I know I’m just asking a question wondering what your opinion is. It’s just a matter of perspective, what do you think? Can you answer it? Its not precisely what we’re talking with, but the logic is similar.
Moreno,
Thats about what schizophrenia does, although to your mind, which is the core of your self. Basically you’re hijacked I guess, your vision, hearing, all will give you false perceptions, making you think things that may seem crazy… if you weren’t crazy already and thinking it was all natural. Anyways thats the gist of it, its not like the doctor is schizophrenia, sure its all natural hormones and misfiring synapses, but really when you been there and out, the difference is so contrasting, the will… the core of your very self … disrupted and out of control. Of course the insane me was me, but there’s a major dilemma in letting the insane anybody reason for the self while there still may be a sane self waiting to come out with the right meds. I guess thats it. I know the dilemma, I made my hypothetical moral choice, its probably not for everyone… but they don’t know what I know. It can’t fully even be described in words… it has to be felt. That I cannot do.
YOu had a psychotic break, if I understood this correctly. That’s not schizophrenia. Or…did you get such a diagnosis. Also people who suffer from PTSD, for example, will have all the experiences you mentioned here, but really this is not a disease, this is merely the body processing past events as well as it can and is allowed by the conscious part of the self.
The main point of my posts was that this notion of the real you, the core of your very self, can be used and is used by ‘normal’ people to disidentify with many of their thoughts and emotions, bodily sensations, desires. But I still think it is them. I haven’t seen this issue addressed yet.
I agree I couldn’t draw the line at such a minor disruptance of will such as you described and find those claims to be frivolous. I was diagnosed with schizo-affective with Bi-Polar II, dual diagnosis. It wasn’t PTSD and I still have minor residual effects. Although perhaps I am blind to what my condition is… I don’t think so, my boss for one today said I was the most sane person at work, including over himself… if only he knew my past… haha.
So you got that diagnosis but you are pretty much symptom free now?
I assumed it was not PTSD - they are much better and not mixing these things up nowadays, I was using it as an example showing how tricky it is to say what is the self. IOW that a person with PTSD could describe their experiences in almost the exact same words - iow make the argument it was not them - whereas there it really was them.
This is a tricky discussion, because if I push my position, it can seem to you that I am saying you are someone you do not feel you are. I have no interest in trying to get you personally to think differently about who you really are, but the philosophical issues interest me, and not just in some mental masturbation way. I have family members who have had breaks and also gotten diagnoses. I would absolutely have been diagnosed at certain periods of my life, though I avoided giving anyone a chance to. And I have also worked as a clinical psychologist. So it’s not some trivial issue - like say discussing why solipsism cannot be refuted, which is more like playing philosophical checkers and I do play it quite often.
Without. Its possible for the diagnosis to be the case… after all, PTSD is temporary. I do have minor symptoms that essentially do not affect me, because I know what they are. Its not gone completely. There is no psychologist who will tell you that Schizo Affective disorder will be permanent, because that is unknown. Sure I may be a rare case, or my diagnosis is off. If so… what else could it be?
I think this “subconscious” realm would be what I am interested in.
I think even a subconscious logical reaction leads to some kind of rationally understandable action - even though it is not recognised by the actor in question. Think hypnosis. Think animals or even plants.
The least cognitive animals follow behaviour with some level of rational predictability - even plants do. Hypnotised people aren’t conscious, though they make sense to those who can interpret the subconscious. Good music and poetry is as though it is directly connected with your emotions, able to completely bypass reason. I disagree that there is nothing important nor pertinent in the behaviours and words of the psychotic mind. I hold out for some hope of translating them in the hope of at least treatment, or perhaps even incorporating them into society (somehow, I do not know how).
Whether their behaviours and words could be socially acceptable at the moment is a challenging question. Though perhaps irrelevant to one with first hand experience?
Perhaps the current social situation could not find such unpredictability acceptable at all. However, I find it interesting to think about how different points in history favour different behaviours. Perhaps today’s mentally ill will one day be the mentally healthy. We would perhaps be medicating those who are like today’s normal people so they could be more psychotic (according to today’s understanding of it).
But since we live today, and not at another hypothetical point in time, today’s values suggest it is “not best to not help them” - for them and everyone else. The most efficient and direct way of doing so is probably force. The problem is that today’s values suggest that force is “bad”. So are we to be consistent with today’s values in one way and not another? What I was driving at is that there is probably some non-optimally efficient and direct way of helping the mentally ill that would be “best” according to today’s values that are not subsumed by efficiency and directness.
So you do not agree with my thoughts on “the self vs. the disease” in that previous post I wrote - to which you responded simply “You get the point yes”?
The two together is a fairly heavy diagnosis, even if, yes, each can be not present. Hell, it could even be something as banal as an extreme allergy to something that is rare in the environment but someting people occasionally are exposed to TO a mineral/vitamin deficiency, like, say, b 12 deficiency…
to the black box of a psychotic break with mild to nearly non-existent aftershocks. Also Schizoaffective is really a kind of black box diagnosis (bipolar is less so). IOW it is a very wide range of symptoms out of which you need a certain core number. It is not as if they really know what it is in your body.
Anyway, I am not trying to put forward substitutes you should consider and mull over, just pleased you are symptom and med free.
I got pretty messed up by a break-up change of setting. I was ok with the break up, then was in a place I had not been in before - not a classic cross cultural change - and bam, I was, to use lay terms, nuts. and I was not really focused on the break up, but with hindsight, later, this was a big factor. The people I was around were very tightassed - think something like corporate Japan - and this also threw me way off kilter.
anyway, that’s all not here nor there.
edit: PTSD is temporary and it is not really a disorder. It like a long version of vomiting up rotten food in a culture that tells you to keep it down.
Well, I do know I experienced the requirements for a Schizo Affective diagnosis… A psychotic break is rather vague and doesn’t seem to keep persisting?
With this dramatic change you experienced, were you in your early 20’s?
Silhouette,
I agree, but would phrase it a little differently. J.'s statements appear to me to be personifications of symptoms. In like manner, when I’m in pain I often have bad dreams, a making sense of the pain on levels of brain function that do not include prefrontal lobe logic or reason. She’s making “dream” sense of the pain in her brain.
I’ve read J.s “diary”. It has no chronological or cohesive narrative structure; but it does have grammatical structure, which is why I questioned WWIII about his type of experience. I’m no authority on these matters, but I do listen and learn.
Wish I did, but I don’t. Your e-book would be most welcome. All first hand experiences of psychosis add to our understanding of their variety and personal toll on lives.