There was an anecdote published in the old Psych Today magazine many years ago
about an MD I always thought of as the Sadistic Dr. X, since I couldn't
remember his name.
He had as a patient an older Orthodox Jewish woman with gastrointestinal
troubles. He gave her the barium or whatever to drink, X-rayed her g.i. tract
and found nothing wrong. For whatever sadistic reasons, he then told her that
the barium had contained ground raw pork, something Orthodox Jewish women do
not eat. He sent her back to X-ray. Her g.i. tract was totally inflamed,
upset, etc. There was no ground raw pork in the barium, but she believed him.
The point, for me: How do you separate the social from the nonsocial, in human
beings? I don't know that you can, if something someone tells you can upset
your stomach that much.
I'm not sure this simplifies things any this time.
Donna Darden.