Steven Ozanich TMS and Pop Culture

It spans across several episodes, but in the first season of Madmen, Betty Draper has an issue with her hands going numb. She even has a car accident as a result of it happening while driving the kids. She ends up seeing a psychiatrist. Funny, because I think back in the 1960's there seemed to be more acceptance of mind-body issues. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like with all the fancy technology and tests that we have now days we have less respect for things we don't completely understand or can't see on a lab result. My hands used to go numb too!

 

Hi, Pandagirl. That's an excellent entry. I worked for an ad agency in the Madmen years and everyone was stressed out and
feeling back pain and drinking to numb it, wondering it their job would be lost with the next merger. Not much has changed since then.

 

In "ALICE," a 1990 movie by Woody Allen, a married mother of two children in Manhattan falls in love with a handsome saxophone player and then suffers back pains. She consults an Oriental herbalist in Chinatown who says her back pains are in her mind, caused by guilt. He gives her magical herbs to cure her.

He should have given her a copy of Dr. Sarno's book Healing Back Pain.

 

"Seinfeld" episode about goodism.


Add to TMS in Pop Culture

“Seinfeld”

There is an excellent (and funny) episode about the TMS symptums of rejection and “goodism” in “The Masseuse.”
George is upset because Jerry’s girlfriend doesn’t like him.

Jerry replies, “Look, it’s not like you’re going to be spending a lot of time with her.”

But that doesn’t do it for George, so Seinfeld tells him: “Not everybody likes everybody!”

George is still suffering from rejection and goodism.

Karen adds, “What difference does it make, anyway? Who cares if she doesn’t like you?
Does everybody in the world have to like you?”

George says, “Yes! Yes! Everybody has to like me. I must be liked!”

YouTube video clip:

 

Here's a thread from the Help forum about Carey Grant playing a TMS'y doctor Noah Praetorious, in the movie "PEOPLE WILL TALK", made in 1951.

TMSHelp Forum - Who Should Play Dr Sarno in a Movie?
www.tmshelp.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=7198‎

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Forest I need your expertise here, how do you pull the video out of this article to get it by itself? Interesting talk between two guys that I can't stand to listen to argue. But their discussion in this video makes my point.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/12/tiger-woods-back-injury-2014_n_4944813.html

 

Sure sounds like Tiger is under a lot of self-imposed pressure to perform and that's manifesting in TMS symptoms in his back. I remember in PT they had a therapist who was specifically dedicated to treating "back injuries" among the golfers at the prestigious Monterey County Club on 17 Mi8le Drive in Carmel, California. She'd travel down there from San Francisco once a week to deal with those kinds of "back injuries" specifically associated with the golf swing. They had a diagram on the wall and a lot of text to go with it too. But what is golf but a game based on self-imposed pressure to be "perfect" but, obviously, in Tiger's case, not necessarily to be "good".

 

Speaking of pop culture, I wonder if anyone has ever examined Oscar Wilde's famously popular 1890 novel, The Picture of Dorian Grey, in light of TMS theory?

http://www.amazon.com/Picture-Dorian-Gray-Oscar-Wilde/dp/1557427968

As Dorian grows older, he never ages, but stays a perfect image of his youth when the portrait he keeps in his attic was first painted. However, as Dorian continues to lead a sybaritic life of decadence and sin, the portrait ages, withers and becomes more and more ugly and disfigured. Wilde's novel appeared 10 years before Sigmund Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, but in many ways anticipates Freud's insights about the unconscious and repression.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray

Of course, Hollywood did a screen version in 1945:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037988/

 

Adelaide's Lament from Guys and Dolls

It says here:
The average unmarried female
Basically insecure
Due to some long frustration may react
With psychosomatic symptoms
Difficult to endure
Affecting the upper respiratory tract.
In other words, just from waiting around for that plain little band of gold
A person can develop a cold.

You can spray her wherever you figure thes streptococci lurk
You can give her a shot for whatever's she's got, but it just won't work
If she's tired of getting the fish eye from the hotel clerk
A person can develop a cold.

It says here:
The female remaining single
Just in the legal sense
Shows a neurotic tendency, see note: (looks at note
Chronic organic symptoms
Toxic or hypertense
Involving the eye, the ear, the nose, and throat.
In other words, just from worrying if the wedding is on or off
A person can develop a cough.

You can feed her all day with the vitamin A and the bromofizz
But the medicine never gets anywhere near where the trouble is.
If she's getting a kind of name for herself, and the name ain't his
A person can develop a cough.

And furthur more, just from stalling, and stalling,
And stalling the wedding trip
A person can develop la grippe.
When they get on that train to Niagara
And she can hear church bells chime
The compartment is air conditioned
And the mood sublime
Then they get off at Saratoga for the fourteenth time!
A person can develop la grippe,
La grippe.
La post nasal drip.
With the wheezes
And the sneezes
And a sinus that's really a pip!
From a lack of community property
And a feeling she's getting to old
A person can develop a bad, bad cold!
(ADELAIDE sneezes)

 

Help Wanted: Programmer. Must be highly fluent in JavaScript.

 

YES!! What a brilliant example! I LOVE this song (and this musical). I noodled around and found the song (movie version) on YouTube:

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Indeed. "The medicine never gets anywhere near where the trouble is" could be the banner headline for much of our modern medical system and its obsession with drugs (oh, sorry let me use the more benign term medications), blood tests and imaging.

 

I wish more people would add theirs. I see Mindbody tie-ins often when I watch tv.
I don't watch tv much but do watch a lot of British tv and movies and they often touch Mindbody subjects.
British tv and films are more about people and relationships than American stuff which focuses more on sex,
violence, explosions, and vampires. No wonder kids and even adults today are so stressed-out.

 

http://portlandtribune.com/component/content/article?id=63243

 

That's a wonderful video of Vivian Blaine from "Guys and Dolls."
And very true that stress, etc., can cause illness, as we're learning more lately from knowledge of cells
and Mindbody.

I just read this advice on living from, surprising to me, Marilyn Monroe:

"This life is what you make it. No matter what, you're going to mess up sometimes, it's a universal truth. But the good part is you get to decide how you're going to mess it up. Girls will be your friends - they'll act like it anyway. But just remember, some come, some go. The ones that stay with you through everything - they're your true best friends. Don't let go of them. Also remember, sisters make the best friends in the world. As for lovers, well, they'll come and go too. And baby, I hate to say it, most of them - actually pretty much all of them are going to break your heart, but you can't give up because if you give up, you'll never find your soul mate. You'll never find that half who makes you whole and that goes for everything. Just because you fail once, doesn't mean you're gonna fail at everything. Keep trying, hold on, and always, always, always believe in yourself, because if you don't, then who will, sweetie? So keep your head high, keep your chin up, and most importantly, keep smiling, because life's a beautiful thing and there's so much to smile about."

She also said, "Fear is stupid. So are regrets."

She had a lot of TMS. Her father deserted her and her mother before she was born, and her mother had mental problems so Marilyn spent
most of her girlhood in orphanages and foster homes. She had a lifelong feeling of abandonment and being unwanted. She also grew up in poverty, as a preteenager she worked in an orphanage kitchen for a nickel a month, and a penny of that was taken for a church donation. Her three marriages were all unsuccessful and she said she would rather have been loved than famous.

 

Nicole Sachs told me a long time ago to watch "FIELD OF DREAMS", haven't done it yet, maybe that's why I've a tight-ass.