If jesus was alive in the time of psychiatry he'd have gone back to being a carpenter

This is a quote from a psychiatrist. I think I read it at psychquotes.org.

It says a lot or perhaps I can find a lot of meaning in it.

Jesus would have been mostly likely diagnosed with schizophrenia. His experiences of god are now pathologised as schizophrenia. Its possible to see other saints and prophets may also be diagnosed with schizophrenia in the psychiatric interpretation of this experience of an altered reality. Moses spoke to a burning bush. Muhammed was said to go pale and feverish as he spoke the words which became the quran. In fact it was his wife, Sara, who wrote the quran since he was not in a state to transcribe it.

I think in other posts I've spoken about how posychiatry replaces religion's role in understanding these unusual experiences. Psychiatry doesn't attempt to find meaning in people's delusions and hallucinations. Pioneers like RD Laing thought there may be meaning to the madness but few psychiatrists listen.

Psychiatry sees the experiences which jesus had as spurious and without meaning. I disgree over this matter of opinion but psychiatry enforces its perspective on patients.

This psychiatrist in essence describes a mode of treatment: continuation of life course. Jesus went from being a carpenter to being a hippie bum. It was lucky that at the time most people were poor so when this schizophrenic dropped out of normal life to become this altrusitic hippie guy and do all those good things which were retold down the generations. If he were born today he'd be dealt with differently.

In fact modern psychiatry doesn't do enough to help a person continue their life course after a psychotic break. This is what is most interesting to me. The idea is that psychiatry makes life crisis just a blip in a personls life course. This isn't true but it should be for those who chose to find no meaning in their experience.

I had my first psychotic break about 9 years ago. I saw auras and spoke to god. My experience of reality was significantly shifted.

I was diagnosed with bipolar with paranoid features.  I was labelled crazy and sectioned and drugged. I was fired from a well paid graduate job at an award winning blue chip company.

For a year I didn't work. I just got drunk and stoned. I've never stopped really. My first job was putting leaflets through people's letter boxes telling them when their refuse would be collected. Then I had a job collecting and distributing post in a large council department.

This wasn't a continuation of life course after a psychotic episode. My life went downhill quickly. I managed to work myself up in the organisation but I have never really recovered my life course.

I'm not fucking jesus either. I'm just a person trying to survive. The fact is I now avoid psychiatry unless I'm desperate and then they don't help me anyway.

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