istanbul: city of dilemmas (a brain-mind perspective)

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Yankı Yazgan



İstanbul, as examined by her/his psychiatrist)

®  How does she affect her inhabitants?

®  What do you see and ®  What do you feel when you view the city.?



Love/hate… Saz/jazz

Fish and raki/ fish and soda Fast and slow


Modern/traditional Crowded/solitaire

Not knowing anything about the geographic locations or directions is much better than having that information almost as a habit



Confusing dilemmas

What about not passing? Maybe you will pass Try passing…

®  A transitional point ®  Hard to tell where it really belongs ®  Lots of ambiguity and uncertainty ®  Both create anxiety ®  And creates further confusion



No seasons in Istanbul, but a never ending struggle between the northerly and southerly winds (Tanpinar) )

®  Hard to make a choice ®  May trigger persistent traits into particular behavor

®  Making a choice may be easy or hard, but the conflict it creates activates ACC (proportionate with the temperamental qualities)

®  .


®  Temperament: persistent across time and contexts

®  Influencing our interaction with the external world

®  Mostly described on a dipole ®  Structural behavioral characteristics


®  Novelty seeking

® Harm avoidance ®  Reward dependence ®  persistence

®  Genetik belirlenim.


®  ‘hüzün …. Or tristesse‘ (Pamuk)


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(And we should) understand the central importance of hüzün as a cultural concept conveying worldly failure, listlessness and spiritual suffering.... ...hüzün has been central to Istanbul (say, Turkish) culture, poetry and everyday life over the past two centuries...

..it is a way of looking at life that implicates us all, not only spiritual state but a state of mind that is ultimately as life affirming as it is negating.”


“ Tristesse is not a pain that affects a solitary individual; hüzün and tristesse both suggest a communal feeling, an atmosphere and a culture shared by millions...” Istanbul is fretful, though realist, thus coping with the daily or eternal hassles…

® vigilance ® flexibility ® Abiding one’s principles ® Is a requirement

®  (the same applies to the city itself) www.yankiyazgan.com www.facebook.com/yankiyazgancom 27


waiting…

® fosters resilience in the face of life’s uncertainty



“... to convey these neighborhoods as traditional, spoiled and untouched by the West, Tanpinar wrote that 'they were ruined, they were poor and wretched' but had 'retained their own style and their own way of life.'

(not anymore)


“...Istanbul does not carry its hüzün as 'an illness for which there is a cure' or 'an unbidden pain from which we need to be delivered': it carries its hüzün by choice. And so its finds its way back to the melancholy of Burton, ..... echoing its self-denigrating wit, it dares to boast of its importance in Istanbul life.” O Pamuk, Istanbul: Memories of a Childhood

istanbul: city of dilemmas (a brain-mind perspective)

Lifestyle

istanbul life

way of life

central importance of

everyday life

solitary individual

spiritual state

raki fish

turkish culture