Anne Skyvington
  • Writing
    • A Change of Blog Title
    • An Article in Quadrant Magazine
    • A Guest Post by Ian Wells
    • An Aussie bloke remembers: Guest post by Ian (Harry) Wells
    • a father’s tale … by Ian (Harry) Wells
    • “Snakey” by Roger Britton
    • A Guest Poem: “First Loves” by Roger Britton
    • At the Swimming Pool
    • A Modern True Story
    • A Story of a Special Child
    • What I learnt from writing a novel…
  • Mythos
    • A FAIRY STORY
    • Anthropos Rising
    • A Grain of Folly
    • The Myth of Persephone and Demeter
    • Candidly Yours…
    • A Story of a Genteel Ghost told by Roger Britton
  • Travel
    • Adriatic Romance … Rijeka to Titograd
    • 5 or 6 Things About Valencia
    • A Bird’s Eye View
    • 7 ancient artefacts in the British Museum
    • A Tuscan Village Holiday
  • Australia
    • A Country College Residence
    • Alone not lonely in Apartheid South Africa
    • A Young Adult Novel: My French Barrette
    • A Sydney Icon or Two
    • 5 things about Coogee
  • Nature
    • Black Swans Surfing
    • Blackbird Mythology: Crows and Magpies of Australia
    • A Kit Home Goes Up in Vacy
  • Poetry
    • a funny thing happened …
    • An ancient mystic: Rumi
    • A Window into Poetry
    • A Love Sonnet by Ian Harry Wells
  • Memoir
    • Always something there to remind me…
    • A Well-Loved Pet
    • Ancient Stories from Childhood
    • Voices From the Past
  • Publishing
    • A Useful Site for Readers and Indie Authors: Books 2 Read
    • Highs and Lows of Self Publishing
    • How I Created My Debut Novel
    • 5 Further Publishing Facts
    • 5 Facts I Learnt About Self/Publishing
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Anne Skyvington

The Craft of Writing

  • Writing
    • A Change of Blog Title
    • An Article in Quadrant Magazine
    • A Guest Post by Ian Wells
    • An Aussie bloke remembers: Guest post by Ian (Harry) Wells
    • a father’s tale … by Ian (Harry) Wells
    • “Snakey” by Roger Britton
    • A Guest Poem: “First Loves” by Roger Britton
    • At the Swimming Pool
    • A Modern True Story
    • A Story of a Special Child
    • What I learnt from writing a novel…
  • Mythos
    • A FAIRY STORY
    • Anthropos Rising
    • A Grain of Folly
    • The Myth of Persephone and Demeter
    • Candidly Yours…
    • A Story of a Genteel Ghost told by Roger Britton
  • Travel
    • Adriatic Romance … Rijeka to Titograd
    • 5 or 6 Things About Valencia
    • A Bird’s Eye View
    • 7 ancient artefacts in the British Museum
    • A Tuscan Village Holiday
  • Australia
    • A Country College Residence
    • Alone not lonely in Apartheid South Africa
    • A Young Adult Novel: My French Barrette
    • A Sydney Icon or Two
    • 5 things about Coogee
  • Nature
    • Black Swans Surfing
    • Blackbird Mythology: Crows and Magpies of Australia
    • A Kit Home Goes Up in Vacy
  • Poetry
    • a funny thing happened …
    • An ancient mystic: Rumi
    • A Window into Poetry
    • A Love Sonnet by Ian Harry Wells
  • Memoir
    • Always something there to remind me…
    • A Well-Loved Pet
    • Ancient Stories from Childhood
    • Voices From the Past
  • Publishing
    • A Useful Site for Readers and Indie Authors: Books 2 Read
    • Highs and Lows of Self Publishing
    • How I Created My Debut Novel
    • 5 Further Publishing Facts
    • 5 Facts I Learnt About Self/Publishing
  • Contact Us
Category

Existence

Emotions and HealthExistence

Depth Therapies Versus CBT

Psychology as a Field of Study

Psychology is a relatively recent discipline, arising from pioneering work carried out by the American philosopher and psychologist, William James (1842-1910). Depth forms of therapy, sometimes known as psychodynamic therapy, consider past events in a person’s life from a causal perspective. They rely on in-clinic experience, and the close relationship between the analyst and the analysand. Cognitive behavioural therapies (CBT) rely more on evidence-based research, and involve retraining of clients’ thought processes, emotions and behaviour, without the necessity to recover repressed memories from the past.

freud's couch

Freud’s Couch

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Depth Therapies Versus CBT was last modified: February 1st, 2020 by Anne Skyvington
June 20, 2018 0 comment
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acropolis-athens
Emotions and HealthExistence

Western Influencers Down Through The Ages

GREEKS of ANTIQUITY

I had my first taste of philosophy at Armidale Teachers College in 1961. This was one of the options that I chose to study, apart from the more mundane teaching subjects that were mandatory. Miss Margaret Mackie enchanted us with stories of the Delphic oracle, as well as introducing me to a long-term love affair with Plato, and Platonic ideals.  I did not realise it at the time, but this gifted teacher was opening up the foundations of Western philosophy and science to me and to others in the class.

Plato

Plato (428-348BC) has been cited as one of the founders of Western religion and spirituality.

Plato’s teacher was Socrates, and much of Plato’s works are based on Socrates’ ideas. We studied Plato’s Republic, an amazing work about the just society. Our teacher focused on the allegory of the Cave, which has fascinated students of philosophy and mysticism ever since.

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Western Influencers Down Through The Ages was last modified: January 18th, 2019 by Anne Skyvington
June 5, 2018 0 comment
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mother-daughter-hands
Emotions and HealthExistence

In praise of mothers and other positive influencers

A mother is often the first positive influencer in one’s life

Mum’s favourite poem, when she was alive, was “If” by Rudyard Kipling. She was not an educated woman in the traditional sense, but she’d learnt to be tolerant of others and knew how to remain positive. Another message she tried to impart to my siblings and me was about staying true to yourself and respecting others. It is sometimes hard to stay positive when the world is in turmoil, with wars raging in other countries, and suicide bombers killing and maiming their fellow creatures. And when one seventh of the seven billion people on earth are hungry, it is hard not to think about this, especially as I sit down to eat in a place of plenty. The fall of the dice could have placed me in that seventh part of the globe. There but for the grace of God go I… But I have to think, rather, how lucky I am to be born in a country that looks after its people and tries to maintain some semblance of egality of wealth across all demographics.  It’s not perfect, but I give thanks for living in a multicultural country that supports freedom of speech and religion for all.

When I married, another positive “significant other” came into my life:

“Nothing good ever comes from being negative,” he said, “but something good can happen if you are positive.”
I used to shrug off these words as just another mindless cliché—the bain of writers’ lives, as they are trying to improve their writing for publication. And I went through some dark periods in my past; there have in fact been many negative phases in my life. Perhaps it all amounts to cycles, as expressed through the lyrics of the song from the fifties and sixties, “To Everything There is a Season”.  Positivity didn’t happen overnight for me. There was a life crisis in the eighties, when my children were still young. But not long after that I knew it was time for change.

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In praise of mothers and other positive influencers was last modified: January 18th, 2019 by Anne Skyvington
May 7, 2018 0 comment
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romantic-photo-of-couple
Existence

How to find a mate in the twenty-first century

Online Dating

If you have never thought about trying Online Dating services or downloading the Tinder App, you are probably in a loving, monogamous relationship, and you might just be, but not necessarily, over fifty!

In any case, you are sure to have a son or a daughter, or and older single friend, who has tried this modern phenomena with varying degrees of success.

woman-and-smart-phone

If you go online, you will find a dazzling plethora of dating sites that must be simply overwhelming to the newcomer: Match.com, Zoosk, Elite, Attractive World, rsvp, Be Naughty, be 2, Academic Singles, eHarmony, City Swoon,  Amour Life,  Puppy Love, Blink Dating, Encounter Dating, The League, The Senior Dating Agency, cDate, Victoria Milan, Senior People Meet, Aussie cupid.com.au … and counting.

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How to find a mate in the twenty-first century was last modified: June 16th, 2019 by Anne Skyvington
September 5, 2017 2 comments
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bird-rising-pond
Emotions and HealthExistence

John Cade and Australia’s Greatest Mental Health Story

john-cade-biographyIt can be said that  John Cade “discovered” lithium, in the sense that he actually identified this substance that would become the chemical that would help many in the manic-depressive (bipolar) community.

One of the best biographies I read last year was Finding Sanity by Greg de Moore and Ann Westmore, published by Allen&Unwin in 2016. This is a biography, not a memoir, as it explores the life of Doctor John Cade in detail, starting with that of his parents, and delving into his own family life spent (he, as caretaker and psychiatrist) in asylums in country Victoria during the 1940s.

John Cade is the  Australian who discovered, in the fourth decade of the twentieth century, a simple treatment for severe manic illness: LITHIUM. This treatment was already used as a cure by ancient Greek doctors before the element had been identified scientifically. Soranus of Ephesus and others ordered salt baths containing high levels of lithium for excitable patients.  Today it has become the gold standard for treating bipolar disorder and saving and supporting lives.  Cade changed the course of  medicine and saved millions of unwell mental illness patients from suffering, not to mention saving governments billions of dollars in health costs. Strangely enough, not many doctors or politicians appear to know about him and his story today.

To quote from the first pages of the biography, “Lithium is the penicillin story of mental health … and Australia’s greatest mental health story.”

In 1920, after his father David Cade returned from fighting in Gallipoli and France, he and his young family settled into a doctor’s cottage in the grounds of a Victorian country asylum there. The younger Cade followed his father into a medical career, also choosing to specialise in psychiatry.  After he returned from Changi, where he was imprisoned in a hellish camp by the Japanese, he was anxious to catch up on lost time, and threw himself into work.  His work was helping the mentally ill and experimenting with new treatments.  This was a time when manic depression either went untreated, or cures were attempted through crude, early forms of lobotomies and electric shock treatment. His was the first effective medication to treat a mental illness, and in the form of a cheap and natural mineral salt.

john-cade-and-dog-at-bundoora

John Cade at Bundoora

Cade tested his theories by injecting uric acid from his manic patients into guinea pigs. Unfortunately, all of the animals died. To prevent this, he used lithium urate, which was highly soluble, to see if urea was, indeed, the culprit in causing mania. To Cade’s surprise, he found this produced a calming effect in the guinea pigs, instead of increased excitation.

Through a series of very careful experiments on both guinea pigs and, later on, people, it was proven that lithium had a pronounced effect on mania. This wonderful discovery was quickly followed by the finding that lithium also helped with the depressive symptoms of bipolar.

Cade’s remarkably successful results were detailed in his paper, Lithium salts in the treatment of psychotic excitement, published in the Medical Journal of Australia (1949).

The significance of what John Cade achieved is hard to overestimate.

quote-depression-john-cade

 

 

John Cade and Australia’s Greatest Mental Health Story was last modified: July 7th, 2018 by Anne Skyvington
August 8, 2017 0 comment
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About Me

About Me

Anne Skyvington

Anne Skyvington is a writer based in Sydney who has been practising and teaching creative writing skills for many years. You can learn here about structuring a short story and how to go about creating a longer work, such as a novel or a memoir. Subscribe to this blog and receive a monthly newsletter on creative writing topics and events.

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