Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2000 19:44:50 +0200
From: John Anderson <panic-AT-semiosix.com>
Subject: Re: mental illness


At 17:25 11/12/00 , Unka Bart wrote:
> >>and his/her return to the culture may be healing for the culture as well.
> >>These practitioners compared the mentally ill to saints, mystics and
> >>prophets (as the psychotic themselves often do).
> >
> >A psychotic reality is different enough to 'our' reality that I don't think
> >one can make a comparison like that.
>
>Well, recognizing that this is a subjective thing, I'm more inclined to
>agree with Ed's thesis regarding some of the NVW (non-violent wackos).

Not all people classified as insane are geniuses/mystics/saints/prophets. 
Sometimes anti-authoritarianism goes too far and romanticises the other 
extreme. So we end up with cool criminals and prophetic psychotics.

But from the other point of view, someone who is psychotic *would* think of 
himself as a saint/mystic/prophet. At a guess, it'd be something like the 
integration of various personality fragments under a strong enough ego is a 
healing process, almost a mystical process. Or maybe it's as simple as "I'm 
right but they just don't understand yet" as a justification of a deep 
discrepancy between the sheet music that most of us read from, and a 
psychotic person's self-composed symphony.

I like the music analogy. You can't say that one piece of music is right 
and another is wrong.

And yes, the return of such a person to 'our' reality can be healing - look 
at that consistently misquoted book "Zen and the art of Motorcycle 
maintenance". But I'd say (for no good reason I can think of right now) 
that the number of people with a return-healing potential is low compared 
to the number of people who are just plain vanilla cuckoo. I wish it 
weren't so.

> >The other difference is that our world
> >is more populated than it was. There's no wilderness to run away to. Well,
> >there is, but you're likely to find park rangers dragging you out of your
> >mystic cave. In short, sainthood, mysticism, shamanism are possible because
> >of a particular social milieu, which doesn't exist anymore. The difference
> >is now irrelevant and they're all mad. Institutionalise the fuckas! Make
> >them normal! But keep the costs down, or we'll take away your government
> >grants.
>
>Well, yes.  But what is your point?

That healing is more likely where there is an 'outside', a space which 
isn't surrounded by the current social system. Such spaces don't exist 
anymore. You can't just walk away into the wilderness, first you have to 
find the wilderness and then walk into it. Or you could just have a break 
down, and men in white coats will come and get ya. But there seems to be 
evidence that incarceration causes the healing process to get stuck. And 
plus there are lots of games you can play with your keepers, even if the 
keepers don't know they're playing. Just ask your dog. But put that dog in 
the wild and she'll get on with living.

Well, OK, I exaggerate, there are wild spaces, but they're generally hard 
to get to - involving things like international travel & special permits. 
Which are kinda hard to come by when your state of mind is such that going 
to buy the paper in the morning means you have to beat back the demons on 
the way.

So now instead of banishment and mystics, we have prisons and mental 
institutions, which are centralised, abstracted state organs. Little bits 
of the great outside made controllable and inside. It's exactly this 
process that the state specialises in. It organ-izes everything.

So now I'm extemporising again instead of pointillicating. But anyway. 
Sometimes I see insanity and its accoutrements as the byproducts of the 
sanitising process called 'growing up'.

bye
John