The feeling of being crowded can be generated when the images resulting from environmental stimuli and those generated by the brain itself clash with the images of the prevailing mood. Our sociocultural evolution has increased the frequency of times during which environmental conditions and spontaneous states of mind become incompatible with man's animal concern with well-being. We can slate that this incompatibility is inevitable at the present stage of evolution. Fortunately, humans can sustain continuing clashes of imagery caused by crowding. Animals in the wild must resolve the inner conflict crowding causes by either dispersing or dying.Our sociocultural evolution seems to have accelerated suddenly about 30,000 years ago. At that time, in ways still barely understood, the cortex of the human brain became able to conceptualize simultaneously the individual as well as the community (Ardrey, 1970). This process enabled the individual to contribute to civilization by providing the mechanism whereby the "ingroup" could incorporate the outsider. Man overcame the (animal) fear of the stranger, learned to live in large aggregates, domesticated himself, and became human. In this sense, evolution can be said to have caused pollution, for large aggregates inevitably overtax the cleansing powers of the environment (environmental pollution) and create in the individual dangerous byproducts of incompatible social interactions (social pollution).The subjective experience of being crowded, of feeling put upon and harassed by the mere presence of others, must have originated at the time man had to become accustomed to living in large aggregates. Man, like an untamed animal, has difficulties adjusting his daily life to the daily life of
On 30 March, 1966, at the Symposium “Enzymes in Mental Health” sponsored by the Carl Neuberg Society for International Scientific Relations, A. Hoffer (1) described the apparently successful treatment in 13 of 17 (acute and chronic) schizophrenic patients in 3 to 5 days by the daily oral use of 1 to 2 grams of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD), better known as diphosphopyridinenucleotide (DPN). Widespread publicity given to this announcement attests to the need of more effective treatment for this illness. It also occasioned frequent and persistent inquiry from schizophrenic patients and their relatives as to the suitability of this treatment in their own instance. Rapid confirmation of the findings would justify widespread efforts to evaluate this preparation, whereas failure of confirmation would provide reasonable grounds for a more cautious approach to its use. The members of the Council of the American College of Neuropsycho-pharmacology decided that, as a group of impartial scientists, it would be appropriate for them to carry out such an investigation as rapidly as was compatible with adequate determination of the usefulness of the preparation.
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