still a human life, and that it must be respected. A group of friends flee the now besieged city by helicopter and take refuge in a shopping mall populated by zombies. Eventually they will not resist the siege and the survivors will flee.
In the third episode (The day of the living dead) we witness the desperate resistance of a small group of people, civilians and soldiers, who live underground and here trying on the one hand to keep themselves alive by supplying themselves with food and goods, on the other hand. study a remedy to restore zombies to a properly human life from their bestial state. They capture them and conduct more or less successful experiments in order to neutralize the “disease” that keeps them alive as monsters.
In summary, there is a problem: the dead who are undead continue to live even if they are no longer people, but pure instinct in search of food. There is an obvious social metaphor: zombies are poor peoples who multiply despite being marginalized from the rich world, but who will eventually devour it out of necessity, and the inability of the degenerate rich world to defend itself from invasion. Another metaphor is the economic one, the zombies as an exploited class that eventually pushed over the edge rebels and devours the exploiters class. There may also be a psychiatric interpretation though.
The concept of “undead” is very similar to obsession, a thought precisely “undead. The answers do not kill the obsessions, which continue to walk just like zombies, automatically. If hit they get up again, if torn to pieces they continue to move in pieces, if locked up they don’t stop trying to get out.
The answers to these non-dying obsessions are: a) trying to find convincing answers and keeping the question alive until it happens; b) try to avoid the question by fleeing elsewhere, only to be faced with new questions or the same in a different version; c) try to elaborate the question in order to actively make sense of it, that is, using one’s own intelligence. The basic problem is that a zombie, since it is already dead, cannot be killed, nor can it return a man alive as he was before he died. The “monster” can be killed by eliminating the source of his monstrous life, which in the case of the zombie is the brain. A piece of his brain keeps moving it in one direction. This metaphor also recalls a man who no longer lives in the heart and in the viscera, but he still lives as a cerebral being. Obsession is a bit the same thing, that is, a brain that no longer works in a natural, intuitive and instinctive way, but only works around a question, as a system that has to solve a question.
In obsession therapies you “shoot” at the question, or rather help the brain to fire at the question, which it usually does when it works in a balanced way. To get rid of the obsession it is therefore useless to “manage” the obsession or try to tame it, because in any case the obsession cannot evolve into a convincing response, it disappears by itself once it is “settled” in the brain. Consequently, the cures for obsession must not make the obsession live, avoid suppressing it, educating it to make it an acceptable form of thought, but favoring its spontaneous resolution, extinction.
Often the person with ongoing obsessive disorder, especially if for a long time, behaves just like humans who eventually succumb to zombies. First they refuse to give up the obsession, hoping it will go away with logical reasoning. Then they try to escape from the obsession with rituals, but they realize that the obsession follows them and also reproduces itself in different forms or in different environments. Finally they try, and this is the most insidious stage, not to escape from the obsession anymore but to think about it in an elaborate way to transform it into a solution.
The final scene of the last episode is significant. The underground refuge of the surviving humans is overrun by zombies. the invasion takes place from the theoretically safest point, ie a freight elevator that connects with the outside world in a fenced area. The zombies invade the elevator and descend into the underground shelter. To let them pass and a man who, resigned to his fate, at least wants to end the madness of those who would like to seek an impossible solution.
Ultimately, the treatment takes place along these two lines: the first is to restore the brain’s ability to automatically obscure obsession; in parallel, however, it is necessary to re-educate the brain not to cultivate rituals or activities that would be intended to work on the obsession in order to obtain a solution.
User 171XXX
June 14, 2012
Okay, it’s okay when the obsessions are made up of questions, but when it comes to mental images
or music, as often happens
# 2
It’s the same thing: the “question” is to be understood as the first compulsion, the thing that arises and forces you to give an answer, which can be another thought, gesture, behavior, etc.
Hence “question and answer” as a general pattern of obsession (otherwise called primary compulsion) and compulsion (secondary).
In this regard, in the second of those two films there is a phrase that an old priest says to one of the protagonists, and that is: “when the dead walk you have to stop killing, otherwise you lose the war”, or translated into psychiatry “when thoughts are obsessions you have to stop responding, otherwise you lose the war “.
# 3
Former user
June 16, 2012
Well let me say one thing. Obsession has anyway a sense. If I have an obsession with dirt and I decide to protect myself by washing my hands 11 times (ritual), I have given an answer to my internal question. ‘that the answer is not convincing, because the person does not grasp the meaning of the action. Recovering the here and now demolishes all obsessions. Recovering today and the meaning of one’s operations is in my opinion the solution. when thoughts are obsessions, you have to stop responding, but grasp their meaning in the here and now.Protecting yourself can sometimes become a cage.When the dead walk you just have to wake up … here in our world the dead don’t walk, otherwise you get lost ..the head.
# 4
In fact, that’s what the message of the film says figuratively. That when thoughts “walk” as obsessions, and therefore no longer as normal thoughts, but as the dead walking instead of being underground, we must not walk with them, but change plans. However, it is not correct that obsessions make sense, because those who wash themselves automatically create the concept of dirt with respect to their washing, which is not the same as the concept of dirt as it would be defined without obsession. The obsession defines a “dirt” compared to an idea of ​​cleanliness which is the “ideal” condition for not having the obsession, but which does not exist, it is only an ideal concept. Clean and dirty in a practical sense simply means when I think or don’t think it’s worth washing, not because I’m obsessed with dirt. In the advanced phase of obsessive disorders, or in the chronic forms, people tend to attach themselves to these contents, so that the obsessions whose content is theoretically sensible (and sensible to want clean and not dirty) are not recognized as such because they are not ” strange “or abnormal.
# 5
Former user
June 16, 2012
I ignore what is correct or what is incorrect. Give me an example of what is correct
. Bah. In my ignorance, I believe that obsession makes sense, albeit chosen unknowingly. If I wash my hands 11 times or I don’t know 12 times I’m protecting myself cmq.Just because my clean doesn’t exist concretely, it means that I have an idea of ​​cleanliness that can’t exist. What is the meaning of this operation for me
If I develop the sense there is sq km and it will depend on the psychiatrist to recognize the direction. To choose one’s best, recovering the present and the sense of personal operations. Obsession interferes and blocks the possibility of going for oneself. the sense c’e’cmq..behind the example of the ideal cleanliness, there is a perception (unpleasant) of concrete dirt..then it depends on the subject and the situation in front of you. martial arts and if for a moment I fixed myself on one point, well … I would end badly.The obsession, in my opinion, lies in the inability to see oneself as a whole, but fixating on one point, I think ( but I don’t feel it) to protect me, controlling oneself on the basis of the ideas that have survived in one’s own life.I can develop obsessive forms of protection. Do not sing in the Church, the nun told me, please! And magically the music appeared on my head during the function. The sense is there .. I am controlling myself, but if I recover the here and now , I will understand that at that precise moment I probably wished not to be in the Church but by the sea … and above all that relationships arise not from obligations, but from perceptions. the internal slogan, I dissolve the obsession. What is the meaning of not singingthat probably at that precise moment I wished not to be in the Church but by the sea … and above all that relationships arise not from obligations, but from perceptions. , I dissolve the obsession.What is the sense of not singingthat probably at that precise moment I wished not to be in the Church but by the sea … and above all that relationships arise not from obligations, but from perceptions. , I dissolve the obsession.What is the sense of not singing
The interest in the function.In my case, well … in my opinion it was an abstract obligation entrusted as a child by the nuns to which I rationally adapted.The obligation mixed with the unpleasantness of a choice, I speak for myself, can produce obsessions, which then are the ones that we commonly encountered in many … During the killer cucumber period, everyone washed the vegetables 100 times .. reason
Vague messages … and my mom still washes the lettuce 12 times … I don’t know if my point of view is correct, but the obsession stems from an extreme generalization. If I don’t wash the killer cucumber, well … It’s a risk. And away to wash, wash wash .. If I don’t go to mass, I’m a disobedient child .. you accept it and hear the music during the service .. but if I say I do what I want, the obsessions I assure you will disappear It is enough to take care of yourself and trust in yourself and your choices, awareness in a word, personal opinion.
# 6
Former user
June 16, 2012
Last thing … I do what I want for myself. I had for organic foods, sex etc etc … I changed simply by recovering my interests and practicing martial arts. I know that everything makes sense. Even the most senseless. I experienced it on my skin. Thanks for the space offered to me. .
# 7
“I don’t know what’s right or what’s wrong”
Me too. I don’t think he understood the meaning of the post from the beginning. You are talking about lifestyle, here we are talking about something else, probably the problem and this. What is striking, however, is the violence with which those who have solved problems throw their own solutions in the face of others, which reveals anything but serenity.
# 8
Former User
June 18th 2012
Hi Dr. Pacini, I learned by studying the Tao and the bagua forms and the thought of Master Bruce Lee, that the other is the basis for knowing oneself. an event that taken within itself has the powers that we recognize it, stopping us at discomfort.Obviously mine is philosophy, but it has 3000 years of history. Analyzing what she wrote, I could tell you that she perceived an attack in my words ; I wonder the meaning of this operation
If you think about it, you have perceived, which I have already noted above, something similar to a delegitimization. I don’t know if psychotherapy works like this, but I assure you that wushu works like this. The opponent reminds me who I am and it’s lucky to meet a fighter; it educates me about who I am. ..for me, it reminds me of how I represent myself with respect to an event; for example
Obsession for organic foods.
Well, cancer. Avoid cancer. But behind that abstract generalization, there was the control of taste, choice and personal sphere. This is my story which was actually obsessive, but sympathetic towards the Bio.Diro ‘more, thanks to organic, now I know that the real problem was choosing the taste; demonizing taste as a source of cardiovascular disease, for example, is an abstraction. I feel, how I am, in the times and ways I want, not being affected by any pathology.However, tasting fried foods 7 days a week, is a substitute for something else … losing the possibility of choosing for oneself period; as I don’t know the obsession with music in the Church, well … it is a testimony ofobligation to be classified as a good guy .. but who is a good guy
Boh … that is to buy a personal sphere, unjustifiable, I would say that it is a daily personal conquest in fieri.Reading what you wrote you felt under attack and my operation as an absolute value; I would say that it is my operation , not his own or that of others … this is the secret … to take care of yourself in a very personal way. water..with serenity you can mirror inside, in spite of the obsessions of the moment 🙂 She too gave me sensations and I took them to understand how I perceive myself now.In China they teach that the World is special to you, nn distant .. the stars are there as long as you are there and vice versa, but in our latitudes the culture is abstract;ha i am thinking of the present
For a Chinese this type of abstraction is unthinkable; for a Chinese I am a function of the World and the World is a function of my existence. The Tao is this and it was the basis for understanding the same physics. ‘the method I used to change obsessions into added values ​​of knowledge. I hope it will help as a personal testimony.
User comments: open!
Professionals comments: closed!
Want to receive updates in Psychiatry
Enter your name, email and subscribe:
