Very interesting, Albert, Dave, and Vajra.
I find that what you are saying also helps me in organizing my
normal thought processes, by giving insight into how we think,
normally.

quote:
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I've heard that schizophrenics tend to spin out imaginary Worlds
according to what they've learned and experienced throughout their
life. Hopefully they haven't done something such as watch a lot of
horror movies, because this is the type of imagined reality their
mind will create.
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True. I have found that you can deal with this imaginary world by
feeding information to this imagination. Like, don't say, "you are
crazy, that is not how it is at all", rather give them a book to
read, or whatever, with the accurate information in it, and they
will weave this into their partly imaginary world, and with luck,
adjust or replace some of it. Your job then becomes the providing
of a corrective environment to counteract the false things coming
from their imagination. This of course is for a case where they are
not that far off, and are partly rational. I certainly don't envy
Dave and the cases he describes.

Telling them they are crazy may be a good idea some of the
time, but it is damaging to their ego, which is fragile, so they
will try to protect their ego or their mental structures. It may be
part of their imaginary world to insist they are not crazy, and
this can block some of the input they need. There may be a curious
flexibility that enables them to adapt something to fit a
contradictory idea to an inflexible idea.

I see examples of this in the thinking of "normal" people.
Like "God does things in strange ways" is a device, an adaption,
to help explain something that happens that would not be proper
for a good god. This enables retaining the rigid immovable idea of
a good god, in spite the reality of something bad that was allowed
to happen, like accidents, natural disasters or diseases.


What I deal with in the middle East is a kind of mass delusion,
that is culturally normal, and some of this thinking about
schizophrenia may be applied there also.There, the delusion is not
coming from a functionally disturbed mind, but from a cultural
delusion that is taught in religious schools called Madrassas.

quote:
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"Or is it as I'd thought that these secondary views while not very
well grounded are very clearly partitioned   - to the point that it
hops between them without being aware that this is happening."
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There can be some of each: various degrees, of clear partition with
awareness of the partition, or not much partition.

In multiple personality disorder, the partitions may be clear, such
that the person may go through a process to change personalities,
which may be deliberate and take a minute or less. Where you have a
mixture of schizophrenia and spirit attachment, it is hard to tell
which is which. The person may go through a process of allowing a
spirit to come in, which is a specific moment of change. This may
be well partitioned, so you know when the spirit enters of leaves.

But there can also be less partitioned situations, where the
person's imaginary life is mixed in with their ordinary real life,
such that the division between what is real and what is imaginary
is not clear.

Albert in his post described a moment of truth in which he began to
recognize which was real and which was false, and to define that
for himself. I am thinking that I should head toward that in the
case of a person I am dealing with. At the present this person
insists that her imaginary world is true. This is further
complicated by the possibility that some of it could sometimes be a
legitimate paranormal happening of some kind. That is, some of it
could be true. This is very difficult to sort out. I have to keep
picking up each piece of the puzzle and looking at it and wondering
what it means.

A better interpretation of "schizophrenic" is "fragmentary mind", with the sense of a lot of islands of function, but little connectivity. This might reflect some of the neurological divisions of the brain's operation that have failed to integrate.

The model I use is based on the attitudes of the subpersonalities that emerge, whatever their origin might actually be. My impression is that the present day personality has gaps, holes, vacancies etc in certain areas. These seem to be filled by "not-self" fragments that state their intention as forcing the actor to live a good life, or otherwise, to self-destruct. They tend to be very limited in function, not well shaped personalities, as if they were called up from lifetimes long past when things were much more brutal.

Most schizophrenics have normally developed logical capability, but they seem to lack emotional stability. There is no way to "reason with them" or to "talk them out of it". The logic is generally clear that they are unhappy and need assistance, but everything is frightening, and that fear overrides the logic. The result is a generalized panic state that is called up by almost anything. Catatonics, as an example, appear to be so terrified that they are in "possum mode", their bodies frozen into immobility and abandoned to whatever degree is possible. When someone intrudes the usual response is a superhuman strength attack.

The closest I can suggest as an example is to imagine going through life while dreaming, unable to tell what is real, what is projected, and unable to organize thoughts, but being acutely fearful of existential destruction by unknown factors. Clusters of inappropriate random "clang associations" occur simply because they have some common factor, giving a world without boundaries or definitions. Just degrees of chaos. Being caught in a waking nightmare while in a delirium that prevents thought is a good analogy. The most competent can handle a shoping cart filled with tin cans etc, as well as a host of imaginary tormentors, and the rest simply can't cope.

There are two basic modalities of menta deviency. What we usualy think of is hysterical function, which amounts to brooding over something to excess, and then projecting a distorted world because the distortions feel better. We all do this to some extent - false pride is an example. And when the false pride is shown to be false, we go through a "breakdown", which means that we have to abandon our distortions and accept unpleasant reality. The same mechanism is used in meditation, but in that case we turn it so that the regeneration leads deeper into meditation, greater inner silence, and better definition and awareness of reality.

Bipolar types seem to be on the fringes of the same kind of delusional thought as schiz at times, but are grounded in a reality that is often hysterically depressed, or at the other extreme, might be manic, and feeling like God - and ready to "fix the world" even if it means killing off a lot of people. (The resemblance to certain politicians in the modern world is obvious. - We need a mental health screen for Presidential candidates. One example - overcoming a substance addiction is a good sign of potentially good character, but it is not a sign of resolution of the underlying mental factors causing the addiction. Bush's actions in office would have been pretty easily predictable if anyone had thought of matters in this maner.)

dave