信件 – 知觉扭曲 – NYTimes.com
书评 2010年4月18日
信件
知觉扭曲
发表: 2010年4月15日

致编辑:

“颤抖的女人” Siri Hustvedt：癫痫 (2010年4月4日)

就像大多数发表的具有“无法解释”神经精神症状的病例一 样，Siri Hustvedt女士的新书《颤抖的女人》（4月4日）就是关于这个难以名状的情况：不能明确的恐怖感，一个隔代相传的有关于战争暴行的见证记忆，由于不 断失去而产生的痛苦和恐惧感。任何企图将这些问题以文字来进行合理表达的尝试都会显得徒劳而无力，但Hustvedt女士在书中对这种情况的探讨却显得一 针见血，并且她认为所有学科 – 从医学到哲学 – 本身都因为表述的模糊性而受到了限制和影响。

因此医者批评患者未能清晰的描述其痛苦而无从下手，这是一 种没有根据的推理。我很害怕自己也产生Hustvedt女士所指责的相同的错误：只希望看到和听到自己想看到和听到的那些东西。作为一个临床和法医神经学 家，精神科医生，经常会遇到由于无法名状的痛苦情绪而产生的知觉扭曲现象。而这种现象无论在文学创作还是文学评论中也都不可避免的存在着。

裴莫许

纽约

作者为哥伦比亚大学临床精神学助理教授，纽约州立大学下属医学中心神经学副教授

Letters – Perception and Distortion – NYTimes.com

Letters
Perception and Distortion

Published: April 15, 2010

To the Editor:

‘The Shaking Woman,’ by Siri Hustvedt: Seized (April 4, 2010)

As is the case in most presentations of “unexplainable” neurological-psychiatric symptoms, there are unspeakables in Siri Hustvedt’s book “The Shaking Woman” (April 4): the horror of a vague, transgenerationally transmitted memory of a witnessed wartime atrocity; the pain and fear of cumulative loss. Any attempt to put the unspeakable on paper will necessarily fall short, but Hustvedt’s sustained argument in the book is precisely that all categories — medical and philosophical — are in themselves subject to ambiguity.

Criticizing it for its failure to address the pain of caregivers is a non sequitur. The reviewer, I am afraid, fell into the same fallacy she accuses Hustvedt of: seeing and hearing only what she wanted to see and hear. In my work as a clinical and forensic neurologist-psychiatrist, I am used to seeing unspeakable emotional pain causing perceptual distortions. Neither literary creation nor its criticism are exempt from this fundamental observation.

MAURICE PRETER
New York
The writer is an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University and an adjunct associate professor of neurology at SUNY Downstate Medical Center.