E. Garak's Brain

[Photon]

I wish there'd been some linkage between the endorphin dependancy (The Wire) and his later claustrophobia.

Of course he told Ezria, its b/c Tain would lock him up when he was naughty-but still, this is Garak. He'd lie when the truth would do.

 

[CorporalClegg]

I don't know. I don't really get the connection.

 

[erastus25]

As a neuropsych. student I can tell you that it's best for TV shows to stay away from any kind of "scientific" statements about the brain. Neuroscience is a relatively new field and our understanding of the brain is constantly changing, making it difficult, if not impossible, to include any kind of brain technobabble that won't be hopelessly outdated within a few years.

 

[LeadHead]

I liked that his claustrophobia was just that. Trek had a pattern of making things some sort of very complicated new affliction. Good to see that that one was just that.

 

[mrs260]

I liked that his claustrophobia was just that. Trek had a pattern of making things some sort of very complicated new affliction. Good to see that that one was just that.

Same here. I hate it when doctors try to connect every symptom or quirk to a single thing on one's chart in RL, and I hate it even more when writers do it in fiction!

The only semi-reliable statement we have from Garak about his claustrophobia is when he's trying to talk himself through it in In Purgatory's Shadow/By Inferno's Light: "This isn't like Tzenketh. The walls won't collapse in on you, there's plenty of air, your friends are right outside."

Maybe his claustrophobia was caused (or severely exacerbated) by a building or land collapse in Tzenketh. Maybe that was just one time where his claustrophia became a rational rather than irrational fear.

What irks me most about Garak's claustrophobic reactions in Afterimage, actually, is Ezri's idiotic insistence on psychotherapy. The fact that it "worked" always made me suspect that Garak was faking at least the severity of phobic reactions during that episode. (Really it was just a badly written, stupid episode, but I do enjoy the idea that he was manipulating people around him for a reason we never discover.)

 

[Photon]

What irks me most about Garak's claustrophobic reactions in Afterimage, actually, is Ezri's idiotic insistence on psychotherapy. The fact that it "worked" always made me suspect that Garak was faking at least the severity of phobic reactions during that episode. (Really it was just a badly written, stupid episode, but I do enjoy the idea that he was manipulating people around him for a reason we never discover.)[/QUOTE]

I agree. What I like about Garak's claustrophobia episodes was that there was no wiz-bang gizmo that descramble the polarity of the neurons in the right hippocampus-thereby, causing his mental illness to magically go away. Garak had to fight his way through.

Not even in the future, is there a tech-doodad that will solve all mental, physcial, and emotional maladies.

 

[Timo]

What irks me most about Garak's claustrophobic reactions in Afterimage, actually, is Ezri's idiotic insistence on psychotherapy.

Well, if 24th century psychotherapy can cause criminals to cease being criminals in six months (at least as regards the specific crimes that got them committed for that therapy), it could certainly work miracles on phobias like this...

Timo Saloniemi