Subject: Re: JDS = ADHD?
From: Matt Kozusko (mkozusko@virtual.park.uga.edu)
Date: Thu Feb 20 1997 - 05:35:41 GMT
I wrote:
> > I don't think (and, granted, it's onnly speculation) that ADHD affects
> > lifestyles and occupations in any sort of consistent, predictable way.
Andrew replied:
> I can tell you with certainty that your speculation was
> unequivocally
> wrong. Such viewpoints as the one you just advance, albeit it in a form
> of a "speculation", are in any case, dangerous. The effects of ADHD on
[cut]
I don't quite see how the viewpoint I have advanced is dangerous. The
affects of ADHD/ADD on a person can indeed be debilitating, but not
always--not even consistently. What I mean by an absence of consistent
and predictable effects is that ADHD, aside from the characteristic very
shnort attention span (simplification), does not affect all afflicted
people the same way. I don't think we can look at ADHD (or any of its
components or varieties) as a kind of condition that we apply to an
otherwise ordinary person. I think it's more useful to approach ADHD as a
personality type rahter than a disorder of some sort. It's a
disorder--and one with a physiological explanation--for people whom it
prevents from functioning in certain roles. But I suspect that many people
with ADHD get along just fine, even without medication (and ADHD's aren't
the only people who have trouble finishing books). What I meant to say
above is that in Salinger's case (if he is indeed ADHD/ADD), his writing
is a product of his necessarliy integrated personality, and not the result
of a fixed process to which a peculiar variable (ADHD) has been added.
I don't think Methylphenidate would change _Catcher_ much. I just can't
see that it makes any sense to say that a particular characteristic of
Salinger's writing can be seen to derive from ADHD.
matt
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