Heaven forbid that secular psychologists accept the fact that J.R.R. Tolkien was a very devout Catholic! That Smeagol forgot the taste of bread and the sound of trees is nothing short of Grace giving Sacraments that 1) keeps us sane and 2) reconciles us back into the fold should we fall to sin (and we do fall oh so often). But no no! Not that nasty elves' food! Let Smeagol diet on beer and vitamins from things that grow!
I recommend Lt Col Dave Grossman's explanations for those post traumatic stress disorders due to killing/murder. Maybe learning from subjects that dwell and die in combat will rigidly enforce reality into air-conditioned office dwelling doctors & psychologists. There's little time and margin for error for being wrong about questioning God's existence when your existence may very well end without a moment's notice.
http://www.killology.com/
P.S. Aren't psychologists still high on the suicide watch list? I heard it from "The Ninth Configuration".
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081237/
Assigning human spirituality to a made-up world, inhabited by made-up creatures that can do magic (among other things). Almost as silly as the premise of the article.
Uh, Gollum isn't real. Discussing motivations of fictional characters is fine when talking about writing, but dissecting fictional characters is up there with "reality" T.V.
I for one find this "diagnosis" quite amusing -- as it was apparently meant to be. I do find it interesting that they leave out the fact that Gollum carried the Ring around for quite some time. Obviously, the Ring affected everyone who carried it, so how could they leave that out? Perhaps it was radioactive? After all, watches treated with radium, etc. often caused serious problems for people who owned them.
Or maybe it was just clutching Pure Evil to one's breast for so long? Oh, sorry, no, that couldn't be it, could it? And certainly the scientists couldn't mention that!
Ummm, no, it was a powerfully evil magic ring working on his poor little mind that made him the way he was.
It was the ring that drove him mad! The ring!
I'm just waiting for the CDC the AMA and the National Education Association to pronounce that a large, undetermined number of school children are at risk for this condition and must, at the first signs, be administered large doses of Ritalin, Prozac and Zoloft.
(Oh, wait!...They've done that already!)
I dunno. I thought that Sauron's ring had a fair load of bad mojo that baked Smeagol's potato in a very bad way.
It...couldn't have had anything to do with the effect of Sauron's ring of power, now could it?
People.
It's a book.
Michael Savage has mentioned this on his show many times, and I believe much of what the DUmmies buy into is based upon this simple deficiency. When he says, "Liberalism is a mental disease", this is IMHO a big part of it. Of course, I think he knows about it because he has experienced it (and seems to every other day), and those out there who haven't felt like a loony Gollum can easily just dismiss it all as "a result of sin", which is wrong.
What? Did someone say fish? Fish? We wants it, precious, yesssss...
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit Eternity Road:
http://www.eternityroad.info
Personally I think he was forced to watch CBS for many years with rabbit ears antenna rather than cable and a broken horizontal-hold adjuster.....
I agree with your comments SaltyJoe. Those who have studied Scripture or theology or at least have a relationship with God, probably also find interest in the Lord of the Rings trilogy because of these issues.
Those who don't and haven't are fairly well voiced here,..ranging from those who find the issue irrelevant to those who become occultic.
It's funny how even a presentation of these issues, as though it were fiction, to be as un-imposing as possible, is still met with dismissal by those who are arrogant and have already begun their slide.
you people aren't taking this seriously enough.
they did the same thing when they made a "diagnosis" of Beowulf. I'm still very upset over that one
"He has presented with anti-social behaviour, increasing aggression and preoccupied with the 'one ring.'...
sounds like my meth/crank addict patients...
Gollum didn't eat just fish. He also ate baby Orcs. Didn't these"doctors" read the book?
I suppose that this is what happens when really really intelligent people try to speculate about the religious beliefs of an imaginary creature of fiction.
I don't recall reading about the existance of any churches, synagogues, mosques or temples in Middle Earth. If you want to claim the whole story is allegorical, that's fine, but I think psychological analysis of individual characters is going a mite too far.