Neurologists and psychiatrists admit they still don’t fully understand OCD or how it works. The condition can’t be cured, but it can be managed, dialing down the barrage of obsessive thoughts — and the compulsive behaviors or physical tics that briefly relieve them — so they aren’t so overwhelming. And for reasons that also aren’t fully understood, some highly trained athletes and performers find that being onstage or on the field, in front of thousands of people — an environment most people find highly stressful — actually reduces their anxiety.
Tag: 04.12.18
The World’s Oldest ‘Oral Library’ – And What Bruce Chatwin Did With (And To) It
“Perhaps the oldest oral library in the world was formed over a span of tens of thousands of years in the arid lands of central Australia. There, the Arrernte people developed a complex system of tribal knowledge, beliefs, duties, and ethics” and memorialized it in a series of stories. In the 1980s, Bruce Chatwin spent time in Australia studying Arrernte stories; when he published what he’d learned in the 1987 book Songlines. That book was a hit, hailed by critics and readers in the UK and US; the reaction in Australia was another matter.