Psychic or Psychotic?

With this in mind, one might ask, "What is the difference between being mentally ill and prophetic?" My own psychiatrist once gave me the answer:

People who hear voices and see things that aren't there can be classified into two groups. The first group are people who cannot cope with these voices and are called mentally ill. The second group are people who can cope with the voices and are called psychic.

It is my personal belief that being psychic and being psychotic are the same thing depending upon how you cope with it. Society in general regards people who talk to God as holy. But society in general regards people whom God talks to as insane.

Manic depression has been called a brilliant madness because of the expansive ideas that psychosis can create. In days of old, people recognized how mental illness can even be a gift. Socrates once declared, "Our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness, provided the madness is given us by divine gift." Plato referred to insanity as: "a divine gift and the source of the chief blessings granted to men." Native American Indians believed that their voice hearers revealed messages that had great spiritual significance.

The idea of the mad scientist can probably be traced to the grandiose thoughts that intelligent mentally ill people can have. John Nash, a lifetime schizophrenic, received the Nobel Laureate in Economics and his life was portrayed in the movie A Beautiful Mind. Other famous mentally ill people are: Beethoven, Tolstoy, Van Gogh, Keats, Hemingway, Dickens, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Emerson, and Woolf, to name just a few.

Wow Alan, that is very concise and a very good response to those who would prejudge us based on their own ignorance. Thank you very much for posting this.