THANKS TO:
CREATIVE TEAM:
- LISA HUTTON: Concept, Web Design, Research, and Project Management
BRYAN J. KOLODZIEJ: CGI Programming
Lisa Hutton is a new media artist and writer in San Diego, California. She received her MFA from the University of California at San Diego in 1999. She has received a number of honors including a mention at Prix Ars 1996 for Variety Is... She has been included in numerous exhibitions including Beyond Interface: net.art and Art on the Net organized by the Walker Art Center, the Fifth New York Digital Salon, LA Freewaves, and ISEA Chicago. To celebrate her fortieth birthday she left her studio and was later seen roller skating with friends.
Bryan J. Kolodziej -- Perl Programmer
Bryan is a former student of the Visual Arts Department at UC San Diego. With the exception of a crayon drawing featured on the hit show 'Romper Room' his work remains unpublished and unknown.
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Logical Insurance Subject Analysis (LISA) is a psychological analysis engine. LISA's purpose is to sort and advise clients based upon their level of medical insurance coverage. Her function is to provide insurers, psychotherapists, their clients, and the general public with the most technologically advanced and efficient mental health care available to date. LISA is specifically designed to promote access to efficient healing through expedient psychological understanding.
The categories of mental health and mental illness have to be understood in the context of the social institutions and practices which gave rise to them. Some historical background will demonstrate the advances that project LISA provides.
Descriptions of psychological behavior and intellectual disturbances have existed in the literature of Western civilizations since ancient times. Depending on the Zeitgeist the phenomena were interpreted in many ways. Galen's Doctrine of the Four Humours was invoked as an explanation of psychological and behavioral disturbances well into the seventeenth century, while theories of the occult strongly influenced views of mental disturbance into the early nineteenth century.
The origin of modern scientific psychiatry can be traced to the Enlightenment. At this time, mental disturbances were first perceived as illnesses--a movement which carried some intellectual force--by creating a climate where mental illness could be seen as natural phenomena. In this way, the rationalism of the age allowed these illnesses to be observed through objective and systematic means. By 1890 William James spoke of psychology as, "the science of mental life." As with any scientific effort to study and classify the human condition, efforts to delineate the mental disorders were influenced by; (1) the dominant intellectual assumptions and attitudes which determine what data receive attention and how the data will be ordered; (2) the technologies and methodologies available for gathering the data; and (3) the setting or social context delimiting the database of phenomena accessible to study.
The analytic model employed by Hutton and Kolodziej is an enhanced thematic apperception test for which Kolodziej created several braided array modules to increase the sensitivity and efficacy of LISA's response. We chose thematic apperception testing over talk therapy due to its compatibility with the theories of Freud and Jung who emphasized the importance of unconscious drives and motives. Thematic apperception tests allow the client to project their impressions on a neutral substrate and so client input can easily be interpreted in terms of unconscious drives, intrapsychic conflicts, defenses against these, and symbolic representation of these forces.
LISA is able to assess the most common types of mental disorders. LISA is programmed to assess mood disorders including bipolar, depressive, and anxiety disturbances. She can also assess the somatoform, including dissociative, sexual, sleep, impulse, adjustment, and factitious types. LISA was originally designed to assess and diagnose personality disorders as these are the most common chronic type presented to psychotherapists and the most troublesome and cost-ineffective for insurers and employers. LISA's algorithms are specifically effective in diagnosing the antisocial, narcissistic, avoidant, dependent, obsessive compulsive, passive aggressive, and borderline personality disorders.
There are several categories which LISA is not programmed to assess. These are, diseases presented by those under the age of twenty-one, retardates, and organic disorders best addressed by medical professionals and neurologists. Nor is LISA's programming currently relevant to the various schizophrenias. We plan to have expanded capabilities available in a future version of LISA as many users have already expressed a desire for these utilities.
LISA addresses the pervasive use of psychoanalysis, the latest pharmacological advances, and the hipness of recovery. Additionally, this proposal is a natural revision and modernization of a project called Eliza. Eliza holds a place in computing history as an intelligent entity, an example of the Turing Test, and, a program which dispensed a banal psychological exchange with the visitor. LISA is an improved machine for psychological analsis and includes the changes in holistic care since the original Eliza. Popular new age ideas of healing and recovery are compared with the natural trajectory of an assessment of health care in the United States.
