My ex has a bother who is a schizophrenic. Its weird how they are attracted to religion. Makes me wonder about all religious people.

I'm inclined to think religion is a mind virus (as in like a software virus). It distorts the real universe - like looking through melted glass.

I think embracing religion is a step towards mental problems, however, for those who are mentally ill and embrace religion, this could be a stabilizing factor in their illness and might even be a step towards reality depending on the extent of their illness; only because some clerics will direct the subject to seek help. Medication is the schizophrenics' best course of action. Unfortunately, schizophrenics left to themselves stop taking their medications.

An acticle: http://www.schizophrenia.com/sznews/archives/003340.html

and a book: http://www.schizophrenia.com/media/#chris

I worked with people with traumatic brain injuries for two years, and during that time I worked with several people within the same ward that had christian based religious delusions.

There's a lot to say regarding an explanation of this phenomena. First, we have to understand how a person operating at the psychotic level thinks. The basic feature of psychosis is a confusion between what is in their minds and what is actually outside of their minds that even influences concepts as basic as self identity. While psychotics can be intelligent and empathic, they tend to view the world in simple, concrete dichotomies, and they tend to defend against attacks through narcissism (I'm better than you, so you can't hurt me!) and paranoia (I don't have a problem, it's you that has the problem! In fact, it's a conspiracy!)**

Anyone familiar with religion will see the link between psychosis and religious/dogmatic thinking, - religion inculcates dichotomized, concrete thinking, (You're either with us or against us - George Bush) and religion inspires both narcissistic and paranoid styles of defense against anxiety.

Now the next part to explore is where the psychotic obtains the content for his delusions. Basically, when you take on a delusion, you don't start from scratch - instead, you build up a delusion based on some mythos that you've learned. And one of the reasons that the christian delusion is so popular is likely due to both to its simple, concrete dichotomies (good/evil) as well to its narcissitic and paranoid features.

In my work with traumatic brain injuries, I had one client who held that god communicated to him through causing his brain injury.. the client believed that the holy, ever flowing fountain of love and kindness chose to communicate to him by slamming his head into the door of his car during an accident. This client believed he was Joseph, the father of 'jesus.'

In the same ward, I worked with the son of jesus - he was the son because he had.... red hair. That was the proof.

Both of these clients had narcissitic features (one of them had a narcissistic personality disorder prior to the accident) and both tended to express paranoid defenses as well. One interesting feature of psychosis is that psychotics are often able to recognize psychosis in others quite well. For example, joseph and the son of jesus both realized that the other guy was suffering from a delusion. One day, when they were arguing with each other, I pointed out that the 'joseph' client should be more polite to the "son of jesus' client.... when he asked why, I sad "because he's your grandson'.

I could provide more detail, but I have to ensure that I don't reveal anything that could identify them.... but I can talk more about the concept of psychosis:

** More detail about the concept of psychosis:

Psychotic clients present as disorganized. If they are able to muster a facade of normalcy at all, it comes apart after a brief contact with you. They present other people as purple aliens - 1 dimensional and flat characterizations. However, they may also be finely attuned to the emotions of others in interactions. They may face extreme difficulties and have questions involving basic identity and basic will-to-live issues. They tend to experience psychotic transferences, where the object transferred (the therapist) is taken in internally without the observing ego playing a part. In other words, the therapist IS the threatening object. You’ll see this with paranoid clients. They are far more likely to suffer Id resistances than any other client. Anxiety is global, and they have a need to defend against a violently dangerous world. They face fears of fragmentation, even annihilation. They do best with supportive therapy, which provides them with basic safety (See Erickson). Note: psychotic patients don’t all dress up as Napoleon - it is important to realize that there are psychotic clients who function well enough to present as out patients. Additionally, any person can face a brief psychotic episode, particularly after a traumatic event.

Types of defenses: Primitive withdrawal, denial, omnipotent control (psychopaths), primitive fantasy (psychopaths), projection (paranoids), projective identification (paranoids again), disassociation,

i don't think there is anyway for you to distinguish when your senses are engaged whether they are engaged in something "real" or "fake"

 

psychologists have empirically (and subjectively) assigned a norm and prescribe medicines so schizophrenics and manic depressives, etc. can adjust to this norm and be a part of society.

That makes sense to me on a certain level.

Obviously you have more experience working with this population than I do and probably know more about the research base.

I was wondering what you think of the conceptualization that they are hearing voices that are telling them whatever...... and due to the religious socialization of society their interpretation is that it iis God and then the delusions and so forth take on a more religious meaning.

Just a thought.

To treat a mental disorder is to make a value judgement on reality --or at least on the way the world should be perceived-- in the same way that saying "there should not be suffering" is a value judgement.The psychologist/psychiatrist doesn't have to take any role in the way a person perceives the world-he could just let the schizophrenic person be; who knows the schizophrenic may have it right, and the rest of us have been out of touch with reality the whole time. Only in the case that the psychologist practices humanistic psychology or positive psychology does he/she entail that there is actually some sort of humanness or some positive entity (psyche) associated with a human individual worth preserving, or relieving from suffering.

Another value judgment would be treating an individual with depression in the context of society and societal norms, in which case society would be the entity worth preserving from the perspective of the psychologist/psychiatrist.

"If you talk to God, you are praying. If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia." -Thomas Szasz  I think that sums it up.

Hello it is possible to distinguish between hallucinations and reality. It is perceptually self-evident. You see every thing you see or percieve is in some sense real. It's just a question of- what is it?

You can't percieve something that does not exist cause if something does not exist then it is nothing, nothing at all, and thus thier would be nothing to percieve.

Hallucination and real things, they are attributes of you, of your sensory systems, of your nervous system. They are onlly "not real" in the sense that they are not in external reality.

When a sane person experience a hallucnination they know it immdeiately cause it does not apear to be in externaly reality, not really. It appears to be exaclty what it is: a sensory effect integrated with his awareness of external relaity. An insane person may believe his hallucniation are in external reality, but this is because he is ISANE. He can not consider the self evident fact before him. He is taken in my the superficial and forms delusions from it.

In other words, halucination, do not look real. They do not look like external reality. They look like sensory effetcs. This is true even of very vivid hallucninations of say a person that is not there. A sane person can see this instantly, a crazy person may not. Talk with a schizophenic who is well medicated or in remisson. They will confirm this. Theyb will also tell you that sane people who have no experience with thses issues are full of all kinds of misconceptions about what it is like to be schizophenic and what it is like to hallucinate.

Another dumbass necroposter. How quaint...

Everything is perceptually self evident if if the sense you use to perceive is vision for example.  To touch on your earlier post, and to draw from my personal experience with LSD, it is impossible at the time to determine reality.  

 

I'm not even sure what you mean by that? Are you trying to make an epistemological statement on rationalism v.s. empiricism?  Are you able to perceive number 7?  What you wrote makes no sense.

huh? 

So how many types of reality are there? Do you normally get paid of internally real dollars, or externally real dollars, or transcendently real dollars perhaps?  There's only one reality, if you perceive something other then this reality, you are delusional and your delusions are not real.

wtf? lol depending on your definition of 'sane' a SANE person (of sound mind) is unable to experience hallucinations.  If that SANE person became temporarily or permanently INSANE, and said person had no expectation of said transition (such as knowingly taking LSD) it would be very difficult for them to distinguish reality from delusion.  I'm sure they would realize something is completely wrong, but they would not be able to distinguish if a dog is real or imaginary. 

I can tell you from personal experience, that while under the influence the hallucinations seem most definitely real.  In retrospect they are easily distinguished as such, but if you take LSD for the rest of your life, you would have no way of knowing if what you saw was real or not.  

When I took LSD, logic did indeed shut down for the duration.  You do go in and out during the high, it works in waves.  For example, my friend and I spend 20 minutes trying to tie our shoes, after which I realized  how it works and did it perfectly, only to stare at a clock for 30 minutes trying to figure out what time it was five minutes after.  I stopped taking it precisely because my logic was non existent during the trip.  I have many such anecdotes but bottom line is, while the hallucinations were happening, I was not aware that I was hallucinating.  10 minutes later it was quite evident, and so on, up and down.  

Also, I was expecting to hallucinate because I knowingly took the LSD, in a scenario where I was given it without my knowledge, I would have realized something is very wrong, but would have not been able to distinguish between reality and hallucination.

I agree. I tripped a least a hundred times or so and probably more from 1968 to 1978 and you do not believe that the psychoactive occurance is real. It is that simple. Perhaps with Jimson Weed.  I  have luekemia and so am being treated with VFend which protects me from any type of fungus. The pleasent side effect for several days were visualiaztions that were more precise than LSD in many ways with out the intense background effect.  In fact immediate and precise visualizations were possible.

What automatic visions I had why very detailed were still understood to be exactly what they were mental images.

Hi Ktulu my logic and perception increased from LSD. Of course that was the good stuff back in 1968 to 78. By the late 70's it the quality had diminished.  It was control of attention that seem to allude me at times. Sometimes as you indicated you were focused for a long while on one object at other times similar ro pot you wandered.  Synthetic Mescaline was mellower and STP lasted a couple three days. One tends to have an organic and physical religious experience in which all is one. or at least I did.

 

 

 

 

Hey Tommy, I missed the 60's myself. Really, when John Glenn set foot on the moon, I was so young that I was most impressed at watching TV made my my next door neighbor's TV camera (he was an electrical engineer for CBS labs). In any case, I remember the stuff from the 80's and 90's myself.

 

The main difference between my acid and yours was that the potency was lower. Well, we had four way hits that corrected for that but if you actually broke them up, they were supposedly in the range of 50-100 mics per hit.

 

Then too, hasn't there always been bad acid around? I know that every time something new hit the street, we would wait a couple of weeks to see what other people thought. Heck but it was no real problem to buy a couple of tabs of stuff that nobody had any issues with. That would last for the time we needed to find out if it was good.

 

As far as telling real from illusion, my memory was that it also depended on just how much one took. If you only got a little high, then a three minute song might seem to go on for a couple of hours but in the back of the mind, you kinda knew what was up with that. On the other hand, if you got fairly well lit, then if you did sort of know, you really didn't care. A couple of examples might help.

 

Once I was mildly tripping in the public library. Walking across the floor, my feet were sinking into the carpet like it was made from pudding or something. But I was only a little bit lit and I knew that was because I was tripping.

 

Another time, also in the library, I realized that the book shelves closest to me were two shelves tall. Then next ones were three shelves tall, then four shelves, five shelves and so on. I remember thinking that they might just go on for a good long way. If I went up them, I might get somewhere cool. I don't recall thinking about getting to the second floor that way so much as getting somewhere worth going. So yah, that was real enough at the time.

 

Now, nobody ever said anything to me about trying to walk across the book shelves that way. However, given that people used to tell me what I had done a day or so later, I tend to think that I did not actually make a stoned ass of myself.

 

Well at least not that time. I used to do all sorts of stoned moves. One time, I remember that the dude I was hanging with was far more balls off tripping than I was when we passed a bank. I whipped out whatever card had a magnetic strip and opened the door to the ATM and shoved him inside. Some time later (it could not have been very long) I was walking down the same bit of road and he was jumping around slamming himself against the window like a caged gorilla. I kept walking. When I ran into him the next day, he told me what had happened to him and I administratively declined to mention to him how that came about.