OCTSPAN Publications

Regaining the Legend of Silence: On Noise Sensitivity, Superfluous Noise, and Noise-Induced Hearing Loss in Today’s World
(posted 19.06.2013)

Our everyday environments have been growing more noisy in the last generation, and now pose considerable risks for many people of noise-induced loss of hearing sensitivity. At the same time, a considerable proportion of people claim that they are disturbed by excessive noise levels. In part this may be a completely unrecognized, yet common form of perceptual disability. Combining these two problems we have a recipe with enormous potential for creating social divisions, and acrimonious, even violent confrontations. Even if decisive action were to be taken now, it would be a long time before the related problems would be properly addressed. Greater awareness is needed of this looming, major public health problem. This is the first step, before any action will be possible at a political level. At the same time, greater recognition is needed of the very great differences between people in their individual “perceptual style”, and the levels of sensory stimulation in which they function at their best.
Noise sensitivity essay

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CHAPTER IN NEWLY-PUBLISHED BOOK:

“Steps To Better Partnership Between Stakeholders to Promote Mental Health and to Alleviate Disablement due to Mental Illness.”

This chapter was inspired by a meeting in late 2011 with a person who had been a leading activist at the time that the HIV/AIDS epidemic accelerated in the 1980s. In that new field of medicine, new styles of health care developed, and new coalitions between the various stakeholders – researchers, clinicians, and those at risk – emerged, as a result of which many lives were saved. That was twenty years ago. Since then, these advances in health care have spread around the world, and to many other fields of medicine, and we are all beneficiaries of those how took the lead in the 1980s. In this chapter, I give my best attempt so far to describe how the same sort of fruitful coalition might grow in the mental health area, which, is often (in my opinion in New Zealand, and probably elsewhere) multiply-fragmented, to the detriment of many people affected by mental illnesses. The PDF version of the chapter is posted here: 04-Miller-Chimes_of_Time. The flyer for the whole book is also posted here: Chimes_of_Times_flyer

Report on Symposium: “Laying the Ghosts of the Asylum Era: Anger Resolution in Psychiatry”

Report on Symposium: “Laying the Ghosts of the Asylum Era: Anger Resolution in Psychiatry”

This document is a report on a Symposium held at the Congress of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, at Hobart, Tasmania, on 21st May 2012. It begins with an account of the historical and immediate background to discussion of the asylum era. This is followed by details of what happened on the 21st May. There is then a more technical section describing how various treatments in psychiatry, while in themselves effective, came to be abused. Finally there is a reflection on how we all come to terms with a difficult history, and can move on to an emerging new style for the psychiatric profession.

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Baruch-Spinoza – A Seventeenth-Century Philosopher for Today’s World. (This is a paper presented to the “Explorations” discussion group, at the Union Church, Masterton, New Zealand, 10. 07.2011.)

The Subversion of Higher Education: Origins, Analysis, Recommendations (released for sale 3.01.2011.US$50 from Lulu.com)

Support independent publishing: buy this book on Lulu.

Community Involvement in Mental Health Research

Concepts of Mental Illness and an Invitation, Part I

Concepts of Mental Illness and an Invitation, Part II

A Brief Introduction to the Anti-Darwinian Heresy

Neural Determinism and the Metaphysical Person.

“Interplay between ideas and empirical observations: the essential core of the scientific tradition” (Lecture given, Otago School of Medical Sciences, 28.03.09)

“Change in Universities, ‘Technology Transfer’, and the Commercial World: An Irreconcilable Clash of Cultures?” (Essay on contemporary scene of unversity research in relation to world of commerce),

A Neurodynamic Theory of Schizophrenia (and related disorders)

Released 23 Apr 2008 – Now Available!

IMPORTANT NOTE ADDED 29.06.09: THE AUTHOR’S SALE PRICE FOR THIS BOOK IS Euro-85, ROUGHLY US$125. HOWEVER, YOU MAY SEE IT FOR SALE AT A MUCH GREATER PRICE (US$259.95). THIS IS NOT THE AUTHOR’S PRICE, WHICH IS WHAT YOU WILL PAY (PLUS SHIPPING COSTS) IF PURCHASED DIRECT FROM LULU

Support independent publishing: buy this book on Lulu.

NB: To see Reviews of “A Neurodynamic theory of Schizophrenia” in Psychological Medicine and European Journal of Neurology, click on item in right hand contents column.

Cortico-hippocampal interplay and the representation of contexts in the brain

A Theory of the Basal Ganglia and Their Disorders

“A Neurodynamic Theory of Schizophrenia”: Introduction. Lecture delivered at Winter Workshop on Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorders: Montreux 5th February 2008.

Axonal Conduction Time and Human Cerebral Laterality – A Psychobiological Theory

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