Love and schizophrenia
August 14, 2014
The topic is not new. You can do without the connecting conjunction “and”; the hyphen “Love-schizophrenia” is more suitable. These concepts reflect a very complex, two-part phenomenon. They, if we apply Euler’s circles, intersect, although they do not completely coincide, especially in our postmodern age, where many things are mixed beyond recognition. Speaking about love, it should be clarified that I mean not only attraction and passion for a woman, but also, so to speak, in a general sense. The word “love” itself is so hackneyed and worn out that it has long been torn away from its real, traditional meaning and, in truth, does not mean anything other than a general positive attitude. Something like “how are you – normal.” This is simply a confirmation of a certain gravity of one object-subject to another. But sometimes so-called “love” takes on a sinister, fatal character, especially heterosexual love. There is a proverb: “Love is evil, and you will love a goat.” Considering the “chemistry of love”, all sorts of hormones, dopamines, testosterone, etc., it is impossible to see your chosen one in an objective light. The idea that a loved one suffers from a mental disorder, some pathology like schizophrenia or epilepsy, somehow does not occur to me. It's a pity. Then, after the romantic period, “idealization,” another subpersonality opens, and the creepy Mr. Hyde appears, and Dr. Jekyll disappears somewhere. My God. It turns out that he is an alcoholic, an adulterer, a psychopath, an oligophrenic, etc. A set of meanings in a certain context during the period of courtship becomes nothing more than an empty concept, an illusion, a picture, a hallucination in the broad sense. And here we enter the territory of latent schizophrenia. This term means “split of mind”, and earlier this mental disorder was called (Dementia praecox - premature dementia) in general, in my subjective opinion, refers to the specific behavior of a modern person. Now on the basis of virtual technologies: Internet, Skype, social. networks, cell phones, dehumanization of consciousness occurs, the real mind, feelings, relationships turn into “virtual”. Reading and viewing electrical signals on the monitor, we see on the screen “not the real thing,” but its image. This is where the “bizarre” begins. You look at a beautiful picture of a young woman with a charming look, read her “messages” and join in virtual communication, which, unlike the real one, is extremely rich in drawn, invented, ascribed meanings, all sorts of interesting stories, products of creative imagination and sometimes outright lies. You hear and read on the screen, monitor, constant assurances of love and devotion coming to you via email, you see a picture on Skype and you feel like the “center” of attention and adoration. Oh God, how wonderful, amazing, fantastic, super everything is! You have never seen or met your virtual friend, partner, lover, but the connection has already been fixed. Now the signs begin to work on their own and schizophrenia with its very characteristic symptoms turns on: hallucination and delusion. Just don’t think that hallucinations are something scary in the form of spiders running around the room, monsters from “delirium tremens.” Not at all, this is an extreme case. All sorts of “voices” and visions order something to be done, argue among themselves. This is already hospitalization. But let's remember that Soviet psychiatry put dissidents in a mental hospital with a diagnosis of low-grade schizophrenia and turned them into “vegetables.” Agree, various super-valuable ideas and mental constructs such as the coming apocalypse, the death of democracy, the return of Stalinism, the true faith, aliens from the constellation Ursa Major, and so on, are very similar to nonsense. The carriers of this nonsense are already far removed from reality and are in the power of their own simulacra, that is, similarities of realities. Considering that the television box constantly feeds our consciousness with “pictures”, you lose the ability of critical judgment and slowly turn into a “vegetable”, a “zombie”. Your identity, that is, your true self, has been hacked, distorted, and perhaps erased. Your own consciousness is no longer there, it has been replaced by a virtual one. The zombie box, in the voice of Kiselyov or Brilev, broadcasts, they say, there is genocide, fascism, Russophobia in Ukraine, and the information is assimilated and swallowed. The picture is the reality. This is complete schizophrenia, because reality is not a picture at all. It's the same in Love. A real young girl may no longer be a girl and may no longer be quite young, but there is an “image” of her, a virtual copy that is much more attractive. Remember the movie "Surrogates". There, however, everything is too straightforward, expensive equipment, some kind of electronic center and other tinsel. In life, meanings work at deeper levels. A person may not even suspect that he is a hidden schizophrenic, and is triumphantly touched by his usefulness. Now he has achieved everything, life is good, as they say. And the wolves are safe, and the sheep are well-fed, right? Love is a continuous and endless delirium. A lover talks and talks about his feelings for his beloved for hours, days, months, years. He is not even interested in whether the interlocutor is listening to him or has long disappeared from the screen. Who cares. Delirium can only be interrupted by some organic needs, that is, the need to eat, visit the toilet, the desire to sleep, if it appears at all. It would seem that there is nothing special, there is no harm to anyone. That’s how it is, but look at the nonsense that calls itself information about what is happening in the world and, in particular, in Russia. Only recently, during the annexation of Crimea, the media chanted: “Russians do not abandon their own,” rallies, banners. And now, when Russian and non-Russian people are being killed in the South-East of Ukraine and they are fleeing to Mother Russia, which accepts and warms refugees, then why does the slogan “Russians do not abandon their own” turn out to be an empty slogan. How long can you show the suffering of people in a “box”?! A rhetorical question. Why can’t we move the regiments and decide the fate of the so-called National Guard in two days? Where is the meaning? What should we show, like a “poplar” that flies somewhere in Primorye and destroys a target, or our “sushki” masterfully perform pirouettes. So what? Power? Impressive? Just don’t talk about the EU and NATO, geopolitics. Of course, the main source of schizophrenia is television. What can we say, let us remember history, the delirium of greatness of Adolf Hitler, this typical schizophrenic. And here is another example of nonsense. Fight against smoking. The law adopted by the State Duma of the Russian Federation hid cigarettes and brought a trivial issue to the point of absurdity. Maybe it would be better to increase the salaries of nurses and doctors, modernize hospitals, and open social pharmacies. I am sure that this will be much more effective in improving the health of the population. Schizophrenia is a free, one might even say, too arbitrary relationship with reality, with the outside world, when a person stops checking his ideas, maps of reality with the territory. This is turning off criticism of one’s own mental constructs, that is, readiness for delirium and delirium itself. To varying degrees, people mix reality with their ideas. Sometimes it’s better to seem more successful, more promising, dazzling, charming than you really are. Believing in yourself and all that. A schizophrenic lives in a world of his own illusions: cacti, flowers, aliens, insects, talks to stones and trees, angels and cries if something is wrong with them. So, love-schizophrenia, of course, is not just a mental disorder, it is a kind of sign in a broad sense, and before you start communicating with a new acquaintance or stranger on social media. networks, in life, ask for a certificate of his/her mental health, just in case.
R. E. LYUKMANOV.
Interesting about medicine. Is schizophrenia a contagious disease?
Translated from Latin: “Split of the Mind.”
In connection with this translation, many people confuse the concept of schizophrenia with a disease that is accompanied by a split personality. In fact, schizophrenics do not suffer from split personality, it is a completely different disease. Schizophrenia is a chronic disease associated with mental disorders. Patients with schizophrenia have periods of exacerbation and calm.
This disease is accompanied by auditory and visual hallucinations, the patient suffers from delusions, and may have problems with speech. In the world, there are less than 1% of people suffering from this disease. Until now, medicine has not found an exact answer to the question of what causes this disease.
How to live with schizophrenia, how to treat it - these questions also do not have clear answers. In this regard, the mysterious disease is shrouded in myths and assumptions.
Beware of schizophrenia, it is contagious!
A number of European and American scientists, conducting research, discovered a molecular trace of the retovirus in fluid taken from the brain and spinal cord of people suffering from schizophrenia.
The study revealed that 30% of patients suffering from acute mental disorders have this retrovirus. But no traces of the retrovirus could be found in healthy people.
Unlike other viruses, which are made of DNA, retroviruses are made of another genetic material, RNA. Like HIV, the schizophrenia retrovirus can form DNA from its RNA for the purpose of further reproduction. It is almost impossible to stop this process.
And if they originate in one person, they can be passed on from generation to generation. From which scientists came to the conclusion that schizophrenia, like other neuropsychiatric disorders, are viral diseases.
The newspaper “Arguments and Facts” in issue 38 of September 21, 2005 published an article about the famous psychiatrist, Doctor of Medical Sciences Etelius Kazanets. Ethelius argues that schizophrenia is as easy to contract as any other infection. Simple everyday contact is enough.
Back in 70, when Kazanets was working at the Research Institute of the Ministry of Health, he heard about a girl who, while living in a communal apartment, contracted schizophrenia from her friend. Ethelius became interested in this fact and began research. I conducted statistics on 40 houses and got an unexpected result.
About 10% of people living with people with schizophrenia also became susceptible to this disease. He derived a pattern that infection depends on the proximity and frequency of communication with the patient. Kazanets considered adolescents to be most susceptible to this disease during their puberty.
Ethelius read out his sensational discovery at the capital's forum, and then published it in the foreign press. Representatives of the medical community reacted with hostility to his statement, and as a result, Kazanets’s career in Russia was over. He was fired from the Institute of Forensic Psychiatry named after. Serbian.
After that, he lived in Russia for another 10 years, working in private practice, and then immigrated to the United States.
Another opinion:
In 2001, the RBC newspaper published an opinion on this topic by doctor of medical sciences, neuropsychologist Evgeniy Shaposhnikov. The neuropsychologist claims that there is no really strong evidence of the viral nature of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia refers to internal mental diseases. The reasons for its occurrence are not known.
There is some risk of a hereditary predisposition to this disease. The same as in patients with diabetes or cancer. But this does not mean at all that a woman with schizophrenia will necessarily give birth to a child prone to this illness. He explains the effect of the contagiousness of this disease with the following argument.
If a patient suffering from obsessive ideas, persecutory delusions, etc., is constantly in contact with his loved ones, he constantly tells them about it and, as a result, can convince them of the reality of the threat. Close people become infected not with schizophrenia, but with its symptom, i.e.
with the thoughts of a schizophrenic, they begin to believe what he says.
Other doctors agree that a virus can cause schizophrenia, but reject the fact that the disease is contagious. And they present a fairly compelling argument.
If this disease were contagious, then all doctors treating schizophrenics would have long ago become infected with this disease.
They call the causes of the disease: hormonal imbalance, disruption of brain function, long-term traumatic circumstances.
The opinion of ordinary people:
What can we say about the opinion of ordinary people about this disease, if even medical experts have not come to a consensus. Several myths have formed among ordinary people about this incompletely studied disease.
There is an opinion that you can become schizophrenic as a result of abuse in childhood. Actually this is not true.
Poor treatment can only speed up the process in a child predisposed to the disease or aggravate the disease.
The idea that people with schizophrenia are aggressive is also a misconception. Aggression itself is not associated with this disease. It’s easier to say that if a person is aggressive in life, then during periods of exacerbation of schizophrenia he will be so, and if he is calm by nature, then schizophrenia will not make him aggressive.
But one should still take into account the fact that these people still pose some danger. During the period of exacerbation of the disease, they can cause harm to others even with good intentions. For example, they will want to destroy something in order to escape from alleged pursuers, etc. In addition, such people are very at risk of becoming addicted to drugs or alcoholism.
Which in turn shortens their life.
Some believe that a person can develop schizophrenia after committing some unfavorable act. And as a result of a strong experience, become schizophrenic. This is also a mistaken opinion.
All schizophrenics are geniuses. There is also such an opinion. Indeed, the brain of geniuses works with greater efficiency than the brain of an ordinary person. Perhaps for this reason, many geniuses may experience mental disorders. But this does not mean that all patients with schizophrenia are necessarily geniuses.
Is there a cure for schizophrenia?
Some people believe that people with schizophrenia are simply mentally weak and therefore cannot cope with their illness. But schizophrenia is the same disease as, for example, deafness.
A person who is hard of hearing cannot begin to hear better just by an effort of his will. Most schizophrenics are aware of their illness and strive to get rid of it. Of course, to understand the disease they need the support and understanding of people close to them.
After all, a schizophrenic still needs to believe in the fact that part of the world that they hear and see is unreal.
But the truth is that at the moment there is no medicine that would completely cure a patient with schizophrenia. There are only remedies that, to one degree or another, can relieve or reduce the symptoms of the disease. Thus, they can improve the quality of life of the patient and his loved ones. But such drugs usually have negative side effects.
But still, even a person with schizophrenia can defeat this disease!
And there is practical confirmation of this. The great mathematician and genius who received the Nobel Prize was a schizophrenic. He could not recover from this illness, but he managed to deceive his illness. A wonderful feature film, A Beautiful Mind, was made about this true story.
And if you are interested in a topic where a person, despite any life circumstances, sometimes from a seemingly absolutely hopeless situation, finds a way to victory, you can go to our “We recommend films” section and check out our rating of films dedicated to the topic : Everything is possible!
Or go to any section and find the topic “Success Stories” and read other amazing stories of victories.
Source: //svoipravila.ru/zdorove/interesno-o-medicine/shizofreniya-zaraznoe-zabolevanie.html
Speech Impairment
A patient with schizophrenia often talks to himself, as if thinking out loud, this phenomenon is especially noticeable in patients experiencing auditory hallucinations.
The patient is characterized by disorganized speech, excessively detailed, sometimes incomprehensible or deviating from the topic. During a conversation, the patient may suddenly stop and not finish his speech or begin a phrase that he will continue only mentally.
Speech disorders in schizophrenia
- Going off topic
- Sudden stops
- Impaired speed (“fluency”)
- Tendency for abstract words
- Brevity of statements
- Decreased vocabulary
- Limited use of conjunctions and prepositions
- Lack of initiative at the beginning of a conversation
- Reasoning
- "Answers on a tangent"
- Inconsistency and incoherence (“incoherence”)
- Perseverations
- Paraphasia
A relatively common symptom of schizophrenia is impaired speech fluency and a decrease in the volume of speech production. The patient has difficulty speaking quickly, pronouncing words and phrases quickly, and often uses abstract words and excessive generalizations. His short statements resemble a telegraphic style due to the omission of conjunctions and prepositions.
Answers to questions follow with delays, as a rule, they are brief. It is relatively rare that patients begin to speak first, forgetting even about greeting.
Neuropsychologists have found that in a number of cases, a patient with schizophrenia understands speech addressed to him, but it is difficult for him to adequately respond to his interlocutor. Here we can assume damage to certain brain structures, most likely Broca's gyrus, or the “speech center,” localized in the basal regions of the frontal lobes of the brain. Note that the ability to recognize objects from an unusual point of view is recorded by the parietal lobe test, and the ability to spontaneous speech is measured by the frontal lobe test.
Errors of patients with poor speech and limited actions are usually of the nature of omissions.
Reasoning is a complex syndrome that is relatively common in some forms of schizophrenia. With reasoning, the external formal side of thinking is preserved: “conclusions are preceded by premises, which, in turn, are justified in great detail, and often with excessive length. At the same time, however, something insignificant, some trifle, is usually brought to the fore, while the most important is, as it were, deliberately overlooked, or with a detailed, but extremely superficial motivation, it is eliminated as not having any significance" (Serbsky V .P., 1912).
In recent years, to study the characteristics of the speech of patients with schizophrenia, a heuristic model has been used, in which the semantic organization includes three different but interrelated components that reflect the properties, processes and content of semantic networks. The properties refer to the weight of connections between words, as well as the size and connectivity of networks. The processes characterize the activation, inhibition, and contextual use of local and global features of speech. The content of networks concerns words, numbers, symbols.
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Is schizophrenia just a way to know the unknown?
Author Editorial Board Pravda.Ru
25.01.2006 00:01
Health » Health and prevention » Psychotherapy
In the previous article about the revolutionary discoveries in psychology and psychiatry of the past century, we talked about Sigmund Freud's contribution to the study of the human unconscious. Being an inveterate materialist, Freud nevertheless could not ignore the mysterious and mystical phenomena of our psyche, and in one of his letters in 1924 he wrote: “If I had not been engaged in psychoanalysis, which is now too popular, I would have focused my attention on parapsychological cases.” . Thus, Freud admitted that it was impossible to explain the phenomena of the conscious and unconscious within the framework of traditional science based on materialism.
Two years after the release of Freud’s “Interpretation of Dreams,” in 1902, the great American philosopher and psychologist William James’s book “The Varieties of Religious Experience” appeared, which became a turning point for the entire world science of man. It was translated into all major languages (the Russian translation, edited by psychologist S. Lurie, was published in 1910) and caused heated controversy about the true nature of the human psyche.
Visions and insights are not always the whims of a damaged mind
James gave many examples, both from history and from contemporary life, indicating that religious visions and insights are not quirks of a damaged mind, but real events of the mental world that require careful study. Through such cases, through the “stream of consciousness,” it is possible to create a genuine picture of the levels of the psyche, which is clearly not limited to everyday reality.
In addition, William James cited data from experiments with nitrous oxide, during which people experienced mystical states. For the first time in serious literature, the question was raised that some substances can be effective catalysts for a person’s transition to other mental realities.
After James' death in 1910, many legends arose around his name. The story about the “red pajamas” became especially famous. Before his death, James told Professor Howforth that he would contact him from the other world. Six months later, a couple from Ireland wrote a letter to Howforth, who said that during a seance, “William James” appeared to them, gave Howforth’s coordinates, asked to contact him and remind him of the story about the “red pajamas.” Howforth puzzled for a long time until he remembered how in his younger years he and James went to Paris, where they bought fancy-shaped Chinese red pajamas in a store.
Meanwhile, great changes have occurred in traditional psychiatry. In 1911, the leading German doctor and, by the way, Jung’s teacher, Bleuler, suggested that his colleagues abandon the term “dementia praecox,” which denoted a whole group of mental disorders not associated with organic brain damage. Based on the accumulated material, Bleuler introduced the concept of “schizophrenia,” which translated from Greek means “split mind.”
Psychiatrists around the world immediately determined that schizophrenia is the most common mental disorder. But already the first attempts to give some clear theoretical justification for schizophrenia and the diverse forms of its manifestation showed that this could not be done purely experimentally and physiologically. Even then, many began to doubt that such schizoid paradoxes as hallucinations, “inner voices,” and splitting of the ego into two or more personalities could not be caused only by a disruption in the functioning of brain cells.
In addition, Bleuler also posed the following question: is schizophrenia a disease or is it a special way of mental being? It began heated discussions about what is considered a mental norm and a mental disorder, which continues to this day.
In 1917, two events occurred that were exceptional in their significance in the history of psychiatry and human culture in general. They showed that mental phenomena, which traditional psychiatry considered and still considers to be a manifestation of pathology and disease, actually speak of the versatility of the human unconscious and the amazing healing capabilities of unusual states of consciousness.
The first case happened with the greatest reformer of psychology and psychiatry, Carl Gustav Jung. This case is especially significant because we are not talking about just a psychologist, but about a professional psychiatrist with nine years of clinical experience.
In 1916-17, Jung, living with his family on a remote estate on the shores of Lake Basel, was often in unusual states of consciousness. Ghosts and other disembodied people appeared to him.
Carl Gustav Jung experienced an altered state of consciousness himself
essence, and in the winter of 1916-17, Jung was visited by a certain astral being, which, as the psychologist himself writes in his memoirs “Memories, Dreams, Reflections,” appeared to be a 2nd century Gnostic from Alexandria, Basilides. According to Jung, it was Basilides who dictated to him a mystical text, which was published under the title “Seven Sermons to the Dead.” Even a superficial acquaintance with this masterpiece that defies any interpretation makes a stunning impression.
From the point of view of traditional psychiatry, Jung, at the time of writing “Seven Sermons to the Dead,” was in a state of acute schizoid attack, accompanied by hallucinations. But since we are talking about the greatest psychologist and psychiatrist of the past century, what happened to Jung speaks of the opposite: the inability of official medicine to explain the mystical phenomena of psychic reality outside the framework of meaningless statements about pathology and illness.
This is confirmed by the complete capitulation of traditional science in explaining the so-called miracle at Fatima. We are talking about events in the Portuguese city of Fatima, when three girls had a vision of Our Lady. According to their testimonies, the Virgin Mary was supposed to appear five times - from June 13 to October 13, 1917. Each time more and more pilgrims flocked to Fatima, but only girls saw the Mother of God, while the rest observed inexplicable celestial phenomena.
Finally, on October 13, 70 thousand people, including journalists, observed a real miracle: the appearance of a luminous disk, which first rushed to the ground and then melted in the sun's rays. At the same time, everyone felt how the valley where the events took place was filled with fragrance and freshness, and subsequently many testified that their state of health - both physical and spiritual - had significantly improved.
The "Miracle of Fatima" still remains a mystery. Attempts by traditional psychology and psychiatry to explain the miraculous vision as collective psychosis look ridiculous, since so many people with different mental status could not experience the same hallucinatory series.
It is no coincidence that the 20-30s of the last century are called a period of “open crisis” in psychology. Traditional science continued to study the human psyche in the spirit of the materialist paradigm laid down during the French Enlightenment. Great strides have been made in research into the activity of the central nervous system and the biochemistry of the brain, and medications have been developed to relieve acute mental conditions.
But even then it became clear that drug intervention only softens the symptoms of disorders, as if taking them into the shadows, but does not help to thoroughly restore the spiritual harmony of patients. Phenomena of the psyche and paradoxes of spiritual development could no longer be explained by disorders of the central nervous system of an organic nature.
Revolutionary discoveries in physics were of great importance for the revision of the materialist paradigm in psychology. It turned out that at the atomic level the principles of Newton's classical mechanics did not apply. Einstein's theory of relativity, confirmed by experiments, showed that time is not something definite, but can slow down under the influence of gravity. This latest discovery has led many psychologists and psychiatrists to question whether the special time perception diagnosed in schizophrenia is an indicator of disease pathology.
In 1927, the first translation into European language of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, to which Jung wrote a psychological commentary, was published in England. Rationalistic European culture was presented with a radically different view of the nature of human consciousness, according to which the psyche is not in a direct and biological connection with the activity of the brain. The Tibetan Book of the Dead described the metamorphoses of the human conscious and unconscious before and during death, as well as the posthumous wanderings of the soul.
Experts in comparative religion immediately noted the similarity between the descriptions of the “Tibetan Book of the Dead” and Christian mystical tales, especially the story of the ordeal of St. Theodora. Thus, in serious science, interest in the study of mental phenomena of near-death states of consciousness emerged and the beginning of a new interdisciplinary direction, called thanatology, was laid.
The successes of the fascist movements in Italy and Germany have brought Western psychological thought to a complete standstill. Based on the rationalism of the same French Enlightenmentists, democratic ideology gave up its place in the minds without a fight
Sigmund Freud recognized that to explain the phenomena of consciousness and
millions of people to views based on appeal to deep and ancient concepts, such as soil, land, spirit of the nation, and so on. Attempts by Freud's followers, among whom the most notable was the father of the "sexual revolution" Wilhelm Reich, to explain the psychology of the masses by the manifestation of sexual complexes and deviations repressed into the subconscious, were unsuccessful.
The appeal of the leaders and ideologists of fascism to the mythological foundations of national cultures and the success of these appeals indicated that sexuality is not the main driving force of the human psyche, that there are archaic layers in it that, when activated, determine the behavior of not only a specific individual, but also large communities.
Europe greeted the pre-war years with overcrowded psychiatric clinics, most of whose patients continued to be treated with pills and conversations. The wealthy public also tried to help themselves without much success by pouring out their souls to psychoanalysts. And few people paid attention to the sensational proposal made in 1940 by the outstanding Swiss psychiatrist Ludwig Binswinger.
Based on many years of clinical research, he came to the conclusion that so-called mental disorders defy any classification. Binswinger proposed abandoning the concept of “schizophrenia” and stated that doctors must work with millions of individual cases, for each of which it is necessary to develop both their own theory and their own methods of treatment.
Andrey Shcherbakov
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