Abstract: The mental health system, profession and care purely works on traditional treatment and rehabilitation using a range of controlling care, stigmatising labels and lifestyles, based on socio-political construction of mental health and mental illness. Despite the number of available and documented research by known psychologists, psychiatrists, and survivors on alternative therapy clearly showing a different perspective of living with mental illness, the individual or the schizophrenic continues facing an existential death. This paper will particularly focus on schizophrenia and the prescribed models of recovery versus possible models of living.
I have organised my paper into three main sections. The first section looks at Art being defined as slyness, trickery, or craftiness within the socio-political construction of the mental health system. Madness in this context is the foolishness of the profession, the system, and the care in respect to the madness of an individual. In the second section, Art means the creative act meant to communicate or express the senses, the experiences, the mind inspired by the madness of the said schizophrenic who learns to express his symptoms through a creative medium. I end the third section, where Art is used to mean the skill to live in madness, i.e. in being the schizophrenic and the meaning the person derives from his or her experiences that contributes to the evolvement of the ‘soul’ through the symptoms. I would be addressing these accounts through an auto-ethnography approach of living with paranoid schizophrenia without medications, and how I, as a schizophrenic being, have studied myself, my symptoms and my creativity to live with a condition that science says has no cure. The sections will question the age-old ideas of psychosis and medical models of recovery which destroy the actual ‘nature’ of being.
Keywords: paranoid schizophrenia, alternative approaches, mental health system, mental illness, recovery methods, within madness
The mental health system, profession and care purely works on traditional treatment and rehabilitation using a range of controlling care, stigmatising labels and lifestyles, based on socio-political construction of mental health and mental illness (Walker). Despite the number of available and documented research by known psychologists, psychiatrists, and survivors on alternative therapy clearly showing a different perspective of living with mental illness, the individual or the schizophrenic continues facing an existential death. This paper will particularly focus on schizophrenia and the prescribed models of recovery versus possible models of living. Another purpose is to bring to light multiple perspectives of schizophrenia which has a different purpose in nature and being. To limit it to a psychiatric disorder amounts to turning a blind eye to schizophrenia’s other dimensions.
I have organised my paper into three main sections. The first section looks at Art being defined as slyness, trickery, or craftiness within the socio-political construction of the mental health system. Madness in this context is the foolishness of the profession, the system, and the care in respect to the madness of an individual. In the second section, Art means the creative act meant to communicate or express the senses, the experiences, the mind inspired by the madness of the said schizophrenic who learns to express his symptoms through a creative medium. I end the third section, where Art is used to mean the skill to live in madness, i.e. in being the schizophrenic and the meaning the person derives from his or her experiences that contributes to the evolvement of the ‘soul’ through the symptoms. I would be addressing these accounts through an auto-ethnography approach of living with paranoid schizophrenia without medications, and how I, as a schizophrenic being, have studied myself, my symptoms and my creativity to live with a condition that science says has no cure. The sections will question the age-old ideas of psychosis and medical models of recovery which destroy the actual ‘nature’ of being.
THE ART WITHIN MADNESS: The Outside World
Psychiatric models and terminologies have given birth to a discriminating existence to an individual who is diagnosed with mental illness, especially schizophrenia. This is a disease of the disease. This labeling might have made treatment and recovery possible only in the eyes of the professional practitioners but not from the eyes of the patient and their socio-cultural environment and background. The terms, the language, the words are the chain that creates an illusion of illness and recovery and further destroys possible platforms of recovery and lifestyle choices. This is the madness within the wall of recovery that looks at recovery from restrictive lenses instead of the freedom in being and expressing.
Portrait of the Schizophrenic
Throughout history, psychiatric care, hospitals and institutionalisation have been the foundation stone for building recovery in the schizophrenic person. This is then followed by forced or tricked medical treatment for those who can afford to keep the schizophrenic at home. Many families, guardians, or those living with the schizophrenic person go through periods of shuffling between care at home and hospitals, institutions, and asylums. The schizophrenic then finds himself a place in the hearts of these walls. It’s within a period of time where he then is in a confused romance and decides to just be with the walls. He surrenders his needs and wants, his desires and temptations, his ideas and philosophies for this prejudiced relationship that stemmed from an arranged marriage and he can no longer find it in him to divorce her.1
For him, this is the relationship he has always known, always had, and always will continue having until he eventually faces a physical death. He becomes the unfortunate romantic fool, who wouldn’t look at another woman2 who might offer him a better relationship, who would not nag and force him to do things, nor control him and drive him nuts.
Here lies the contradiction in such recovery where a mad person is being driven into madness. He is kept crazy. He cannot see beyond this new identity which condemns him to a lifetime of being the celebrated madman in pajamas within the four walls.
His make-up artists consist of various side-effects of pharmaceutical drugs. His new look changes from dry mouth, constipation, blurred vision, drowsiness, lactation, sexual dysfunction or no sexual desire, drastic weight gain, restlessness, stiffness, tremors, muscle spasms, tardive – dyskinesia, low white blood cells, and an increased risk in obesity, diabetes, hyperglycemia and high cholesterol. His opposite sex faces all of the above with drastic menstrual conflicts.
This look glamorises the schizophrenic, painting a well- established portrait and if one is found to not fit under this diagnostic look, s/he is questioned if s/he truly is a schizo.3 The schizophrenic director consists of all those involved in being the carer or treater playing dictatorship, Hitlerian do’s and don’ts. The schizo is directed on how to eat, where to sleep, how to behave, what to say, what he should do, what he should not do, what to think, followed by other typical bad parenting traits. The schizo is treated like a child, made to feel like a child, but the system expects him to recover like an adult. This constant conflict and confusion add to the madness in recovery.
The schizo realises that it’s far more peaceful to remain mad and within the walls, because it will allow him to at least just be. The prescribed recovery only seems to drain him of his energy and confuses his abilities in decision making4 and choices5 that every human being is supposed to have. Here lies the question whether one sise fits all models. The situation worsens as the side effects of treatment impair the decision making capacities.6
The supporting actors are newly made friends in the hospitals, or the support groups, or the institutions, and/or the schizophrenic voices and alter egos. These friends are seen as the new kids on the block. They become his comfort, his closest allies and sometimes enemies, his curse and his boon, and he becomes them. This updates his current interest, hobbies and pastimes and ambitions. What he had before is thrown into the bin. This is his new hang out, his new friends, his new look, his new identity, his new environment, his new culture, his new lifestyle and newer ambitions. He lives in this new school and finds himself fitting in, out of choice or not. He eventually builds his identity here, engaging in the routine like everybody else. He discovers a different side of him, which now dominates and/or erases his old self. His lifestyle revolves around waking up like a zombie, walking aimlessly, talking to oneself or to others (real and unreal) pacing back and forth erratically, yelling and smashing things every now and then (due to lack of expression and complete frustration with a monotonous culture).
His ambitions range from getting better to getting better to getting better to getting better until he eventually realises that there isn’t a good enough reason in getting better and eventually takes his own life. His suicide isn’t because the voices were telling him to kill himself, but because the voices eventually got stronger and compensated for what the real people couldn’t offer him. The voices understood his pain better than anyone else. 7
The brush, the colors and the mediums
It is said that there isn’t one particular identified cause for schizophrenia as they ‘can be’ organic, substance induced, and very often hereditary. In fact, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association and other psychiatric journals, mental illness is most often inherited. A schizophrenic mother will positively pass on her illness or symptoms to her children or possibly skip a generation. A family with a history of suicide would certainly have a future descendent, as applicable to a history of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and so on.
Therefore, an evolutionarist would point out that it is not a cause but merely the inheritance of the gene which multiplies itself only to adapt and survive as mankind continues evolving. As civilisation and modernism fertilises stress, the gene goes through a constant pressure thereby succumbing itself to transform and adapt. A father who is a Type A Personality – having a history of alcoholism, childhood experiences of climbing trees and hunting wildlife, burning the family car out of argument with his father – will certainly pass these traits to his child. Likewise, a mother who is a Type B Personality – believes in ritualistic prayers and constantly talks to God and asks for protection – will pass her traits to the child she carries. The child born to these parents will not show all of the traits when he is born but will develop them as he faces different struggles in life.8
As he passes through a series of traumatic experiences, some of the traits intensify or multiply as defense or coping mechanisms which can be described as an over-expression of that particular trait according to the present socio-cultural norm and all of that which influences him. So if his father’s expression of anger, in the year 1970, was to burn the family car, then it would be logical to conclude that this child in the year 2002 would express this same trait as burning the house down along with the father. Psychiatry then fails to look at the resemblances of the gene. It’s absurd to treat a gene and categorise it under a diagnosis of a mental illness.9 The DSM categorises every possible trait into a diagnostic symptom. The individual will show signs of positive symptoms, negative symptoms, and cognitive disorders. These symptoms then are broken down into further sub-symptoms thereby wiping away any possible actual traits of the individual’s personality.
From the eyes of the experience, there is always a cause or trigger of the repressed gene or trait more so than stress being the only factor of trigger. Along with the main repressed trait, there will arise a list of accompanying characteristics, creating a chain reaction of these traits that might seem contradictory at certain situations. The symptom classified as ‘delusion of grandiosity’, finds me believing that I am a famous person or I am going to be a famous person. While growing up, I observed through media, that every famous person faces a threat, or harassment, is being spied on, and automatically has to be suspicious of everyone. The psychiatric diagnosis terms this as ‘delusions of persecution’. This isn’t a separate symptom but only caused by the original idea of my self-image as I grew up. Which person living or dead have not lived their versions of grandiosity and accompanied by the inability to trust easily?
A 22 year old female, fallen madly in love would start dreaming endlessly about her new lover, often engaging in fantasy role-plays, watching only romance movies and reading the such, singing love songs in the shower and having imaginary conversations just before a date. She would make remarks such as:
“I see red roses everywhere.”
“Even the movie I saw the other day had the same message.” “There was a supplement in today’s newspaper on how red roses
signify passionate love.”
She calls her best friend and screams: “Oh my god, I am getting all the signs. He is my true love.”
Substituting this feel good experience into that of a victim of rape or violence or any other traumatic experience will have a different usage of words, messages and signs which automatically seem to fall under the criteria of a psychosis. The victim will show signs of withdrawal, suspiciousness, apathy, that everyone’s ‘out to get’ her, hearing of her perpetrators voice, lack of emotion, social isolation, low energy, suicidal behaviour. Over a period of years, these natural reactions dominate her previous known reactions and she is automatically a schizophrenic. The treatment and recovery is made on the grounds of the so-called symptoms, without taking into consideration a highly plausible cause of such behaviour that requires recovery and healing.
The Muse; the Model
The medical model of recovery is understood as ‘to get back into the outside world so as to be able to sustain and care for oneself or stand on one’s own feet financially and be independent.’ From the Recovery versus Medical Model, Spiritual Competency Resource Centre:
The medical model tends to define recovery in negative terms (e.g., symptoms and complaints that need to be eliminated, disorders that need to be cured or removed). Mark Ragins, MD observed that focusing on recovery does discount the seriousness of the conditions. For severe mental illness it may seem almost dishonest to talk about recovery. After all, the conditions are likely to persist, in at least some form, indefinitely. How can someone recover from an incurable illness? The way out of this dilemma is by realising that, whereas the illness is the object of curative treatment efforts, it is the persons themselves who are the objects of recovery efforts. (See http://www.spiritualcompetency.com/)
The schizophrenic in remission gets back to finding some employment and to seeking love and affection. The person tries to maintain a socially acceptable lifestyle, and continues doing what he did as he understands himself to be at that point in time. He doesn’t know and is not prepared for the sharks in the outside world. He isn’t equipped with the required skills he had lost while in treatment. He doesn’t understand the change in culture and environment as he was surrounded by a different reality during his diagnosed identity. The outside world looks strange to him, people now dress differently, talk differently, act differently, and do things differently. Backstabbers and ‘bitches’ are meaner, politics and diplomacy seems gibberish; he is seen as the epitome of being an alien, an outsider, an outcast, an exotic creature. He gets used physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, socially, academically. His very existence and being are constantly ripped off him. This vicious circle of being taken advantage of pushes him into further social isolation and suspiciousness.
Recovery models should not have to focus on getting back to work or employment or school, but instead, on getting the individual back in ‘groove’. Every individual will have their own idea of recovery and what they understand to be a functional life.10 Simple everyday battles, such as, learning to make one’s own bed, self-care which includes grooming and good hygiene, going to places of worship, paying bills, running household errands or chores, reading, social interaction, and many other tasks need to be re-learnt.
The focus is on a life-long self-effort and self-models of recovery and the quality of life. A common principle in weight loss programs and workout regimens:
“….it is not losing weight that is the final goal, it is learning how to maintain that loss which is the most difficult and time consuming life-long self-investment.”
THE ART WITHIN MADNESS: A Possible World
In an interesting partial anticipation of the ideas of the R-complex, the American philosopher Susanne Langer wrote:
Human life is shot through and through with ritual, as it is also with animalian practices. It is an intricate fabric of reason and rite, of knowledge and religion, prose and poetry, fact and dream…. Ritual, like art, is essentially the active termination of a symbolic transformation of experience…it is born of an elementary need…. (Sagan 63)
Does insanity induce creativity? OR is it that creativity induces insanity?
There are a number of great geniuses, musicians, artists, writers, and scientists who have had different forms of mental illness or mental breakdowns. Isaac Newton, Robert Schumann, Friedrich Nietzsche, Vincent Van Gogh, Edward Munch, Virginia Woolf, Guy de Maupassant, Johannes Friedrich Hölderlin, Camille Claudel. (Stahl Chapter 1.1)
Stahl quoting Dr. Paul Hauck on depression and the need to communicate:
And we all experience anger and fear on a daily basis. Nearly all cases of depression are self-inflicted and
that only through understanding the deeper psychological roots for the depression; one can thoroughly heal oneself from it. Antidepressant drugs play a major role taking a patient out of a current depression, but they are unlikely to truly repair the patients psyche. Most people who suffer from depression, artists and non-artists alike, experience a strong desire to work creatively during such a depression. The reason for this is the fact that the depressed feels the desire to communicate and thus share this horrendous feeling; to tell others about the pain in an appropriate way. Straight words are often too banal and limited in their expression to communicate something rooted so deeply and which seems so important. (Stahl Chapter 1.3a)
A personal account of battling a ten day affair with suicide: Five moons gone…
you only led me into disillusionment, why? Why do you tease me like the tide does a surfer?
I rested, and kept resting in hope you would carry me away
alas, you only kept me awaiting
I broke inside, throbbed in pain, beat myself up but only in vain… I succumbed to all your rules,
but you played me, you arrogant bastard! You only kept me in vain…
I’ve heard of your ways
I’ve seen you embrace others before me…
O’ how I have only stood in envy watching… They drift away with you…
you arrogant bastard! You know I call for you but you only tease me again
like the blood does a vampire
Is it because I have refused to bleed…? Is it because I changed the rules…?
Is it because I manipulated the blade…? You son of a bitch! You teased me again! You left me…
cold and alone…
torn and abandoned… attached yet distant…
I am incapable of loving any other anymore
but you…
…you bloody hitchhiker! You come as you wish…
and disappear in the light leaving me stranded as before…incapable of loving any other (Rankouss)
There is a certain divinity in taking one’s life, a kind of ultimate control for which we are all looking. However, suicide is hardly ever caused by creativity because creativity when adequately recognised by the artist should add to their self-esteem. In fact creativity is rather a means to deal with such highly destructive feelings and it helps the affected person to communicate these painful and dangerous feelings. (Stahl Chapter 1.3c)
THE ART WITHIN MADNESS: The Inner World
Every individual seeks to find his or her own meaning in life and to give meaning to their experiences. In doing so, they create their own recovery and healing process. Likewise, I create my own meaning of this illness or disease. I now have come to know that there are many others living with schizophrenia and are off medications. I still continue having certain days that disable me, but during what others perceive to be ‘disabled’, I am being capable in a different reality of my own.
Henri Ellenberger, in his encyclopedic The Discovery of the Unconscious (1970), speaks of how Jung underwent a form of ‘creative illness’ similar to that suffered by Freud at an identical period (i.e. between the ages of 38 and 43). This illness strikes after a time of intense intellectual activity and resembles a neurosis or psychosis where the sufferer grows convinced that he is beyond outside help, becomes socially isolated, and turns deeper into his own self.
A sense of euphoria and a transformation of the personality occur immediately after recovery sets in and the subject feels that he has gained insight into important truths and believes that he has a duty to share these with the world (Stevens 35). This description fits the symptoms of schizophrenia which were described by Eugen Bleuler in 1908.
I hold a mirror, but it does not face me
We grow up learning to adjust to be accepted by the people and society around us. We are conditioned to fit in everywhere and with everyone. We look at others and allow our true evolutionary gene to mimic the very next fur coated Homo sapien. By doing so, we forget to look at our true selves. Born a Hindu, but raised along with other races and religions, I was that child who hung around with Gods and Goddesses with multiple arms, multiple faces, multiple powers, multiple avatars or egos, multiple partners and gender identities, multiple roles, multiple curses and boons. I was also introduced to Sunday school and learnt about the newest conversion called Christianity. Along with Christ, came Gautama Buddha, another stream of faith leading many families and individuals calling themselves Buddhists. Then, the religion that ruled Malaysia, the country I was born in: Islam.
I could be oblivious and ignore the reasons behind any of the laws or ways of faiths above but I wasn’t such a child to not question anything. In fact, I was only thrown out of class for asking too many questions. In due course of time, I was ignored or told to be a huge distraction. Eventually, I grew into a trouble maker and was thrown into detention or asked to get out of the class.
So, I was a kid who grew everyday questioning and reflecting about all the above religions. Often would I find myself trying to look like one who follows, or be like a follower. I was only being honest to my monkey gene. This trait obviously followed me into adulthood, but I couldn’t express much of it. It would be crazy. From not being able to communicate this underlying childhood influence which was so important to my psyche of understanding where I came from, it turned into a bloody11 schizophrenic delusion of grandiosity.
This is the problem with the world. They forget what they have influenced us with. They forget what they have fed our minds during those crucial formative years. Then they remove all of it and throw us into a jungle of modernism forcing us to adjust with the new age world of Shah Rukh Khans, Superman, Rockstars, Madonnas, and other similar ‘real’ individuals who live in their grandiosities.
Look carefully at the following sentence:
I HAVE SCHIZOPHRENIA THEREFORE YOU
DON’T EXIST
What does it actually say?
This happens to be a small part of the symptom of disorganised speech, called word salad. I call it the schizophrenic’s alphabet song. Herein lies hidden codes, secret or divine messages, strongly held beliefs, a feeling of grandiosity, and a particular belief of the self. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, I have all characteristics of delusions and disorganised speech, thought and behaviour. During such symptom manifestations my real world also bears similar resemblances to the content of the symptom.
The Hearings Voices Network believes that the key in understanding voices lies in the ‘content’ of the voice and it is important to give the hearers a safe environment to talk about their voice hearing experience.
I am in love…
I see things that others can’t see,
I hear things that others can’t hear, I feel what has not touched me,
I taste and smell what other people say don’t exist, I live in a different world called fantasy…
They call me crazy; they say I suffer all forms of hallucinations. That I need to live in the ‘real’ world…
I am called SCHIZOPHRENIC BUT BOLLYWOOD calls it LOVE!
Romance it is then and God bless Shakespeare for helping me understand the tragedy and comedy that comes with it. So I evolved from the romantic fool for others to the romantic fool for myself.
On the similar lines of Jung’s creative illness I relate my existence to the Concept of Dread by Kierkegaard where Angst is understood as a profound and deep-seated spiritual condition of insecurity and fear in the free human being. Where one discovers true freedom of being but where freedom in itself is not free (Kaufmann 105). I have had moments of being a slave to my instincts, which are otherwise interpreted as psychotic breakdowns. In these instinctual moments or unconsciousness, one becomes a free animal, an instinctual addiction that has to be controlled. From living in fear of oneself I now live in the dread of myself.
Today, as I have made a conscious choice to not succumb to psychiatric treatment as I wish to live my symptoms, I have understood that I face the similar angst as I now have the animal instinct constantly churning within me but I have to be very conscious of any action I may choose under such unconscious influences. I have to be conscious of my unconscious states at all points.
Madness is the accepted murder of the real world (Rankouss)
The Bitter-Sweet Symphony
Apart from the conscious and the unconscious, we have the subconscious where we dream. Our dreams often feel so real that we believe we have been there, touched that person, animal or thing. We are convinced that the scene, act, or event has actually taken place. We wake up in a puddle of sweat, or tears, or confusion, or disorientation, or laughter, or cries or orgasm. We wake up unconsciously reacting according to the content of the dream. Until, our partner, or mother, or pet shakes us and we are reminded to open our eyes realising ‘Oh it was only a dream.’ What this exclamation is saying is ‘It was only another reality, another world…and it’s over. I am not there now.’
Dreams are our subconscious doing its work12 because we are so conditioned to not deal with issues that otherwise trouble us everyday. We paint a poker-face and move on, locking all those emotions and feelings up and burying them deep inside,13 promising ourselves to never open that chest. Many people are able to live their life doing this. The schizophrenic does not need a dream. They live it. The eyes are open; it is only unfortunate that they have no control over shutting it.
The symbolic meanings that dream interpreters try to decipher are just the same as that of the schizophrenic saying: ‘that is a sign’ or ‘that is a message’. The schizophrenic thinks and sees in symbolic language. This is where the conflict of realities causes the madness.
My bitter-sweet symphony continues being a paradox in recovery. When a so-called normal person gets angry, one can find them storming out of meetings, throwing things around, cursing the other with foul language, or simply walking off, but when a schizophrenic does so this is seen as a symptom. I am not allowed to even be angry nor express it just like everybody else.14 Thus I simply ask how you would like me to recover and be like everybody else when I cannot express negative feelings just like everybody else. I have a lot more expectation to be in control of my feelings and behaviour which is nothing but a passive state of being and an on-going existential death.
Brush Strokes
I began searching for my self through my other selves. I started swimming into the ocean of unconsciousness because I did not quite have a choice there. I was already there. I had to learn how to breathe, snorkel, scuba-dive, learn different strokes, and swim amongst the great sharks, friendly dolphins, stinging ray fish, comforting whales, and where the ravaging piranhas all dwell. This exploration of all selves is called The Archetypes15resembling Plato’s Ideas (Stevens 48). These archetypes are categorised as the self, the ego, the persona, the shadow, the anima and the animus. Of all five, the shadow is seen to be the most important to master or conquer. This dark companion is our greatest enemy and potentially the most dangerous, having a very distressing way of reminding us of its presence. Just as a child will show delight and joy when approached by his mother, he will also show signs of weariness and withdrawal when approached by a stranger (Stevens 64).
Sketching
Shadow16 said ‘I am always with you, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind; sometimes beside
…you just don’t see me in the dark…
Yet, you choose to look at Reflection and play with Ego. – Draca17 After I started accepting my inner appearance, I realised I was
also changing my outer appearance, that is my physical appearance: the way I saw myself instead of the way people saw me. I learnt to live this shadow image I had buried inside me as society, 18 family and friends had an issue with that darkness. I simply stopped suppressing it and allowed it to show. I also realised I could live it without committing the acts that are associated with it by years of misunderstandings and misinterpretations that the outside world attached to dark existences. I accepted that dragon19 in me.
“Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts.” – The Buddha
Conclusion
By examining my personal experience before medications, during medications and without medications, I have realised that the experiences I have encountered have numerous meanings which might not necessarily make sense to another; but the meaning I derive from it is what helps me make meaning of it without being in much distressed. I have taken into consideration that every schizophrenic comes with his or her set of personalities, social and economic background, intellectual and cultural background and life challenges, therefore their idea of recovery and being will be very different than that of mine but it isn’t an impossibility provided if they are shown a way to derive their own meaning to their condition. This touches upon the need to see the person behind the label as no two schizophrenics are the same; neither are any two people. Therefore there cannot be a ‘one sise fits all’ model of recovery for anyone. I indefinitely do not believe this to be an illness of the mind but an Illness of the Soul20 and hence, everything has to be explored and examined.
NOTES
1 The psychiatric model system
2 A different approach to care and treatment
3 After losing weight and working on my self-image to what I was before the treatment, I had many people exclaim: ‘You can’t be schizophrenic you don’t look schizophrenic’ or ‘Does she really have schizophrenia?’ ‘She doesn’t look like one.’
4See http://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/newsarticle.aspx?articleid= 107408.
5 http://www.un.org/disabilities/default.asp?id=272.
6http://missinglink.ucsf.edu/lm/ethics/content%20pages/fast_fact_ competence.htm.
7 The understanding of the voices here is based purely upon my personal experience. It might or might not apply to all who live with such symptoms.
8 Psychosocial theory of development by Erik Erikson (Wade 512)
9 It is valid to make the comparison with certain breed of dogs, such as Rottweiler, that were bred and trained throughout the years for a particular purpose that man thought it could offer: trained to kill. The most feared man’s best friend had to face a ban in some countries and in the hearts of many. Today a new generation of love and care in a Rottweiler’s training has changed its personality from killer to therapist and show dog.
10 I constantly question ‘the need of recovery’ when I might be very happy in a separate reality that others cannot experience. This in itself makes me feel grandiose, even though it robs me off simple activities as filling forms, going to the bank or cleaning. At times, normal necessary activities are of no importance to me.
11 The word bloody is not used as a curse but to mean stains of a schizophrenic blood implying ‘once a schizophrenic always a schizophrenic’ as anything we express or feel is seen as a symptom.
12 “Will it not be enough to say that in dreams anything is possible – from the deepest degradation of mental life to an exaltation of it which is rare in waking hours? Sigmund Freud” (Quoted in Tandan 13)
13 Jung’s Personal Unconscious: The dumping ground where all our repressed memories and that which we do not wish to think about consciously.
14 I got angry because you said something that hurt me, and not because the voices told me so! (Rankouss)
15 Jung’s hypothesis of the collective unconscious (Stevens 47).
16 I focus this paper on my shadow consciousness, as this has always been a dominating influence in my life and continues to be so.
17 The dominant ‘controlling’ male voice which I named and gave an appearance I could live and relate to, thus helping me understand my states of depersonalisations or alter ego switches.
18 The moral complex imposes severe restraints on the Self, much of which is necessarily relegated to the shadow, where it is experienced – when it is experienced – as a threat. To defend ourselves from this threat, and to sustain our peace of mind, we make use of a variety of ego-defense mechanisms, particularly repression, denial, and projection. Not only do we repress the shadow in the personal unconscious, but we deny its existence in ourselves, and project it out on to others. This is done quite unconsciously: we are not aware that we do it. It is an act of ego-preservation which enables us to deny our own ‘badness’ and to attribute it to others, whom we then hold responsible for. This shadow projection is when one’s own hostile and persecutory feelings are disowned, and are projected on to others who are then perceived as being hostile and persecutory to oneself (see Stevens 66).
19 Might schizophrenia be what happens when the dragons are no longer safely chained at night; when they break the left-hemisphere shackles and burst forth in daylight? (Sagan 210).
20 A term I coin to reinvent and give meaning to what madness means.
REFERENCES
Buddhist Quotes and Sayings: A View On Buddhism. Web. Hearing Voices Network. hearing-voices.org. 2008. Web.
Kaufmann, Walter. Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre. New York: Penguin, 1975.
Rankouss, Ilex. A Journal of My Alter Ego. Self-written notes during therapy, 2011.
Sagan, Carl. The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence. New York: Ballantine, 1977.
Stahl, Anne. Till Death Do Us Part: The Marriage of Art and Madness.
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Stevens, Anthony. Jung: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford UP, 2001. Tandan, Madhu. Dreams & Beyond: Finding Your Way in the Dark. India: Hay
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Walker, M. T. ”The Social Construction of Mental Illness and its Implications for the Recovery Model”. International Journal of Psychosocial Rehabilitation. 10 .1, (2006). 71-87. Web.
Contributor:
RESHMA VALLIAPPAN. (Founder-Director of Mind Arcs/The Red Door and Ashoka Fellow and Ink Fellow) She is the protagonist of a documentary that received several national awards based on her own recovery of paranoid schizophrenia without medications called ‘A Drop of Sunshine’. Battling several other health issues caused by a brain tumour, her work uses a variety of creative tools to address issues and challenge stereotypical models of mental illness. She is involved in cross disability alliances and is also a member of a global group working towards building solutions and making changes at policy levels through the implementation of UNCRPD. She is a guest lecturer, painter, story teller, mime artist, writer, speaker, martial artist, dancer and a manager for all her alter egos. She has also developed a course module on Mental Health and Sexuality for CREA’s course on Disability & Sexuality. Currently she is pursuing double masters. Reshma’s personal story has been published in a textbook by Gale Publishers, “Mental Illness: Issues that Concern You”. The first sequel of her autobiography will be published in a month by Kali for Women. At present, she is associated with Jnana Deepa Vidyapeeth, Pune.
