Critical Analysis Of Charles Siebert's 'An Elephant Crack Up?'

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There are some wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than wounds that bleed. Just as all humans, elephants similarly feel emotions whether it is joy or sorrow. In his article “An Elephant Crack Up?” the author, Charles Siebert focuses on the recent strange and bellicose behaviors of elephants and clears up the causes of the behaviors with plenty of informative observations. In “Immune to Reality,” Daniel Gilbert theorizes that the psychological immune system is triggered by large-scale negative events. We also see these negative effects in the passage, “The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan,” while Ethan Watters exposes the attempts of Glaxo Smith Kline to convince the Japanese doctors that the Japanese people …show more content…

Our mind is a very complex organ, however when there severer trauma due to a loss in a family member sometimes even the most complex system of all cannot handle the situation. Gilbert demonstrates the results of what happens when the mind is rejected. He states, “We do this quickly because our psychological immune systems have no trouble finding ways to exploit the ambiguity of this experience and soften its stings” (Gilbert 133). He explains that the mind can easily recover from anything because it finds ways to make the situation positive. However when there is a loss in the family this theory does prove that the elephants can recover as fast as he claims. In Siebert’s passage he describes how the entire family mourn over the death of a single elephant and witnessing the death is even more traumatizing. He says, “’The loss of an elephants’ elders,’ Bradshaw told me, ‘and the traumatic experience of witnessing the massacres of the family, impairs normal brain and behavior development in young elephants’” (Siebert 356) Witnessing the death of the elephants’ parents can be so traumatizing that the mind isn’t able to find ways to make the situation better. If Gilberts theory was true than there wouldn’t be a lot of emotional pain felt in this world. For instance we read in Watters passage about the depression of many workers and their attempted suicide reports. Watters states, “He describes …show more content…

Everyone has emotions and everyone deals with them differently. The psychologists in Japan have been more clinically correct and culturally sensitive to use psychotherapy techniques for dealing with depression. When the western markets came into their territory, the markets slowly began to manipulate the Japanese. In contrary, the people of that country might be getting more help from their psychological immune systems by not changing the way they label their feelings than they do with the medications. Animals who are constantly disrupted by humans have the ability to get tempered and show this anger through aggressive behavior. Elephants who have been taken away from their families and homes go through the most traumas and as the emotions start to build up, one day it will all just trigger. We cannot just sit back and watch these animals while they go through such distress. We know we have to help these animals without disrupting their environments. We can do so by psychologically healing these animals. Words are singularly the most powerful force available to humanity. We can choose to use this force constructively with words of encouragement, or destructively using words of despair. Words have energy and power with the ability to help, and to heal. It has been said, “time heals all wounds.” I

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