answer. It is not something which is a succinct answer or one which may
make sense to the lay person or those without an in-depth understanding
of the nature of psychiatry.
First and foremost it is not an illness. This is bullshit. The use of
the paradigm of illness and the label of schizophrenia has enabled a
broad range of types of people to be subjugated by psychiatrists from
black campaigners to communists to what might be considered a true
schizophrenic.
A true schizophrenic (and I really mean dementia praecox so that
includes schizoaffective and bipolar) is a different type of human being
to the automoton type, the one which is like a robot. This, in fact, is
probably not accurate enough.
I would guess many schizophrenics are artists, philosophers or monks.
They may also take on other roles in life. I believe schizophrenics are
passionate and caring people so they may end up working for charities or
churches. They may be more prevalent in universities than in corporate
environments which require automoton behaviour and performance.
In general they may have a more inward facing experience of reality, by
which I mean they're more in their head than other people. Jung typified
schizophrenics at one end of a spectrum and hysterics at the other.
Hysterics were concerned with the external world and schizophrenics were
concerned with the internal world.
Delusions and hallucinations are what people often associate with
schizophrenics. This may not always be present but I would guess that it
is common. I think what would be more common is the internal focus of
consciousness and reality, which can sometimes be at the cost of
external reality and the demands of modern developed world society. For
example in Inida there are Sadus who can perform amazing feats of
strength and offer wisdom to the community but they are often unwashed,
live poor and have little concern for the trappings and constructs of
modern Indian city life. They also smoke a lot of weed...much like true
Rastas.
The diagnosis of schizophrenia is used for many purposes. In practice it
has been used for social control since its inception. It still is. Black
men are overdiagnosed with schizophrenia by psychiatrists in the UK and
US but not those in the West Indies. The reason, in my opinion, is
related tot he change in the diagnosis during the 1960s and 70s. The
chemical cosh or major tranquiliser was advertised to the American
public for its power to suppress angry black men. The drug is used for
this reason today. This may be the underlying reason as well as
sociopolitical pressures which mean the diagnosis is used to suppress
black men.
While it is a false construct there are some parts which are real. On
measures of disability schizophrenia scores very highly. The live
shorter, worse lives. 10% kill themselves and a large number of these
suicides happen in the early stages. The transition period from
automoton to schizophrenic type can be hell on Earth. But once a
schziophrenic type expresses the hell of life and mental healthcare can
be equally damaging to their life such that many kill themselves and I
guess many more would like to rather than live another day.
The pathologisation - by which I mean the stuff which psychiatrists
judged as illness because they observed it from the outside rather than
knowing what the experience was like - is, perhaps, an understanding of
the deepest miseries a human being can go through. I was reading
DSM-IV-TR yesterday in the park and reflecting on my own experiences of
acute psychosis. What ends up being pathologised are natural human
reactions to an intense pain, a pain so deep and so different to what
normal people experience that no one but a person who's been through
could understand what it is like. The suffering is often caused by the
internal 'delusions' and 'hallucinations' (the experiences are very
real, as real as reality itself) though some of it is also caused by
other people, psychiatry and society.
The patholgisation doesn't offer the right answers though. Their only
solution seems to be drugging schizophrenics and treating them as
subhuman. Many end up institutionalised or incarcerated long term in
psychiatric hospitals. Many more end up excluded from mainstream life by
being forced to live on state welfare. Though many want to work the work
systems and workplaces are not set up to accommodate and value this
different human type.
It is my opinion that the schizophrenic type is an essential part of the
human race and a valuable type. The suppression and subjugation of this
type has lead to many of the problems of the modern age. In my opinion
the schizophrenic type are deep and thoughtful, caring and
compassionate, sensitive and loving in ways which automotons could never
understand. In the cold, harsh capitalist reality of modern life there
skills are valued less whereas people who are heartless, greedy, selfish
and shallow are advantaged and rewarded. Schizophrenics can think "out
of the box" whereas automotons are stuck thinking how they've been told
to think. Schziophrenics have high levels of creativity (often
suppressed by the drugs) and this has little value in Industrial age
factory-type work settings but as society evolves to the next level, The
Third Wave as predicted by Alvin Toffler, this quality will become more
valuable than the ability to do the same thing the same way day after day.
But it is definitely not an illness. The negative symptoms are normal
human reactions to a shit of a life. The positive symptoms have been
part of the human condition since human beings evolved different from
apes. The problem is society, teaching, conditioning, and all that other
stuff of the psychosocial model of cause which creates the worse
outcomes in developed world nations. Schizophrenics often do better in
developing world nations.
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