Lecture (4th November, 2017; Hong Kong): ‘A Voyage of Healing’
On 4th November, 2017, Robert Miller delivered this lecture at the Hong Kong Mental Health Conference (3rd-5th November). This lecture covered many topics, including some of the speaker’s early years and background, the origins of ethical sensitivity, and some professional issues for mental health professions.
However, the central theme was to develop as a scientific topic, a concept which is surely most fundamental for psychiatry, and other mental health professions, but which is seldom considered in scientific terms – human nature itself, in all its diversity: How does the human brain construct for each of us a sense of being a unified person? – and then how is that sense of being a person continually updated throughout our lives?
A theme which unites all topics covered in this lecture – one which is in principle quite revolutionary, but nonetheless neglected – is the Gestalt principle. Originally formulated in the inter-war years in relation to perceptual psychology, it is applicable in a much wider sense – to any organized ‘whole’ in the biological or social realms.